63 pages • 2 hours read
Anna Marie TendlerMen Have Called Her Crazy
Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Mental Health and Societal Expectations
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussions of mental illness, gender discrimination, sexual violence, emotional abuse, physical abuse, and self-harm.
Mental health plays a central role throughout Men Have Called Her Crazy. The memoir opens with Tendler checking into an inpatient care hospital for treatment for her anxiety and depression. This decision is monumental for Tendler because of the social stigma surrounding seeking treatment for mental health, both in society at large and within Tendler’s family, a microcosm of society. Before seeking inpatient care, Tendler was even hesitant to try medication to help mitigate her anxiety symptoms. Her therapist, Dr. Karr, encouraged her to try medication, telling Tendler, “I would hate to see you not take medication for anxiety, a medication that could change your life drastically for the better, because of a stigma you’ve picked up from your childhood” (13). Dr. Karr explicitly utilizes the term “stigma” to describe Tendler’s reluctance to seek care, illustrating her awareness of Tendler’s motivations and the broader societal issues that impact her patients. Societal expectations in the American culture in which Tendler lives center on ideas of normalcy and adherence to certain norms surrounding mental health and expected behavior. Tendler even has some internalized fear of others with mental health issues as she thinks ahead of her entrance to Dalby, “The women might be mean to me because I’m new, or they might be unpredictable due to mental illness. My anxiety hinges on the anticipation of the unknown” (8). She thinks that the other women may act strangely toward her, outside the expected norms of behavior. Though Tendler lives with mental illness, she still applies the norms of socially accepted behavior to her fellow patients, worrying about their potentially “unpredictable” conduct.
Tendler’s mental health regularly places her outside of these societal norms, especially as it relates to her appearance and career. Tendler only packs sweatsuits for her time in inpatient care, and she reflects on how her mental health has impacted her sense of style, which, throughout her life, has been incredibly important to her identity:
Once I lived almost exclusively in carefully sourced vintage dresses and Gucci from the early days of Alessandro Michele’s maximalist reign, now I wear only roomy jumpsuits, pants with an elastic waist, and one pair of Levi’s so worn in, its cotton twill is now closer to flannel than denim (37).
Throughout the memoir, Tendler’s clothing and style play a crucial role in her conception of self; as her mental health deteriorates, so too does her desire to wear the clothes that once previously represented her identity and that society associates with success.
Tendler also wrestles with the issue of success, especially as it relates to her academic and professional career. She tells one of her therapists, “My life feels like a series of starts and stops, walking road after road, hoping to find the one that leads to something meaningful. Yet when I come to an intersection, instead of walking straight, I unfailingly turn left, beginning all over in a new direction” (75). Tendler feels that she’s incapable of following the linear path that society associates with notions of success. She’s tried several different career and academic paths, but traditionally, society expects people to follow one path from college to a career. Tendler worries that her mental health will prevent her from finding success and being able to finish her projects and accomplish her goals. However, as she continues her healing and self-discovery process, she realizes she is capable of success.
The Impact of Gender Dynamics on Personal Identity
Gender is a crucial aspect through which Tendler frames much of her writing in Men Have Called Her Crazy, as the title itself suggests. Tendler wrestles with her experiences with men throughout the text, considering how traumatic interactions with men have shaped her view of herself and the world; her conceptions of these interactions grow more nuanced and complex as the memoir progresses. At the beginning of the novel, Tendler speaks with a therapist at the inpatient care facility and attempts to describe certain painful romantic relationships, focusing on the sexual aspects of these relationships. She writes:
Everything I explain to him feels vague, like it could be something, but it could also be nothing. Is any of it abuse? Is it kids simply exploring sexual boundaries they don’t understand? Is it adult men simply exploring sexual boundaries they are conditioned to disregard? I feel stupid recounting these experiences in all their un-concreteness. I do not know what they mean. Maybe they don’t mean anything (3).
