First, I want to say that I loved this book. I want to lead with that because (a) I have seen a lot of negativity about this book in this sub and (b) I do have some criticisms, which I want to be taken in the proper context. This is one of the best books I've read in years.
Tons of spoilers ahead…
First, my thoughts on Vanner's portrayal of Helen…
Based on Mildred's account, Andrew provided the capital and the financial orthodoxy, and Mildred provided her exceptional mind. The result was Andrew stealing the credit. This fits in nicely with one of the major themes of the novel : intellectual theft. Each book has it… Book II is the manifestation of Andrew's attempt to claim Ida's work, as well as the attempted erasure of his wife's contributions to his success. Book III includes attempted thefts by Ida's father, husband, and Andrew. In Book IV, we see Mildred complicit in this, as she nudges Andrew with DF#EA so that he can claim AEF#D as his own. In all of these cases, intellectual theft is transpiring. This is an important major theme. So, it is only natural that in Book I, Vanner takes Helen's mind. I've seen many attempts to uncover some deeper, plot-driven explanation for this (e.g., Mildred is Vanner, Vanner stole the book from Mildred, etc.), but I think Diaz's motivation for Helen losing her mind was not plot-driven… Instead it exists so that the theme of powerful men engaging in 'mind-theft' can violently come full-circle in a return to the beginning of the novel – DF#EA-AEF#D.
Second, my thoughts on Diaz's central theme – that you cannot trust any narration, particularly one with the power to bend and shape reality.
By the time I was half-way through the novel, I was convinced that the purpose was that you could not "trust" the narrator of any of the four books. However, I could not shake the vague feeling that either (a) this is simply not accurate or (b) Diaz was putting his thumb too heavily on the scale for some narrators. Diaz outright tells you not to trust Book I and Book II. In Book I, we are told that Vanner's account of Helen's loss of mind is fabricated. In Book II, we are very deliberately shown Andrew's reshaping of his and his wife's stories through Ida's writing. However, in Book III and Book IV, it feels like we are supposed to trust these versions of events. There's not really even a hint that they are unreliable. This was a little jarring for me, and it left me with a feeling that Diaz missed an opportunity to reinforce this theme.
There was an odd sex dichotomy when it came to trust… At the end of the novel, it was clear that the male characters were untrustworthy – Andrew, Vanner, the father, the boyfriend. The female characters, Mildred, Ida, and Helen… There is no clear indication that any of them are untrustworthy – at least not in the same way as the aforementioned characters. I began to worry that Diaz stumbled into a trope where the men exhibit a brutish lust to take from others and the women are mysterious, cunning, and uncredited.
So, not liking this interpretation, I decided to again consider the possibility that all 4 narrator's should be questioned. And this led me to an interesting theory that I haven't seen suggested: What if Book I's portrayal of Helen is reliable? Consider the possibility that Helen's mind truly is going, just as it was portrayed in Book I, and Andrew later shapes reality such that her malady becomes cancer. Some evidence:
- Think of the nurse: In Book IV, Mildred develops a close relationship with her nurse. In Book I, a nurse is seen repeatedly mourning Helen.
- In her diaries, we see a steady decline in coherence.
- She writes of constant bells sounding, which may or may not actually exist. She repeatedly writes of a noise occurring in her brain.
In her final entry, there's a few nuggets that support this theory:
- "A bell in a bell jar won't ring" – This sounds like a mind trapped inside itself. It also alludes to Plath's The Bell Jar, which is a book about the entrapment of mental illness.
- "Ferns within ferns within ferns within ferns" – This again seems to symbolize the idea of nested realities.
- "I know my days are numbered but not every day is a real number" – This really resonated with me, but I'm not sure if I fully understand why. "Numbered days" obviously refers to her mortality. The days not being "real numbers" feels like such a powerful metaphor. There's a clear allusion to the mathematical notion of the imaginary. Her days might be unreal, surreal, or disconnected from reality.
- "It took me a while to realize the hum was only inside my head"
- "Imagine the relief of finding out that one is not the one one thought one was."
- And then the final line of the book: "In and out of sleep. Like a needle coming out from under a black cloth and then vanishing again. Unthreaded." – This seems plausible as a final entry after receiving the treatment described in Book I.
There are honestly several other quotes I could include. I've already made this unnecessarily long.
I like thinking that Diaz at least wanted us to consider this interpretation, which would then reinforce the theme that all narrators should be questioned.
(A final complimentary theory – Vanner attained possession of her diary and interpreted her writing as a woman descending into madness, hence his portrayal. We know on some level he had "access" to a lot of the private events in the diary, as he depicted some of them in his book.)
Sorry for the long and rambling post. I prefer these interpretations to some of the more common ones which discard the characters as a bit of a trope.
by iscurred