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Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back of the book. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6” x 9” black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. UMI A Bell & Howell Infoimation Company 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor Ml 48106-1346 USA 313/761-4700 800/521-0600 FICTION, REALITY, AND FEMALE SUICIDE DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Elizabeth L. Patnoe, M.A. ***** The Ohio State University 1997 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor James Phelan, Adviser Professor Marlene Longenecker // Adviser ^/Department of English Professor Susan Williams UMI Number: 9731691 UMI Microform 9731691 Copyright 1997, by UMI Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 Copyright by Elizabeth L. Patnoe 1997 What the Living Do Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there. And the Drano won’t work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up waiting for the plumber I still haven’t called. This is the everyday we spoke of. It’s winter again: the sky’s a deep, headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through the open living-room windows because the heat’s on too high in here and I can’t turn it off. For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street, the bag breaking. I’ve been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve, I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it. Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning. What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss—we want more and more and then more o f it. But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass, say, the window of the comer video store, and I’m gripped by a cherishing so deep for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I’m speechless: I am living. I remember you. Marie Howe ABSTRACT Men make most completed suicide attempts and women most uncompleted ones—but fictional suicide is predominantly committed by women. This dissertation moves beyond earlier observations about art’s feminization of suicide to explore the individual and collective, fictional and real, theoretical and pragmatic consequences of a range of suicide narratives, including: The Blithedale Romance, Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina, Constance Ring, The Woman Who Did, The Awakening, The House o f Mirth, "Patriotism," "To Room Nineteen," "The Ballad of Lucy Jordan," Children o f Light, Heathers, Thelma and Louise, and The Virgin Suicides. Using feminist, structuralist, Marxist, psychoanalytic, and rhetorical strategies, I compare trends in real and fictional suicide and discuss the female suicide masternarrative—Hsxe pattern of fictional female suicide that emerges from shared techniques and that informs these trends. Its protagonists are young adults who are detached from their children; financially secure, but dependent on men; and heterosexually passionate. They rarely seek help, indicate their suicide intentions, fear, resist, or plan their suicides; and they die after interrelational rupture with men, impulsively, on their first attempts, and at the story’s end. The mastemarrative’s strength is evident in its reflexive intertextual dynamics, narrative coherences, and in its covert, collaborative overdetermination of female suicide. Through its formulaic techniques, manipulative reflections and deflections of reality, and its diverse ambivalences, it reveals cultural anxieties about women. But it also supports disturbing myths, models, and prescriptions for women, especially regarding their relational usefulness and needs—and their fates when they deviate from traditional roles. Moreover, its texts become analogous to the II pornographic by collectively minimizing each protagonist; thematizing women's worth in relation to men; replicating and honoring androcentric desires, constructs, and narrative dynamics; and linearly leading us to women who become passive and reclined as they honor patriarchal constructs. Most importantly, social science research of the last three decades supports the hypothesis that, through suicide contagion, the mastemarrative promotes and facilitates suicidal acts in real women. Thus, it also invites us to explore larger issues about narrative, including: narrative consequences, dynamics, ethics, reliability, and liability. Finally, through its mergings o f myth, ideology, and technique, it shows how narrative can be socially and epistemologically constructed and constructing, sometimes fatally so—and it compels us to reconsider why and how we write, read, and discuss narrative, especially female suicide narratives. Ill In memory of Nanni, Elizabeth Anne Zaccagnini Gasparro who lived with gusto, strength, and remaining presence 1894-1994 IV ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am indebted to several people who directly and indirectly supported my efforts to write this dissertation. With respect and affection, 1 thank my committee members for their reading stamina, collegiality, and their intellectual and personal diversity—for creating a synergistic, model committee. In particular, 1 thank Susan Williams for her clear, supportive perspective on the condition of being ABD and for the unparalleled speed with which she read and returned drafts, replete with incisive comments. I thank Marlene Longenecker for her calm reassurance and flexibility, for her humane, full perspective on the profession and on the life experiences that influence those in it, and for her honest, fresh responses to my work. 1 thank Jim Phelan for his faith in this, another, effort, especially for his ability to maintain a comprehensive vision of it—and for his continued professional guidance and personal presence. As teacher, mentor, friend, 1 remain "dum beholden" to you. With admiration, I thank Cartha Sexton—"my lifeline"—for her administrative support and friendship throughout graduate school. 1 give a special thanks to reference librarians—all of them. And one to The Critical Difference for Women at The Ohio State University for its 1994 Professional Development Grant in support of this work. With cheer, 1 thank The Columbus Dispatch night shift press room and security staff—especially Ralph Sparrow, Bob Leppert, and Chuck Hagy, who made Saturday nights more than a nursing job and who became a supportive community of inquiries, diversion, and desserts. And with love and admiration, 1 thank my parents, Christine and George Patnoe, who taught me the value and beauty of stamina and determination—and who, when others said I was stubborn, said they thought I had patience, tolerance, and internal fortitude. I am also thankful for several friends and colleagues who share my belief that full souls work, play, think, and feel, and who, in sharing their souls with me, supported my graduate school and dissertation efforts in cotmtless ways: Karla Armbruster, Valery Boydo, Mary Heffron, Barkleigh Hobart, Roseanne Hoefel, Chris and Carmen Korleski, Michael Maher, Nils Samuels, Jenny Smith, John Streamus, and my siblings: George, Brian, Ray, Judy, and Christine. I am especially grateful for the support of my sister Judy and my brother-in-law Jerry Palumbo—for computer help, for the office space last summer, the chocolates and flowers by the keyboard. Finally, in acknowledgment of Jil B. Patnoe Davis (1957-1987), whose ever present absence has been an inspiration I wish I never had. We remember you. VI VITA 1980 A.A.S. in Registered Nursing,Coming Community College, Coming, New York 1986 B.S. in English and Secondary Education State University College of New York at Brockport 1987 The Ohio State University Fellow 1988-91 Graduate Teaching Associate, The Ohio State University 1990 M.A. in English, The Ohio State University 1991 Teaching Assistant, Young Scholars’ Program, The Ohio State University 1991-92 Ombud, Department of English, The Ohio State University 1992-93 Editor’s Assistant,Narrative 1993 Teaching Associate Mentor, The Ohio State University 1993-94 Lecturer, Department of English, The Ohio State University 1995-96 Consultant, Ohio Board of Regents, Academic Programming PUBLICATIONS "Lolita Misrepresented, Lolita Reclaimed: Disclosing the Doubles." College Literature 22.2 (June 1995): 81-104. Rev. of Ethics, Theory, and the Novel, by David Parker. Modern Fiction Studies 42.1 (Spring 1995): 243-47. Vll "Narrative Theory." With James Phelan. Encyclopedia o f Rhetoric. Ed. Theresa Enos. New York: Garland. 1996: 454-57. "Hyperbole." Encyclopedia o f Rhetoric. Ed. Theresa Enos. New York: Garland. 1996: 334-35. "Sexual Dysfunction." With Steven Pariser, M.D.