Recently, I've watched both the French film Seraphine (2008) and the most recent cinematic version of Jane Eyre.
The representation of madness in these films couldn't be much different.
In Seraphine--based on the real life of primitive artist "Séraphine de Senlis"--we watch as the painter slowly goes madder and madder, and is later committed to the asylum where she dies. At no point is her madness is she attractive. She is a peasant who paints her way out of poverty, only to leave the world of sense and reality.
In the current Jane Eyre, the madwoman in the attic is crazily beautiful, passionately attached to her husband, vile to Jane, and beautiful in an eerie and otherworldly way. She's a heiress fallen on bad times.
What does the difference between these two versions of madness mean? Heck if I know.
Sometimes I just observe, without having an answer for everything.
