Lily's Topic and Foci
Topic: women with mental illness
Focus 1: The differences in how women with mental illnesses were treated in 3 different time periods (50s, 60s, now) using The Bell Jar, Girl, Interrupted, and OCD Love Story. This includes stigmas around mental illness, as well as approaches and attitudes of doctors. The Bell Jar and Girl, Interrupted include characters at the same mental hospital, so it will be interesting to compare their experiences 10 years apart. Although the character in OCD Love Story is not admitted to a mental hospital, she battles with OCD and anxiety in modern times (2010s). In The Bell Jar, the main character's doctor is "unsympathetic" and fails to listen to her as he prescribes unnecessary treatments. She faces stigmas surrounding her gender and her mental illness. In Girl, Interrupted the doctors use ineffective and damaging treatments, and the protagonist faces discrimination due to the stigma of mental illness. In OCD Love Story, the therapist is a woman who is very involved in the protagonist's life. The protagonist also attends a teen therapy group. Despite the modern setting, there are still stigmas regarding mental illness. I am interested to see how the mental health field has changed and improved over time.
Focus 2: Social nonconformity and limited choices for women in The Bell Jar and Girl, Interrupted. In Girl, Interrupted, the main character wonders whether her symptoms truly make her "insane," rather than just a rebellious teen. She also faces sexism at a job, strict dress codes, and even faces sexism in her diagnosis. She eventually turns to the convention of marriage. In The Bell Jar, the main character struggles with choosing between following the life that is expected of a respectable woman in the 50s and following her own desires. She defies the societal expectations of a "confident, polite, smiley" woman and is moody and dark. She also has sexual desires that go against conventions of the time.
Focus 1: The differences in how women with mental illnesses were treated in 3 different time periods (50s, 60s, now) using The Bell Jar, Girl, Interrupted, and OCD Love Story. This includes stigmas around mental illness, as well as approaches and attitudes of doctors. The Bell Jar and Girl, Interrupted include characters at the same mental hospital, so it will be interesting to compare their experiences 10 years apart. Although the character in OCD Love Story is not admitted to a mental hospital, she battles with OCD and anxiety in modern times (2010s). In The Bell Jar, the main character's doctor is "unsympathetic" and fails to listen to her as he prescribes unnecessary treatments. She faces stigmas surrounding her gender and her mental illness. In Girl, Interrupted the doctors use ineffective and damaging treatments, and the protagonist faces discrimination due to the stigma of mental illness. In OCD Love Story, the therapist is a woman who is very involved in the protagonist's life. The protagonist also attends a teen therapy group. Despite the modern setting, there are still stigmas regarding mental illness. I am interested to see how the mental health field has changed and improved over time.
Focus 2: Social nonconformity and limited choices for women in The Bell Jar and Girl, Interrupted. In Girl, Interrupted, the main character wonders whether her symptoms truly make her "insane," rather than just a rebellious teen. She also faces sexism at a job, strict dress codes, and even faces sexism in her diagnosis. She eventually turns to the convention of marriage. In The Bell Jar, the main character struggles with choosing between following the life that is expected of a respectable woman in the 50s and following her own desires. She defies the societal expectations of a "confident, polite, smiley" woman and is moody and dark. She also has sexual desires that go against conventions of the time.
I think this is a really interesting topic: especially since your first two books are older and from a time period when it was less socially acceptable for anyone, especially women to be not "confident, polite, and smiley" (as you said). Looking at how those expectations affected women's mental health and how society reacted to that and how both of those have changed will be really cool.
ReplyDeleteSome questions you could maybe think about that relate to your foci:
What does it mean to be "insane," both in the context of each of these novels and in the context of society at the time those novels were published?
I know in The Bell Jar Esther is very vehement about not getting married, and you said that the main character in Girl, Interrupted does eventually get married. What prompts her to do this and what does that reveal about the differences between her and Esther?
Obviously all the novels you want to look at have overlapping themes, but are there any more physical/tangible parallels between the stories that you could examine? I haven't read Girl, Interrupted or OCD Love Story so I'm not really sure how well this applies but if there are any common physical manifestations of their illnesses that could be an interesting thing to compare.