When is Madness Sane?

When Emily Dickinson wrote that "Much sense - [is] the starkest madness" and "[madness is] handled with a chain," she implies that having the trait of sensibility is equivalent to delirium. Dickinson also believes that the delirium can be controlled just like any other trait, which is ironic because delirium connotes chaos and anarchy. I believe that Dickinson is comparing the contradictory concepts of madness and sensibility in order to develop a theme of disillusionment. Due to Dickinson's prolonged isolation in her lifetime, she most likely had a lot of experience with feelings of disillusionment and therefore she integrates this theme in order to express the pain and suffering she felt. I thought "The Persistence of Memory" by Salvador Dali also represents disillusionment and chaos because clocks are forms of conformity, and time is the stimulus that tells us when to wake up in the morning, and when to go to bed. Dali paints the clocks melting, turning into unrecognizable puddles being torn apart by the ants, which conveys destruction of the conceptions of control and order. The descent into madness is similarly characterized by the slow deterioration of all conformity and the perception of reality.