Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Reclaiming The Female Suicide Narrative: Rebirth, A Plunge, And The Absurd, Shelby T. Wax

Scripps Senior Theses

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.