Method to her madness: abnormal psychology in Margaret Mahy's young adult fiction

Abstract

The twelve-year-old protagonist and narrator of The Other Side of Silence is what psychologists term a "Selective Mute". Given the presence and accuracy of the clinical detail in the novel, it is clear that Margaret Mahy has researched this condition thoroughly. Abnormal psychology is in fact the basis of several of Mahy's novels - most obviously of Dangerous Spaces (suicidal depression), and of Memory (where one of the two main characters suffers from Alzheimer's disease, while the young hero cannot control his angry and violent impulses). Indeed, it characterises the protagonists of the vast majority of Mahy's works for older children and young adults - it is surely one of the author's most consistent preoccupations. This striking and unifying feature of her fiction has not, however, been directly confronted in criticism of her work. What this thesis demonstrates is firstly the overwhelming presence of abnormal psychology in Mahy's oeuvre, as represented by six central texts: The Haunting, The Changeover, The Other Side of Silence, Memory, Alchemy, and Dangerous Spaces. The question arises as to why this feature has received so little critical attention. Considering this. I turn to Mahy's narrative technique. The reader's point of view is manipulated in these novels so that it is consistently aligned with that of the protagonist (whose perspective may therefore be taken at face value). What is ultimately that protagonist's psychological problem, therefore, is presented uncritically. At the same time, the stories (including setting, character, and incident) all function as externalisations of the disturbed inner landscapes that the novels explore. In Dangerous Spaces, for example, the reader almost literally enters the inner world of the novel's seriously withdrawn protagonist as the imaginary Viridian is described. Externalisation in this (and Mahy's other novels) provides the means by which interiority is subverted.