Unit:
Department of English Language and LiteratureLibrary of the School of Philosophy
Author:
Fountoulakis Michail
Dissertation committee:
Eυαγγελία Σακελλίου, Καθηγήτρια, Τμήμα Αγγλικής Γλώσσας και Φιλολογίας, Ε.Κ.Π.Α.
Ασπασία Βελισσαρίου, Καθηγήτρια, Τμήμα Αγγλικής Γλώσσας και Φιλολογίας, Ε.Κ.Π.Α.
Μαρία Κουτσουδάκη, Καθηγήτρια, Τμήμα Αγγλικής Γλώσσας και Φιλολογίας, Ε.Κ.Π.Α.
Κωνσταντίνος Μπλατάνης, Επίκουρος Καθηγητής, Τμήμα Αγγλικής Γλώσσας και Φιλολογίας, Ε.Κ.Π.Α.
Σταματίνα Δημακοπούλου, Επίκουρη Καθηγήτρια, Τμήμα Αγγλικής Γλώσσας και Φιλολογίας, Ε.Κ.Π.Α.
Τατιανή Ραπατζίκου, Αναπληρώτρια Καθηγήτρια, Τμήμα Αγγλικής Γλώσσας και Φιλολογίας, Α.Π.Θ.
Aliki Barnstone, Καθηγήτρια, Τμήμα Αγγλικής Φιλολογίας, Πανεπιστήμιο Μιζούρι (Η.Π.Α.)
Original Title:
“Antigone’s Tragic ‘Sisters’ in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar and H.D.’S Her”
Translated title:
“Antigone’s Tragic ‘Sisters’ in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar and H.D.’S Her”
Summary:
This Ph.D. dissertation examines Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar and Hilda Doolittle’s Her, by setting them against Sophocles’ Antigone. Like Antigone, who is condemned to die, buried alive outside the polis, Thebes, for having defied Creon’s decree to leave Polyneices’ body unburied, Esther and Hermione, the heroines, are both ‘punished’ for defying patriarchal hegemony in their own allegorical polis. Punishment takes the form of criminalization, in the case of Antigone, and medicalization, in the case of Esther and Hermione. Esther Greenwood’s resistance surfaces as a physical symptom, ‘madness’, precisely because hegemony is internalized by her, as subject, while it is, at the same time, fought against. Hermione Gart’s anti-gender stance also surfaces as a physical symptom, “dementia” as she calls it, on this account, too, even if, till the very end of the novel, it is combated. Their attempts to express dissent and engraft it into a narrative of resistance to gender ideology through their writing and sexuality afford us the ‘tools’ to explore resistant female subjectivities in the two romans-à-clef in connection with how their acting dissident, or dissident ‘prattein’, is finally neutralized and co-opted into the narrative of patriarchal hegemony mainly because hegemony is internalized by the heroines, which reflects real life, too. Both Plath and H.D. are seen to embrace difference and fight for recognition of their right to dialectize away the pariahdom/femaleness duality through an effort “to speak as conscious pariahs, as rebellious ones,” and in so doing to “escape from their predetermination” (Didier 348). It seems true, however, that, as Antigone teaches us, any attempt to undermine the dominant ‘narrative’ seems ineffective since resistance subjects the resisters to ‘othering’, with Esther’s and Hermione’s dissent being medicalized and co-opted by their allegorical polis. To this effect, the allegorical polis becomes the conceptual space afforded to the two heroines, who, along with most women, have little, if any at all, choice in the eyes of the hegemonic patriarchal culture.
Main subject category:
Language – Literature
Keywords:
Antigone, Polyneices, incestuous relationship, closure with heterosexuality, Haemon, Creon, democracy, poststructural feminist interpretative approach, patriarchy, hegemonic narrative, co-optation, appropriation, Butler, Althusser, Gramsci, Kristeva, Foucault
Number of references:
247
