Against the grain: A feminist criticism of the construct of madness in contemporary French women's theatre

Aparna Puri, Purdue University

Abstract

This dissertation studies the thematic and cultural conflation and significance of madness and woman in contemporary dramatic literature as exemplified in four French feminist plays. I draw interpretive criteria from Marguerite Duras's Le theatre de l'amante anglaise, Claire Hinschberger's L'Interrupteur, Arlette Namiand's Surtout quand la nuit tombe, and Emma Santos's Le theatre, and from several contemporary feminist and post-structuralist theorists. My analyses explore the reasons why feminist playwrights appropriate the thematics of madness, questioning the hegemony of reason and rational discourse which they view as phallocratic and inadequate for the expression of woman's consciousness and condition. Chapter one considers the ramifications of societal yoking of madness to women, and how feminist theatre essays to transform contemporary discourses on woman and madness. Analyses of the mother-daughter dyad and of maternity and motherhood, in chapter two, elucidate the specifically female parameters of madness found in the plays being studied. In chapter three, I suggest that a woman's madness results from and rebels against the inherent conflict in patriarchal configurations between artistic creation (a male prerogative reserved for men) and biological procreation (a female obligation assigned to women). The fourth chapter deconstructs male-biased language and discourse which posit women in negative terms, emptying their referents of the dominant culture's imposed and biased values. I appraise in chapter five new discursive spaces created by the four women plavwrights which enable woman to represent herself in self-defining terms. Duras, Hinschberger, Namiand, and Santos seek to demystify the conflation between femininity and pathological. Their experimental dramaturgy aims both to displace patriarchal biases which privilege "man," "reason," and "same" over "woman," "madness," and "other," and to bring strong validation to the second term in "man/woman," "reason/madness," and "same/other" dichotomies. Their use of madness as a deconstructive strategy and their portrayal of mad female protagonists while reflecting negative patriarchal prejudice, also acknowledges the uniqueness of woman and affirms her emerging presence as different than the "other" Who was marginalized or absent in male discourse. Madness, then, as a dramatic thematics underscores an important positive orientation of the feminist agenda: the process of becoming woman, authentically.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Pellissier, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Romance literature|Womens studies|Theater

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