Graduation Year
2016
Document Type
Open Access Senior Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
English
Reader 1
Thomas Koenigs
Reader 2
Aaron Matz
Terms of Use & License Information
Rights Information
© 2016 Shelby T. Wax
Abstract
This thesis looks at female suicide in literature from the 1890s to 1970s in the novels The Awakening by Kate Chopin, Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, and Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion. Looking at these female-penned novels in comparison the canon of Western literature, they all clearly indicate a change in the treatment of female protagonists suffering from loss. In The Awakening, suicide is represented as a rebirth. In Mrs. Dalloway, the protagonist suffers from a fragmentation of the self. In Play It As It Lays, the protagonist finds life through the Absurd.
Recommended Citation
Wax, Shelby T., "Reclaiming the Female Suicide Narrative: Rebirth, a Plunge, and the Absurd" (2016). Scripps Senior Theses. 822.
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/822
