I Never Promised You a Rose Garden
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| Author | Joanne Greenberg |
|---|---|
| Publisher | |
| Released |
I Never Promised You a Rose Garden is an autobiographical novel by Joanne Greenberg, written under the pen name of Hannah Green. It was made into a film in 1977. (Neither the novel nor the film should be confused with "(I Never Promised You a) Rose Garden", the Joe South song, most famously recorded by Lynn Anderson in 1970.)
[edit] Plot summary
Rejected by peers and to a certain extent by her family, victimised by anti-Semitism, and traumatised by painful surgery for urethral cancer in early childhood, Deborah Blau is a highly intelligent and sensitive girl who perceives reality as innately cruel. At approximately age eight, she creates or discovers the Kingdom of Yr, an alternative dimensional world where she is respected as a queen. It has a language of its own called Yri, which may or may not be based on scraps of other languages Deborah heard from her multilingual family. It is rich in metaphor and poetic imagery, with place names like "the Plains of Tai'a" and "the Canyons of the Sorrow". In a way, the culture of Yr, with its emphasis on remembering Deborah's personal suffering, reflects the values of her Jewish heritage and its commemorative stories and festivals describing historical events.
In its purest form, Yr is an ancient kingdom of awesome beauty. Eagles soar over mountain ranges overlooking plains and valleys where wild horses graze. Deborah has several names there, but is most often referred to as "Bird-one"; she can shapeshift there and become a wild horse or a bird. Because she sometimes slips and speaks or writes Yri words in school or other everyday situations, there is a Censor who guards her speech and actions so that she can travel in her homeworld while maintaining a semblance of normality in the world-at-large. The gods of Yr described in the book are Anterrabae, who perpetually falls in a shower of fire; Lactamaeon, a black man on a black horse; and Idat, a rarely seen, androgynous figure known as the Dissembler.
Over time, Deborah is removed from anti-Semitic environments and moves to a large city where Jews are accepted. As she matures and earth world pressures ease up on her, such that at sixteen she actually has friends and is doing well, she finds her loyalties divided, but is unwilling to put Yr behind her. She holds onto it more firmly than ever, such that its hold on her becomes tyrannical. In her perspective, it's the gods who will not let her go. She begins to suffer much more from their cruelty than in her daily life, but she's afraid that she is too different from ordinary people, that the earth world is still not a good place for her and will ultimately destroy her if she tries to exist there without Yr to retreat to when things go wrong. In addition, it's no kiddie fantasy to her; it is a homeland, the birthplace of her soul. It is at this point that she enters a private hospital for the insane, and begins therapy with an insightful woman psychiatrist.
The doctor in the novel is based closely on Greenberg's real doctor, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, and Deborah's hospital is Chestnut Lodge in Rockville, Maryland. In writing the novel, Greenberg changed names and places, of course; but she also changed the names of the Gods (Yr was Iria, and Anterrabae was originally Antilobia, for instance), and so the words of the Yri language given in the book may not be the true Irian speech. Some of Greenberg's doctors at Chestnut Lodge felt that she had made up Iria on the spot to impress Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, who wrote glowing reports focusing on Greenberg's genius and creativity. Fromm-Reichmann saw these qualities as signs of Greenberg's innate health, indicating that she had every chance of recovering from her mental illness.
In both real life and in the novel, Greenberg was diagnosed with schizophrenia; however, this word was used at the time to describe any thought disorder. In fact, undifferentiated schizophrenia was a trashcan diagnosis which could cover anything from anxiety or depression to simple homesickness. A 1981 article in the New York Times cites two psychiatrists who examined Greenberg's self-description in the book and concluded that she was not schizophrenic, but suffered from extreme depression and somatization disorder. [1] In addition, Deborah's difficulty socializing as a child and especially her periodic inability to process sensory input suggest a form of autism. In a recent interview on public radio, Greenberg states that subsequent to the urethral surgery, her vision literally went "grey and flat", and stayed that way for many years. She still reports difficulty with depression, but says she can alleviate it with activity.
At the novel's end, understanding that acceptance by other people is not impossible, discovering that she can find beauty in the "real world", and after a long period of therapy with Dr. Fried, Deborah gradually pulls herself away from the Kingdom of Yr and eventually makes a full return to the world of reality.
[edit] Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
In the wake of the success of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Roger Corman was able to get funding for a movie version of Rose Garden. Bibi Andersson played Dr. Fried, while Kathleen Quinlan played Deborah. For reasons yet to be determined (perhaps the backers objected?), all references to Judaism were removed, as well as the whole story of the vicious cruelty Deborah suffered from anti-Semitic peers; so that her childhood bout with urethral cancer becomes the sole reason for Deborah's "retreat from reality". Deborah's name is changed from Blau (matching the author's pseudonym "Green") to Blake. Another major theme of the book, Deborah's artistic talent, was reduced to a scene in which she scribbles childishly on a drawing pad. The Kingdom Of Yr is portrayed on-screen, as are some of its gods, but we never see its original ethereal beauty, only the wasteland that it became much later. The background music for the Yr sequences is a recording of a Balinese Kecak, the ceremonial chant of the sacred monkeys from the Ramayana. The film's supporting cast, which included Diane Varsi, Sylvia Sidney and Signe Hasso, may be its best feature. Total running time is 96 minutes. The studio is listed as "Imorh" Productions, imorh (variously meaning "sleep", "death" or "insanity") being a Yri word from the novel.
[edit] External links
- I Never Promised You A Rose Garden at the Internet Movie Database
- To Redeem One Person Is To Redeem The World (ISBN 0-684-82792-1) Biography of Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, with much information on Greenberg and her stay at Chestnut Lodge.
- Budding from a Garden of Reality Student essay proposing that the Kingdom of Yr was real, if not material.
- Frieda Fromm-Reichmann Facts
- A 1995 lecture by Joanne Greenberg, exemplifying her personal style.
- NARPA article summarizing Greenberg's life and the treatment she received at Chestnut Lodge.
- Appearances in a Rosegarden 2006 interview with Greenberg (free registration required)
