Being committed to the psychiatric institution

Being committed to the psychiatric institution is the pivotal event in which the narrator is driven by her husband and son to a remote stone building and forcibly admitted, marking the climax of her descent into madness and the beginning of her exile from family life. The scene unfolds as a grotesque parody of a family outing, with the narrator seated in the back of the car in yellow shorts, suitcase in hand, practicing her "crazy face" in the rearview mirror. Her husband gestures at her to stop, reminding her that they had discussed this yesterday and agreed it was for the best—for all three of them. The journey is framed as a cure approaching, but the narrator's internal monologue reveals a profound ambivalence: she imagines herself as Zelda Fitzgerald en route to Switzerland, not for the chocolate or watches, and devours the road with her knees under her chin, biting on the window. The car, checked by the mechanic to ensure it was up to the trip, has no trouble with the hills, and the weather report announces clear skies all weekend. The narrator reflects that she should have snuck out at night and punctured the tyres with a needle, a fleeting thought of sabotage that underscores her powerlessness.

The Journey and the Narrator's State of Mind

The drive is rendered as a descent into unreality. The narrator describes herself as broken, her stitches undone, wearing shoes with no laces and shorts that keep falling down. In her suitcase lies a little notepad with coloured pages, but she wonders what she could write down beyond images that don't mean anything. The road is empty, and the car has enough petrol to get to Siberia, there and back through the dirty snow piled up on the roadside. She frames the journey as the beginning of a novel: "This is how the novel begins. The character sitting in the back is being taken somewhere far away." She sees herself as meek, like a schoolgirl almost, with her shorts and her ponytail, but actually she can scare away dogs and has bullet-wounds for eyes. The trees sent spinning by the moving car overlap and intertwine, merging into one—not trees but a feeling of elation, a nauseous, guilty mouth. The looks from her men are like kicks in the ribs. The two of them sing softly in English, "love me, love me, say that you love me," and she blocks them out with Mozart's Divertimento in D major, K334. The narrator's son turns around and looks at her curiously when she bursts into laughter, and she thinks, "Yes, it's your mother laughing. They're such imbeciles. Father and son, in unison. Birthed by the same woman." This moment crystallizes her alienation from both her husband and her child, who are united against her in their decision to commit her.

Arrival at the Institution

When they arrive, the narrator sees "this pile of uneven stones with a chimney on top" and realizes it is to be her new home. She imagines the routine: breakfast of toast with plum jam made by a band of disturbed inpatients, working in the vegetable garden, taking part in craft workshops, and sleeping on a narrow mattress. The patients in the beds next to hers will have nightmares, just like her. She will walk around among half-smoked cigarettes, in the prime of life and in freefall. She vows to wake the dead, to get them to jump over the fence like little sheep, and says goodbye to morbid sexual anxiety. The three of them get out of the car looking like overwhelmed tourists, taking photos here and there. The narrator thinks they will now have a tour of the facilities—the swimming pool, the games room, the dining hall—and that she is on her honeymoon, like the other women. But instead, someone grabs hold of her arms and squeezes them energetically, welcoming her and pushing her slightly. She sees how easily her husband and son, who were at her side not a second ago, wave goodbye, saying "see you later, beautiful, see you later, Mummy." Everything happens so quickly after that: she hears the engine and they are already rolling away through the hills, already singing another song. She turns around and sees a hallway full of closed doors. Someone forces her forwards, and they shut her away.

The First Morning and the Doctor's Visit

On the first morning of all the other mornings, the narrator lies with her fingers hanging off the edge of the bed. A doctor comes over, his crooked eyeglasses above her, his four pupils. She tells him she dreamt she'd left her baby asleep under acid rain, that she hadn't been able to bring him with her and he was looking at her from a long way away. She says "I'm sorry," and when the doctor asks what she was saying, she replies it was just a dream. She asks if she has to get up, and the doctor says she doesn't have to do anything. She asks if people here go about their business during the day, and he says she can do as she pleases. She asks, "My husband paid for me to do as I please?" and he replies, "You're free to leave whenever you like." She asks if this isn't the new world, and he says it's just somewhere that's a bit calmer than other places. Then he goes off, dragging his feet like all tormented doctors do. The narrator lies there watching a small iridescent fly hit the glass of the window again and again, a symbol of her own trapped state.

Thematic Significance

The commitment is the culmination of the narrator's trajectory from a reluctant mother and wife to a diagnosed madwoman, and it exposes the family's collusion in her exile. The event is framed as a "cure" by her husband, but the narrator's perspective reveals it as a punishment for her nonconformity—her refusal to be a normal mother, her affair, her violent impulses. The institution, with its promise of calm and routine, becomes a space of both confinement and potential liberation, where the narrator can finally "wake the dead" and explore her own madness without the constraints of family life. The scene's dark humor—the narrator's ironic comparison to a honeymoon, her imagining of the facilities as a resort—underscores the absurdity of her situation and the failure of language to convey her experience. The commitment also marks a rupture in the narrator's relationship with her son, as she is separated from him and dreams of him looking at her from a long way away, a premonition of the lasting distance between them. The event thus serves as a turning point in the novel, setting the stage for the narrator's subsequent release and her continued struggle with motherhood, desire, and identity.