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Abstract

This dissertation focuses on the correlation between patriarchal environments and female madness within three novels, The Bell Jar (Plath, 2023), Surfacing (Atwood, 2002), and Eileen (Moshfegh, 2016), which centre around the lives of female protagonists in North America between the 1950s and 1970s. It argues that the female protagonists from the novels, Esther Greenwood, the narrator from Surfacing, and Eileen, live within patriarchal environments which contributes to their declining mental states. These female characters all experience abuse at the hands of their male counterparts, live within oppressive and patriarchal societies and are expected to adhere to gender-specific roles. With the support of Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (2001) and Nicki’s The Abused Mind: Feminist Theory, Psychiatric Disability, and Trauma (2001), it is argued that 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s patriarchal environments in the novels contribute to the characters’ mental instability and in some cases, diagnosed mental illness. Additionally, The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness by psychiatrist D. R. Laing (1960), will be used to argue mental illness and the ‘splitting of self’, present in the women in The Bell Jar (Plath, 2015), Surfacing (Atwood, 2002),  and Eileen (Moshfegh, 2016). It is argued that the women are reacting to oppressive environments, through their own method of rejection and through this, they are labelled as mad. This is supported by Ussher's argument that ‘madness is often defined as deviation from archetypal gender roles’ and the ways in which women react to abuse and oppression is a form of deviance (2011, p. 13). This dissertation asserts that the protagonists are not mentally ill due to one factor, but are victims of abuse and oppression who have reacted to their environments. Nonetheless, they are labelled by their societies as mad. Having said this, through the ascribed label of mad, which in this dissertation is synonymous with deviant, these women are liberated from societal pressures and oppression.

Course: English Literature - BA (Hons) - C0995

Date Deposited: 2024-01-22

URI/permalink: https://library.port.ac.uk/dissert/dis14304.html