Tendler’s use of rhetorical questions illustrates her lack of confidence in labeling her experiences. She doesn’t know what language to use to describe them, and she worries that they are not serious enough to warrant her emotional reaction. Tendler questions the very meaning of these painful experiences, wondering if they have any significance in her life. Later, she acknowledges that her memory of them is crystal clear. About the men she’s had relationships with, she writes, “I have a sort of photographic memory for the ways men have asserted their power over me, the ways they have treated me poorly, and the ways I have fought to be equal or conversely sublimated myself to keep peace” (139). Though Tendler feels uncertain about the language she should use to describe her relationships with men, she remembers specifically each way these men have harmed her and shaped her perception of the world around her.
Along with her worldview, Tendler’s perception of self has been strongly impacted by her interactions with men. She’s self-aware of how she’s shaped herself to appeal to men to attain her value to them. She writes about sharing her history of self-harm with her male romantic partners, “I relied on this attention from men as validation of their feelings for me because I didn’t trust I could get their attention any other way” (140). To feel sure that her romantic partners had real feelings for her, Tendler felt the need to share about her self-harm; she also wanted to ensure that her partners took her feelings seriously, as otherwise, she worried men would disregard her emotions as frivolous or unserious.
In addition to her emotions, Tendler worried that her sense of worth is connected to men’s perception of her. Writing about her relationship with Reece, she says, “I didn’t break things off because my value had always been tied to what men thought of me; because I didn’t want to seem reactive, or difficult, or mean” (240). Though by the end of the memoir, Tendler no longer believes her inherent desirability or dignity are bound to men’s view of her, for years, she thought that she needed to make her emotions palatable and her actions appealing to men. She wanted to make herself into someone men would want and find appealing and easy to get along with, regardless of her feelings or desires. By the end of the memoir, however, Tendler decides that this is not a love she wants to invite into her life. She no longer wants to sacrifice who she is and what she wants simply for the sake of men loving her.
The Process of Healing and Self-Discovery
Tendler spends much of her time in the present narrative arc of her memoir working on healing and learning more about herself in the wake of her worsening mental health. Early on in her time in Dalby, Tendler goes for a walk and has a moment of awareness about a change in her thought process, as she writes, “I realize […] that not having access to my phone has sent thoughts, sentences, and fully formed paragraphs flooding into my head at rapid speed and with seemingly no end. My brain is percolating with activity and is narrating every single move I am making” (34). Isolated from her technology and the immediate stress of her everyday life, Tendler can better connect to her inner dialogue, a thought process she carefully records in her memoir. This awareness of her thoughts allows her to use self-awareness to be forthright about her emotions in both the past and present while also critiquing and analyzing these feelings.
Though Tendler finds arriving at the inpatient facility anxiety-inducing, especially in the context of having to live with strangers, she grows more comfortable sharing her feelings and being vulnerable with the other women. She bonds with them over the minutiae of everyday living, and she finally feels fully part of the community after she gets to break the news about the arrival of a new coffee machine, writing, “We are no longer four women plus one new girl; we are five” (55). Though Tendler previously found forging new relationships daunting, her ability to integrate herself with the other women of Dalby demonstrates an important step in her healing journey, as she lets herself become vulnerable with others. She is more open about her feelings and experiences, which allows her to know herself better.
By the end of the memoir, Tendler has had several realizations about herself, especially in the context of her relationships with men. She writes:
I’ve simply changed the way I relate to [men] and what of myself I’m willing to give. I no longer get lost inside the abyss of the other […] it’s shocking how much faster I recover from an ending when I don’t have to also disentangle my sense of self from the other person (293).
She no longer ties her emotional well-being and sense of worth to the men with whom she falls in love; she does not give everything within her away but instead keeps herself safe from destruction when relationships end. She also develops a strong sense of empathy for her past self, even when she finds it challenging, writing, “I can at times feel mad at the me who came before this moment […] you were so stupid, I want to tell myself, but I redirect my thoughts to something more constructive. You are so lucky to have learned this now; it will keep you safe and happy” (293). Though she’s tempted to criticize herself for past mistakes, Tendler reframes these thoughts into something positive, a reminder that the difficult lessons she’s learned will lead her to a better future. Throughout her emotional journey, Tendler learns more about herself and her feelings. In doing so, she allows herself to become more self-aware and self-accepting, two traits that will remain important as she continues to heal throughout her life.
