The main focus throughout this novel is the Goodie-Brown family, the novel tells the story of many different members of this family at different points in their lives, but they are all connected. In The Birds of Opulence Wilkinson shows neglect and mistreatment of mental illness in women by family and community, as well as how it can affect their children and the people around them. The main four characters the audience sees these developments in are Lucy, Yolanda, Francine, and Mona. However, later in the novel, the reader discovers more information about Tookie and Minnie Mae that brings Lucy’s mental state into light quite a bit more.
The first situation the reader is put in during the novel, is the birth of Yolanda herself. The moment Lucy gives birth in the squash patch, Wilkinson states, “There was already a sorrow cloaked around her head that she couldn’t shake” (Wilkinson 12). This is the first introduction into the themes of mental illness in the novel. When the time comes for Lucy to breastfeed and take care of Yolanda, it is clear that the family is not concerned as to why Lucy is behaving the way that she is, just that she isn’t taking care of Yolanda as she should. The specific scene of Minnie and Tookie forcing her to breastfeed Yolanda shows a large amount of mistreatment of the situation. They hold her down and force it upon her instead of trying to get the bottom of her feelings. Minnie Mae starts this; Tookie is tentative but obeys her mother. “’Hold her feet’ she says to Tookie, and she pushes her full weight atop Lucy, holding her hands down, even with Lucy kicking and screaming. ‘We got bottles’ Tookie says but takes her place at the bottom of the bed. ‘Cow’s milk for cows’ says Minnie Mae” (Wilkinson 26). The women had other means of feeding the baby, even if it wasn’t as good. They chose the baby over Lucy’s wellbeing, reinstating where she stands in their priorities.
As the situation progresses, the audience sees the community’s reactions to Lucy. During the party when has an episode and drops Yolanda, the only person concerned about her is Joe. While Minnie Mae and Tookie are focused on the baby, the community is whispering, “Others are whispering among themselves. ’Crazy heifer’ ‘well if that don’t beat all’” (Wilkinson 31-32). In a small town like Opulence, rumors and information is spread quickly, there is no doubt this situation was talked about. The gossip only increases the stress on Lucy, since the family has been shown be concerned about their name, this also increases tensions in the household.
As Yolanda gets older, we see in her reactions and interactions with Mona that she has feelings of inadequacy when compared to others. In many interactions with Mona, when Mona matures at any rate faster than Yolanda or mentions sexuality, she gets very defensive and upset. It seems that this comes from a feeling of unworthiness in response to her mother’s emotions toward her. A main instance that we see this behavior is when Mona mentions getting her first period and makes fun of Yolanda for not getting hers. With the insult Mona throws at her, “And you got a baby pussy” (Wilkinson 78). She slaps Mona in a face. She also stops talking to Mona for months after Mona sleeps with her brother. In comparison to Mona, their reactions to different treatments and getting older are completely different.
Later in the novel, the readers see hints of depressive states that Yolanda may be in. In her conversation with Kee Kee on the phone, he asks her “You got the blues…. again?” (Wilkinson 170). This seems to be a reference to a depression that Yolanda may have been in, as well as another example of the tentativeness the family talks about mental illness. It is also mentioned that she has panic attacks. The audience also finds out that her husband, Junior, has been cheating on her. This gives some insight on her living situation as well as what could be affecting her other than genetic depression. Yolanda has many experiences witnessing the mental illness in her family, as well as hearing the story of Minnie Mae beating Tookie when finding out she was pregnant. She has witnessed all these secrets, illnesses, and events that have affected the women in her family. They take a toll on her character and are more than likely a main reason as to why she has mental health issues as an adult. In Journey McAndrew’s review of the novel he states, “The women are susceptible to unhappiness and psychosis, or as Granny Tookie describes It, ‘The decent of old haunts.’” (McAndrews 118). This description is a great example of what happens to Yolanda’s character, she has had the old haunts of the other characters on her shoulders.
When talking about others affected by Lucy’s illness and the mistreatment of it, we must talk about Joe. He seems to be the only character that pays a lot of attention to Lucy’s mental state and is the only one with her in the end. It seems that the position he is put in throughout the novel is to be Lucy’s caregiver, and in the end, she decided to take her own life anyway. He mentions at the end of the novel, “Folks always asking him to fix this and that. And though he thought there was nothing he couldn’t fix; Joe was helpless against those things that twisted Lucy’s mind” (Wilkinson 191). Joe has spent so many years of his life trying to help Lucy, but he couldn’t do it alone. There should have been others around her who understood the impact of mental illness better, those who could understand and support her. From this quote, he blames himself. The neglect of her mental state from most of the family and community caused it to be difficult for only Joe to help her. He even had her taken to a hospital to see if they could help, and in the end, it didn’t. If they would have rallied around and all tried to support her, Joe wouldn’t have been left alone with him attempts to help her. It takes so much knowledge to help someone with mental illness, which makes Francine’s situation even more tragic when thinking about her.
