Where It All Goes Down
1948 to 1951, Chicago and Rural Illinois, and Yr
Fall is all about pumpkin carving, watching the leaves change colors, and taking a drive out to that mental hospital with bars on the windows, are we right?
Er, maybe not that last one. But that's what fall is about in the opening of this novel.
It's 1948, and the Blaus are driving from Chicago to rural Illinois, where Deborah will live and be treated for schizophrenia at a mental hospital. During flashbacks that Deborah recounts in therapy sessions, we get a tour of Chicago and its suburbs, but most of the action takes place in the hospital itself, as well as in the landscape of the Yr, an imaginary world that only exists in Deborah's mind.
The Blaus are a Jewish family of immigrants who live in an anti-Semitic neighborhood and send their daughter to an anti-Semitic summer camp. It's no wonder that Deborah has identity issues stemming from her religious and ethnic identity. (For more on the Jewish experience in America at the time, check this out.)
The 1940s and 1950s were an era before the term "politically correct" even existed. Yeah, Deborah and her family had a hard time with prejudice. It was a fact of life at the time.
The mental hospital where Deborah lives is never named, nor is the small town where it's located. Sometimes authors like to omit these details because it makes the setting more universal. I Never Promised You a Rose Garden is a slice of dysfunctional Americana that sheds light on the way mental illness was treated and thought about during the 1940s through the 1960s, when it was first published.
Joanne Greenberg, the novel's author, was admitted to a mental hospital herself, also from 1948 to 1951, but the real-life hospital was in Maryland. In the book, we travel to Illinois, but no specifics about the hospital's exact location are given. Do we need them? No. The experience Deborah and the patients have then becomes something internal and emotional, something that we don't tether to an exact place.
And Then There's Yr
The Yr of Deborah's imagination has vast plains, huge deserts, great blue skies, storms, and a Pit full of nothing but darkness and voices. It's important to remember that Deborah came from a background that fluctuated between privilege and near-poverty; this instability made Deborah feel unstable, and it caused tensions in her parents' lives that spilled over into how they treated her.
Spending some time in the landscape of Deborah's mind also gives us a firsthand account of what it feels like to lose hold of reality: apparently, this experience is all at once exhilarating, disorienting, and frightening. To the outside world, Deborah is cold and unfeeling, but we feel more sympathetic to Deborah because we see what she sees. Her internal world, even when it's dark and scary, is still very much alive.
In Yr, there are gods, goddesses, and a whole hierarchy of fantastical beings that Deborah's created to keep her company since she was five. They all started out as protectors, but the more out of touch with her inner self Deborah becomes, the darker and more limiting the characters become.
The landscape of Yr actually loses color over time, too. Eventually, it all becomes gray. There are still great plains and the Pit. But there's no color.
Eventually, Deborah learns how to live on Earth full-time and says goodbye to the magical place that both comforted and caged her.