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Sylvia Plath's the Bell Jar and Sarah Kane's 4.48 Psychosis

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Sylvia Plath's the Bell Jar and Sarah Kane's 4.48 Psychosis Joint Degree in English and American Studies Final Thesis Dismantling Mental Health Stigma: Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar and Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis Supervisor Prof. Shaul Bassi Assistant supervisor Prof. Cristoph Houswitschka Graduand Giulia Regoli 876106 Academic Year 2019 / 2020 Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................................................ 1 Introduction ...................................................................................................................................................... 2 Chapter 1: A brief historical overview of madness and insanity .................................................................... 5 1.1 The definition of madness through history ........................................................................................... 5 1.2 Women and madness ............................................................................................................................. 9 1.3 The literary perspective on madness ................................................................................................... 13 Chapter 2: Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.............................................................................................................. 16 2.1 Biographical notes ................................................................................................................................ 16 2.2 First part: Esther in New York............................................................................................................... 21 2.3 Second part: Esther’s mental breakdown ............................................................................................ 34 2.4 Third part: the recovery ........................................................................................................................ 40 2.5 The metaphor of the bell jar................................................................................................................. 47 Chapter 3: Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis ......................................................................................................... 50 3.1 Biographical notes ................................................................................................................................ 50 3.2 The play and its context........................................................................................................................ 56 3.3 A closer reading .................................................................................................................................... 61 3.4 The play’s reception and performance ................................................................................................ 76 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................... 83 Bibliography .................................................................................................................................................... 85 Abstract The central theme in The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath and 4.48 Psychosis by Sarah Kane is the experience of living with a mental illness and the suffering that it can bring to one’s life. In these two texts the writers openly talk about their pain and their thoughts, which are undoubtedly affected by their diseases, but still depend on their personal way of dealing with them. In this thesis, expressions of mental illnesses in Sylvia Plath and Sarah Kane will be discussed in connection to the long-existing mental health stigma which does not see patients as people with a problem, but as dangerous, attention-drawing individuals or mockery objects. The focal point of this analysis is to show how, in their texts, mentally ill people are depicted as people who are suffering, dismantling these prejudices that deprive them of their humanity and individuality. The theme is also relevant in particular for women, who are often victims of the patriarchal society that sets stricter rule for them to follow in order to fit. This thesis is going to highlight the way Plath and Kane treat these topics differently from the dominant social and mental prejudices and to examine, therefore, how they managed to represent a different conception of mental illness regarding women in particular, but also all people in general, in their texts. 1 Introduction The concept of madness in Western culture has been changing over the centuries, but has always been connected to the idea of deviation from the most common behaviours that were considered as normal in their respective times and places. In fact, the definition of mental disorders and their treatments are products of societal and behavioural norms, and therefore depend on a particular time and space: for example, if in the ancient Roman and Greek times they were treated as psychosomatic illnesses connected to the body, in the Middle Ages the focus was the religion, so a mad person was thought to be possessed by an evil demon and his behaviour had to be corrected. This concept of a deviation that has to be rectified remained also until the 18th century, when the people considered insane were alienated from the rest of society and put in asylums were they were deprived of their human rights and their freedom in order to be rehabilitated. These people, though, were not only those regarded as mentally ill, but also the socially ostracized ones, such as beggars and homosexuals, who were indeed seen as diverting from the predetermined moral path to follow. According to Michel Foucault and his Madness and Civilization, in the modern era the confinement of these undesirable parts of the population was necessary to protect the society, and this is why the line between mad and rational became also physical resulting in this controlling treatment of the mentally unstable. In order to have this distinction eased and to have a more clinical and inclusive approach to mental illnesses, one would need to wait until the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, with the advent of the psychoanalytical and psychotherapeutic approach, even if the prejudices and the stigma attached to mental health are still nowadays very widespread due to all the centuries of repression and containment. 2 Similarly, the representation of mental illnesses is a theme that has been present in Western literature for centuries now: from the character of Achilles in Homer’s Iliad and Macbeth’s madness in the Shakespearean play, evolving then in the insanity depicted by Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland with The Mad Hatter, or in the darker atmosphere of Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart, folly has always been a present component of ancient and modern literary texts. However, what has been changing through all these years is the way these characters are presented and described and, overall, the purpose of their representation. In fact, the prejudices against mentally ill people eventually turned into a social stigma which comprehends mockery, isolation, fear, and avoidance. In this regard, the exact same thing happened in the literary world: the characters who are affected by every sort of mental instability are seen as a symbol of dangerousness or as the ones which make the readers laugh (just think about Don Quixote and his imaginary world). Furthermore, there is also a literary tradition that sees mad people as having a superior knowledge of the world, a sort of contact with what is beyond reality that can lead to revelations about the purposes and conditions of human life: even if it can be seen as more positive than the stigmatization, this kind of romanticization of mental illnesses does not allow to have a real knowledge of them, contributing to create a conception of ill people that has almost nothing to do with their actual condition. In more recent times, as the studies about mental health have become more and more inclined towards an approach that is inclusive and considerate about the affected people, there has been a revolution also in the depiction of this particular kind of issues in the literary frame. In particular, the two female writers and their works that are analysed in this dissertation, Sylvia Plath and Sarah Kane, can be seen as an example of this change: in fact, Plath’s The Bell Jar and Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis manage to convey their direct experience with mental illnesses and to deconstruct the idea of insanity as totalising and resulting in a personality loss. Indeed, what the two writers 3 attempt to communicate is their vulnerability and their suffering in front of something quite elusive and not well definable as depression and other medical issues could be. Therefore, this thesis will focus on Plath’s and Kane’s writing in general but, on a more specific level, their novel and play, respectively, that talk about dealing with and co-existing with their diseases, in order to illustrate how they both manage to deconstruct the mental health stigma by giving voice to their own experiences. Thus, by examining the character of Esther Greenwood, Plath’s alter-ego, and Kane’s personal story narrated in her last play – which will be considered beyond the autobiographical level – this thesis will analyse the works of the two writers, highlighting the different ways in which they are able to reach the same purpose, that is to revolutionise the concept of mental illness by bringing out the human
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