Words of Wisdom from "Crazy" Jane

Out of the four poems we’ve been assigned this week, “Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop” is definitely my favorite. It is concise and short, but aside from this, I really enjoy the wisdom in Jane’s words. Because of their titles (“Crazy Jane” and “Bishop”), readers might originally think the bishop would be the one to impart wisdom and advice. But Yeats, by comparing the two characters’ world-views, shows that it is actually the “crazy” one who has all the insight.

In stanza one, Yeats describes the Bishop’s world view. Speaking to Jane, whose “Breasts are flat” and whose “veins must soon be dry,” the Bishop gives her the directive to “Live in a heavenly mansion,/ Not in some foul sty.” In other words, the Bishop thinks that because Jane is old and worn out, she would be better off to die and go to heaven than to continue to live in her old body. Clearly, the Bishop has a very black and white world view in which things are either fair or foul. To the Bishop, fair and foul are binaries which can never intersect. So, because of this, he never considers there might still be something good to Jane’s life, and comes to the cruel conclusion that Jane’s body is a “foul sty.”

Jane, on the other hand, has a much more flexible, realistic world view. She says that “Fair and foul are near of kind.” Rather than seeing them as complete opposites, Jane sees fair and foul as equally important, connected parts of the human experience. Indeed, in her assertion that “nothing can be sole or whole/ That has not been rent,” Jane opposes the Bishop’s opinion that fair and foul can never intersect. Instead, Jane shows how things which would normally be considered foul (things which are torn and “rent”), are actually fair because, through life’s trials, they have become “sole or whole.” Therefore, Jane sees the beauty in that which has been hard-worn. She does not think that life is composed of that which is either fair or foul, but that which is a combination of the two.

So, who has more wisdom? The Bishop, with his inability to see the complexity and interconnectedness of life, or “crazy” Jane? I, for one, think it is Jane. She might not have a youthful body or beautiful home, but she is able to see that it is life as a whole, both the fair and the foul, which makes one complete. And, I think that’s what Yeats wants his readers to see too. We must only be willing to listen to the words of this “crazy” woman to gain this insight.