Attributions of Madness in Ian McEwan's Enduring Love

Abstract This chapter considers the treatment of madness in fiction from a cognitive perspective by exploring such theoretical issues as narrative thinking, attribution theory, and intermental thought. The phrase narrative thinking refers to the belief that human beings typically experience their lives as a narrative or story, and that this is a good thing. Attribution theory is the study of how attributions of characters' states of mind are made by narrators, readers, and other characters. Intermental thought is joint, group, shared, or collective thought, as opposed to intramental, or individual or private thought. I apply these concepts to the key relationships in Ian McEwan's novel Enduring Love. I start with the characters' need to narrativize: that is, to understand an event or a situation in terms of a narrative. After analysing the nature of the attributions of madness to Jed (who suffers from de Clerambault's syndrome or erotomania, a real complaint) by Joe (the narrator-character), I show that Joe and Clarissa (Joe's partner) narrativize Jed very differently. In discussing the effect of Jed's madness on the intermental unit formed by Joe and Clarissa, I explore what happens to this intermental unit when the two individuals within it narrativize the same events intramentally. I conclude with a discussion of Clarissa's criticism of Joe's handling of the situation - and, in particular, the question of whether or not it is sufficiently motivated - from a number of different aspects: characterization theory, empathy, rhetorical and ethical criticism, and gender studies.