The notion of insanity being introduced in the text makes you rethink how you perceive and comprehend how you read the text from that point forward. When you see Sybil struggling to cope with her new surroundings it makes you question how you would act in that situation and if you would be able to handle all that psychological turmoil that has taken its toll on her. The concepts of insanity also change how I read the story because the narrator (Sybil) is the one who is going insane. I was forced to feel and react to all the mental aspects and psychological battles that Sybil is fighting while in the insane asylum, which made me question if she was not already completely insane and if I could trust her thoughts. "I stretched my hands to them, crying with an imploring cry, Yes, I am quiet, I am hopeless." (Alcott pg.236) These were some of Sybil's actions that made it hard for me not to think she was not already insane.
I feel as though the mother and daughter relationship in nineteenth-century society literature was changed with the relationship of Sybil and her mother. Being that their relationship was established while Sybil is going insane and her mother on the other hand is already assumed to be insane. This is far different from the other text we have read were the mother daughter relationship was established on love and morals. I also feel as though Sybil and her mother still had that special love that a mother and daughter share even though it was under very dark and conflicting circumstances. Those circumstances were being able to fight through the insanity barrier and Sybil's mother warning her to escape, which was the foundation their relationship was built on. "I believed her dead, yet I had seen her, knew where her solitary grave was made, and still carried in my bosom the warnings she had sent me, prompted by the unerring instinct of a mother’s heart." (Alcott pg.240) This shows how there was still a loving relationship between mother and daughter with Sybil and her mother, it is just portrayed and received in a different manner by Sybil. Which is different from the traditional sense of a mother daughter relationship we have seen in other text.
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I agree that the relationship between mother and daughter here is very different from what we have read and seen. I also agree that Sybil and her mother still have a love that is unconditional because the text shows a mother looking out for a young girl even though she does not know and Sybil points to yearning for her mother. I quoted the same passage you did in my blog because it definitely shows the relationship that was still present through rough times.
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