SOURCE: "'The Frenzied Moment': Sex and Insanity in Jane Eyre," in Madness and Sexual Politics in the Feminist Novel, University of Wisconsin Press, 1978, pp. 13-37.

In the following essay, Rigney maintains that in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, Bronte suggests an association between sexuality and the loss of one's identity, and consequently, one's sanity.

 … the lunatic asylum is yellow. 

 On the first floor there were
women sitting, sewing;
they looked at us sadly, gently,
answered questions. 

 On the second floor there were
women crouching, thrashing,
tearing off their clothes, screaming;
to us they paid little attention. 

 On the third floor
I went through a glass-panelled
door into a different kind of room.
It was a hill, with boulders, trees, no houses. 

 … the air
was about to tell me
all kinds of answers. 

Margaret Atwood's "Visit to Toronto with Companions," The Journals of Susanna Moodie

In the deep shade, at...