Mapping female melancholy A study of select novels of Jonathan Franzen and Jeffrey Eugenides

Abstract

The human mindis an intriguing phenomenon. The study on the functioning of thehuman mind is complex as it is individualised in cach person. Human emotions are universalas people regardless of their age, gender, sex, class, religion, race and creed, experiencesimilar feelings. The concept of melancholy, from its initial connotations, has evolved andaltered over the centuries.Melancholy is a timeless emotion blending extreme sorrow,nostalgia and introspection. The focalpoint of the study is the postmodern interpretation ofmelancholy inwomen withinthe selected context. The thesis attempts to map themelancholic temperaments in women from a literary perspective and not from a medicaloutlook. The thesis attempts to study the psychoanalytic feminist analysis of postmodernmelancholyin women within the selected works of Jonathan Franzen and Jeffrey Eugenidesdelineating hysterical realism. The thesis also aims to distinguish melancholy from traumaand depression. Differentiating the postmodern interpretations of melancholy from the earliernotions of other theorists, an attempt will be made to mould the female mind within theselected context. The objective also aims to delve into the possible circumstances thatconstruct the female mind to be melancholic. This thesis tries to fill the research gap createdinthe study of melancholy in women by tracing the expressions in contemporary Americansociety through the chosen novels. The primary texts chosen to study the undertones ofpostmodern female melancholy are The Corrections (2001), Freedom (2010) and Puriy(2015) by Jonathan Franzen and The Virgin Suicides (1993)and The Marriage Plot (2011) byJeffrey Eugenides. Despite the criticism of conceptualising women through the male lens, theselected tales accidentally or deliberately expose the nuanced melancholic realms of women.The thesis is conceptualised in alignment with the notion that the author loses gender as thesetexts plunge into the depths of the female psyche. The thesis neglects the gender of theauthors in the interpretations and analysis of the selected texts. This study intentionallyemphasises on the privileged class of women such as the white, learned and financially stableAmerican women. It is done in pursuit to delineate female melancholy as a multifaceted,inevitable and a subjective occurrence that eclipses the characteristic traits. The study will bebased mainlyon the theory of psychoanalytic feminism overlapping the importantpostulations in psychoanalysis subjected to the central aspects of the thesis. It also integratesthe various aspects of postmodernism and hysterical realism. The thesis statement of thestudy is that the female melancholy is an inevitable, multifaceted and a subjective emotionalstate of the mindthat functions as a refined contrast to the clinical mentaldisorders in thepostmodem times. It proposes a nuanced comprehension of the affective terrains of womenmarked by unaddressed loss, disenchantment, fragmentation and upheavals. The postmodernmelancholy in women is contextual; it presents a compulsive narration of desire andunresolved grief. The thesis eventually reconstructs the historical perspectives on femalemelancholy in the postmodern times. It analyses postmodern female melancholy as a centraland coercive facet of the selected novels. The postmodern interpretation of melancholyunfolds as a powerful expression of identity, sorrow and defiance in women.