Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Eva Baliová Suicides of female writers and the influence on their works Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis Supervisor: prof. Mgr. Milada Franková, CSc., M.A. 2019 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. …………………………………………….. Eva Baliová Acknowledgement I would like to thank my supervisor, Milada Franková, for her patient guidance and encouragement. I am genuinely grateful for her support and help. Table of Contents 1. Introduction 2 2. The Art of Suicide 4 3. Mental Illness 8 3.1. Traumatic event or experience 9 3.2. Delusions and hallucinations 11 3.3. Depression, insomnia and existential ennui 13 4. Gender oppression 17 4.1. Lack of freedom 17 4.2. Marriage and children 20 5. The Act of Suicide 25 5.1. Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway 25 5.2. Charlotte Perkins Gilman's “Making a Change” 29 5.3. Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar 31 6. Conclusion 36 7. Bibliography 38 8. Summary 41 9. Resumé 42 1 1. Introduction This thesis will examine the connection between the works of three prominent British and American female writers of the 19th and 20th centuries, namely Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, all of whom committed suicide. The main claim of this thesis is that there are some similar aspects in their works that could have predicted their suicidal intentions. The authors selected for this paper lived in different decades, they wrote in various styles, and yet, they are all famous for their deliberate choice of ending their own life. Therefore, it seems, that the act of suicide, which is a uniquely human phenomenon, is appealing to people and they are fascinated and drawn towards this subject at an artistic and fictional level as well as they are trying to understand the reasons behind it. On that account, the areas of research are grouped into several categories, such as mental health, gender oppression, and suicide attempts. The focus will be put on selected stories that are widely known, namely, Mrs. Dalloway, The Bell Jar and The Yellow Wallpaper, and others. In addition, the intention of this thesis is to show that even though the works of the authors mentioned above often fall under the 'suicide art' label, they have a great literary value by themselves. Nevertheless, the parallels between the lives of characters in the works and the lives of the writers who created them are noticeable. This thesis works with a certain number of points that are present in the majority of the selected books. Sometimes, there are some exceptions, but they are always explained and elaborated on in the opening of each chapter. In the beginning, the matter of the length of the books needs to be cleared. The novels The Bell Jar and Mrs. Dalloway are works of a bigger range than the short story The Yellow Wallpaper written by Charlotte Perkins 2 Gilman, therefore, it doesn't contain all the points that this thesis works with. To correct this discrepancy, another short story, “Making a Change”, written by Gilman will be analyzed alongside the others. As has been noted, the thesis is divided into four main sections. The first part introduces the topic of suicide itself and the basic information is provided. Also, it briefly describes how different periods perceived it. Then, the shift towards women purely takes place and the results from the study that connects mental illness and creativity in female writers are provided and contemplated on. The next chapter elaborates on mental illness; it focuses on the psychosis of the mind and its symptoms that are visible in all the characters created by writers who also partly suffered from them. The following passage is devoted to gender oppression and the lack of freedom that often comes with marriage and children. Those two themes are purposefully chosen because both issues are highly visible in all the books this thesis works with. The last passage connects the suicidal acts in the books with the actual attempts from the lives of studied writers. The reasons why they decided to put an end to their days are studied and at the same time, compared to the suicidal inclinations of their protagonists. 3 2. The Art of Suicide “To take one’s life is to force others to read one’s death.” (Higonnet 68) In the first place, according to the Dictionary of Medical Terms, the word “suicide” is defined as “the act of killing oneself” (Collin 401). The website of the World Health Organization states, that “close to 800 000 people die due to suicide every year, which is one person every 40 seconds.” In 2016, it was the 18th leading cause of death in the world. With this in mind, what is the point of talking about a few selected writers who committed suicide if such an act happens on a daily basis? To put it simply, because even in our age, suicide is still considered to be a taboo subject. Nobody wants to talk about it. But it seems that bringing this topic to the surface while connected to some famous person is more acceptable to the public and they are more open to consider it as an issue. When they are not personally connected to the case, they are able to discuss it and look for the reasons behind it. In such a manner, it is a way of spreading awareness, so people know how to recognize a cry for help or even save somebody’s life if needed. The history of suicide is far-reaching. Each period takes a different approach to it; one accepts it, one forbids it. The word itself appeared presumably late, around the middle of the 17th century. Before, terms such as self-destruction, self-murder, and self-killing were commonly used to describe such an act. In the Middle Ades, suicide was seen as a horror and a moral sin. For example, Dante Alighieri, author of the Divine Comedy, puts people who attempted or committed suicide in the seventh circle of Hell, alongside murderers, sodomites, and tyrants. Hence, to kill oneself, or even an attempt to do it was treated at the 4 same level as killing somebody else. It was murder. Even if one did not succeed for the first time and he or she was caught during the non-fatal suicidal action, the result was punishment in the form of hanging. Then, as a criminal, one was buried at a crossroad, so the ghost of a dead person would become confused and he would not find the way home and hunt the household in revenge. In the Renaissance, the more open approach was taken. Shakespeare mentions and works with this topic in several plays of his, for example in Hamlet and Othello. Furthermore, the Romantic era saw suicide as fashionable: “to die by one’s own hand was a short and sure way to fame” (Alvarez 233). Still, among the public and according to the law, it was a criminal offense to kill oneself. Of course, those are only general observations. There is always some individual who will go against the flow and pursue his own views of a given subject. Suicide is often seen as a predominantly female phenomenon due to frequent representations in literature and art in general. As an illustration, see Shakespeare’s Ophelia, Sophocles’ Antigone or Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. Nevertheless, according to numbers on the already mentioned website, men commit suicide approximately twice as much as women on a worldwide scale. What seems to be the biggest difference between genders is the way they decide to put an end to their days: The ways in which women choose to die differ from those chosen by men. Men jump, and shoot themselves. Today, women more often take sleeping pills, drink household poisons, or turn in the kitchen stove, although guns are gaining. The cynical view is that women deliberately employ ineffective methods. (Higonnet 69) From the beginning of times, women were perceived as inferior and not important, therefore it was a heroic violent death of a man that was celebrated, so even if a man killed 5 himself, it was compared to “a lost battle” (Brown 148). It did not matter if the origin of this “battle” was heroic or economic, such as bankruptcy. Woman’s reasons to end her life was often associated with love and therefore considered frivolous. “Female deaths were attributed to disappointment in love or the loss of chastity. The latter was thus seen as shameful and sick” (Brown 148). Nevertheless, as this thesis does take into consideration female writers only, another concern needs to be contemplated. Are female writers more inclined towards suicide than other women? In the study “Mental Illness and Creative Activity in Female Writers”, the focus is put specifically on this selected group of women and it connects mental illness with creativity. As mental illness does belong in one of the areas of research that this thesis considers, this study proved itself as very useful. The questions that this research investigates are numerous, but the one that is the most relevant is: “Are female writers more likely to suffer from mental illness than members of a suitable comparison group?” (Ludwig 1651) The women who participated in this study engaged in different forms of writing, such as poetry, fiction, prose, etc. That is convenient as the authors studied in this paper have, as well, different approaches towards writing; Sylvia Plath wrote mostly poetry, Virginia Woolf focused on novels and essays and Charlotte Perkins Gilman created short stories and other notable works.