Francine and Mona are in different but similar situations. Francine doesn’t have family in Opulence to notice that there is anything going on with her. The only person who would be able to notice was Sonny, and he has passed. Through getting taken advantage of and her grief, her attachment to Mona when she is brought home becomes aggressive. She chases off women who come to check on her, and rumors begin. This causes her to lock herself away and remain in a depression. The town speaks of the way Mona was conceived, and after she gets older the way they speak of her, effect Mona and her mother greatly.
Throughout her childhood and as she gets older, Mona pushes for independence. The town talks of Mona in an overly sexualized manner because of the scandal of her birth, which later develops into the way she sees herself and behaves. From the situation previously referenced, when she and Yolanda discuss getting their periods, she states “‘If I did it with a boy right now...’’ (Wilkinson 78). This is also reflected when she gets involved with Marshall at age 17. Mona wants to be seen as an independent woman and ends up going to far as to get herself into more trouble than before. Through the rumors she has heard and directly stated to her from the community, it causes these idealisms to form in her brain.
The community in this situation are the main reasons as to why the situation with Mona and her mother get so out of hand. Since the opinions about children born out of wedlock were so negative then, the church women and most of the town didn’t have any problems insulting Mona and her mother. The main example of this we see is when Mona is 9, and these women are speaking of her outside of church, “’Pretty little dark thing, though.’ ‘Pretty ain’t never got a body far for long.’ ‘Born a bastard, die a whore.’” (Wilkinson 64). These women feel free to talk this way about a nine-year-old, because of the perception of women like Francine in this time period. Not a single one of these women consider the fact that the man took advantage of Francine’s grief, and they continue to pour their anger about the situation onto Mona. This sets Mona up to think of herself in this way, and over sexualize herself from a young age. She ends up having the same fate that everyone assumed she would. She got pregnant, ran away, and people still seem to judge her even outside of town.
Although these two situations are very different from one another, each of them reflects many of the same themes. There are angles of judgement that come from small town communities that only worsen the mentally ill’s situation. No one really considers why a person may be the way that they are, they simply judge and want to know why each mother is treating and reacting abnormally with their children. By not prioritizing the women just like the children, the families and community makes the situation worse. The women can’t improve in order to take care of the children as they should, and the children still witness their mother’s illnesses.
The Goode-Brown family as a whole have a lot of passed-down generational issues that are follows throughout the novel, as Lucy Lancing states, “The Goode-Browns are comprised of a host of female characters struggling to understand sex, mental illness, and their roles in Appalachian society” (Lancing 84). From Minnie Mae, to Tookie, to Lucy, to Yolanda, almost all of these women have to deal with these issue and secrets from their past. If they had just changed the way they treat each other and how they understand mental illness, this pattern may have not repeated itself as it did. When it comes to Francine and Mona, the community is the main antagonist in Mona’s development. If there were only people to understand what her mother went through, and less people to judge she may have been able to escape the idea people pushed onto her.
This entire novel makes example of the major issues that women faced in this time period, showing through many tragic, yet realistic, circumstances the effects of the neglect of mental illness. Through two different families we see one with a large family and another with no family, and how similar the situations end up turning out. Wilkinson is raw in her presentation of these mental illnesses, and believes it is important to showcase multiple different types of illnesses in order to get her point across and spread awareness. She states in an interview speaking on themes on mental illness in the novel, "I write about it from a personal standpoint because it’s something that has been prevalent in my family, and something that is prevalent I think throughout Appalachia...” (House 59). This novel does exactly as it is written to do and expresses the struggles of mental illness in Black women in this time period, especially mothers.
(1911 words)
Works Cited
House, Silas. "An Appalachian Heritage Interview With Crystal Wilkinson." Appalachian Heritage (2016): 57-69.
Lansing, Lucy. "Freedom Through Mental Health in Crystal Wilkinson's "The Birds of Opulence"." Furman Humanities Review (2017): 83-96.
McAndrews, Journey. "Crystal Wilkinson. The Birds of Opulence." University Press of Kentucky, (2016): 117-120.
Wilkinson, Crystal. The Brids of Opulence . Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky , 2016.