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Woman's Experience and Trauma in the Bell Jar, “Tongues of Stone,”

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Woman's Experience and Trauma in the Bell Jar, “Tongues of Stone,” UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DO RIO GRANDE DO SUL INSTITUTO DE LETRAS Mariana Chaves Petersen The Loss of Language in Sylvia Plath’s Narrative: Woman’s Experience and Trauma in The Bell Jar, “Tongues of Stone,” and “Mothers” Porto Alegre 2017 Mariana Chaves Petersen The Loss of Language in Sylvia Plath’s Narrative: Woman’s Experience and Trauma in The Bell Jar, “Tongues of Stone,” and “Mothers” Dissertação de mestrado apresentada ao Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul como requisito parcial para obtenção do grau de Mestra em Letras. Orientadora: Profa. Dra. Rita Terezinha Schmidt Porto Alegre 2017 FICHA CATALOGRÁFICA Petersen, Mariana Chaves The loss of language in Sylvia Plath’s narrative: Woman’s experience and trauma in The bell jar, “Tongues of stone”, and “Mothers” / Mariana Chaves Petersen. — 2017. 117 f. Orientadora: Rita Terezinha Schmidt. Dissertação de Mestrado — Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Instituto de Letras, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras, Mestrado em Letras: Estudos de Literatura, BR-RS, 2017. 1. Sylvia Plath. 2. Narrativa. 3. Experiência da mulher. 4. Trauma. 5. Linguagem. In loving memory of Therezinha Wilkoszynski Petersen —Liv Ullmann as Jenny Isaksson in Face to Face by Ingmar Bergman as palavras escorrem como líquidos lubrificando passagens ressentidas —Ana Cristina Cesar Mais comment continuer de vivre dans une telle violence, si douce aussi soit-elle. Ne pas mourir de mourir, mourir de ne pas mourir. —Luce Irigaray, Speculum de l’autre femme TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments ......................................................................................................................................... 8 Resumo ............................................................................................................................................................... 9 Abstract ........................................................................................................................................................... 10 Abbreviations ............................................................................................................................................... 11 Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 12 1 On Woman’s Experience and Trauma ................................................................................ 22 1.1 Speculating with Luce Irigaray ..................................................................................................... 22 1.1.1 Language of the Same and the (Nonexistent) Other ................................................................. 24 1.1.2 Maternal Origin, Female Genealogies, and Relationships between Women ................. 29 1.1.3 Woman’s Sexuality, Theory, and Difference ................................................................................. 32 1.2 On Melancholia and Trauma ......................................................................................................... 39 1.2.1 The Language of Trauma ....................................................................................................................... 39 1.2.2 Melancholia and Incorporation .......................................................................................................... 41 1.2.3 Trauma, Latency, and Memory ........................................................................................................... 45 2 The Bell Jar .................................................................................................................................. 53 2.1 On Being a Woman ............................................................................................................................. 56 2.1.1 Language, Science, and the Hypocrisy of Gender Norms ....................................................... 56 2.1.2 Motherhood, Female Genealogies, and Relationships between Women ........................ 61 2.1.3 A Defense of Female Sexuality............................................................................................................. 68 2.2 Under the Bell Jar................................................................................................................................ 73 2.2.1 Trauma and Language ............................................................................................................................. 73 2.2.2 Melancholia, Incorporation, and Trauma ...................................................................................... 75 2.3 A Possible Recovery .......................................................................................................................... 83 3 “Tongues of Stone” and “Mothers”....................................................................................... 87 3.1 “Tongues of Stone” ............................................................................................................................. 89 3.2 “Mothers” ................................................................................................................................................ 94 3.2.1 Relationships between Women and Motherhood ..................................................................... 95 3.2.2 A Final Loss of Language ........................................................................................................................ 99 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................... 105 Works Cited ................................................................................................................................................. 112 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my family for supporting my education and acknowledging the importance of graduate studies. To my lifetime friends and also the ones I made the last couple of years: your friendship was essential for me to go through with this process. Thank you to my supervisor, Professor Rita Terezinha Schmidt, for being so present, for reading this thesis so carefully, and for being an example for me and for so many others. To Professor Elaine Barros Indrusiak and Professor Marta Ramos Oliveira, for being important parts of my academic life since my undergraduate studies until now. To Professor Eliana de Souza Ávila, for accepting to be a part of this work. To my undergraduate students from North American Literature IV: our discussions helped me to shape the arguments of this thesis. I would also like to thank the professors and the staff of the Programa de Pós- Graduação em Letras (PPGLet): your classes and your guidance were essential to this work. To Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES), for the fellowship that allowed me to dedicate the last two years to research. Finally, thank you to the staff of the Mortimer Rare Book Room, Smith College, for being so helpful with sending me Plath’s manuscripts whenever I made a request. RESUMO Inicialmente publicado em 1963 sob o pseudônimo Victoria Lucas, A redoma de vidro traz como personagem principal e narradora Esther Greenwood, a qual faz duras críticas aos papeis atribuídos às mulheres nos Estados Unidos nos anos 1950, enquanto passa por um colapso, que culmina em tentativa de suicídio. Depois de o romance ser republicado, reconhecendo a autoria de Sylvia Plath, na Inglaterra em 1966 e nos Estados Unidos em 1971, ele foi objeto de diversas leituras críticas feministas, sendo mais recente o enfoque no romance como estudo de caso. Nesta dissertação, busco estabelecer um diálogo entre essas duas abordagens, relacionando gênero, feminismo, melancolia e trauma, fundamentando-me nos escritos de teóricos como Luce Irigaray, Cathy Caruth, Sigmund Freud e Nicolas Abraham e Maria Torok. Apesar de falarem de diferentes loci, ambas Irigaray e Caruth dão especial atenção à linguagem. No romance, Esther perde sua capacidade de ler e escrever, fato que está ligado não só às suas críticas a um mundo pertencente aos homens como também a certos acontecimentos que desencadeiam essa perda. Tendo isso em mente, relaciono a narrativa a dois contos de Plath: “Línguas de Pedra” e “Mães.” O primeiro, de 1955, traz uma personagem (sem nome) em um cenário semelhante ao de A redoma de vidro: em um hospital psiquiátrico, ela apresenta dificuldades de ler e de pensar. No segundo conto, escrito em 1962, a situação da protagonista, também Esther, pode ser comparada ao presente da narrativa de A redoma de vidro; ademais, uma vez estabelecido o paralelo, a personagem do conto parece apresentar uma perda ainda mais profunda da linguagem que a protagonista do romance. Palavras-chave: Sylvia Plath; narrativa; experiência da mulher; trauma; linguagem. ABSTRACT Initially published in 1963 under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas, The Bell Jar has as its protagonist and narrator Esther Greenwood, who seriously criticizes the roles attributed to women in the United States in the 1950s. At the same time, she is going through a breakdown, which culminates in a suicide attempt. After the novel was republished, under Sylvia Plath’s name, in England in 1966 and in the United States in 1971, it was the subject of several feminist critical readings, its focus as a case study being more recent. In this thesis, I aim to establish a dialogue between these two approaches, relating gender, feminism, melancholia, and trauma, grounded in the writings
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