I ‘m guessing maybe “incurably deranged in his mind”  is what the poor  parents were told, layman’s language from the authorities that be.

I think Don is surely right here. We don't have to take it the the narrator necessarily agrees.

 

VN said readers should be alerted to the acrostics in the last paragraph of "The Vane Sisters" by a "change of style". Does the "Signs and Symbols" narrator change style. There seem some hints in the comments people have been making on the first few paragraphs that perhaps he or she does, perhaps to adapt to the person whose viewpoint is, implicitly or explicitly, being reported. Is there a change of style that reveals the "inside" story, as in "The Vane Sisters"?

 

Anthony Stadlen