in Girl, Interrupted

1
Discourses of Adolescent Girl and Normality

• in Girl, Interrupted

2
Outline

• Introduction
• Film
• Madness and Causes
• Treatments
• Back to Normality
• Solution and Compromise
• The Film and the Novel
• The Novels Critique of Discourses on Girlhood
• References
• Next Time

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Introduction (1) Intertexts

• Novel Girl, Interrupted (1993)written by Susanna
  Kaysen (1967 ?McLean, 2 yrs) a best-seller on
  New York Times chart for many years
• Film Girl, Interrupted, directed by James
  Mangold (1999), Winona Ryder as executive
  producer
• Title from the painting Girl, Interrupted at her
  music by Johannes Vemeer
• Novel McLean as a parallel universe another
  Ivy League school
• The film TV The Wizard of Oz Dorothea
  finding her way home

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Introduction (2) Background and Theme

• Background 60s
• an age of revolution and political
  upheavalsVietnam War, assassination of Martin
  Luther King
• Girls go to girls college
• Plot a girl (would-be writer) finds her way back
  to society after staying in Claymoore/McLean for
  two years.
• Questions Interrupted by what? At what place?
  Return (???) to what?

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Madness vs. Normality

• Are they sane? Or Mad?
• The characters
• Susanna Kaysen borderline personality
• Lisa--sociopath
• Georginapathological liar
• Daisy --anorexia
• Polly Clark burns victim
• ? A dyke

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Sane or Insane? (Susanna Kaysen)

• (monologue)
• Have you ever confused a dream with life? Or
  stolen something when you have the cash? Have you
  ever been blue? Or thought your train moving
  while sitting still? Maybe I was just crazy.
  Maybe it was the 60's. Or maybe I was just a
  girl... interrupted.

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Sane or Insane? (Susanna)
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Sane or Insane? (Daisy)
Diagnosis Eating disorder and other unspecified
(chap 10) Symptoms Eating in private, fathers
chicken only, keeping bones under bed, attempted
suicide (later after moved out) Claims
EatingDumping (privacysexual implication) Possib
le causes Incest (father) ? Suicide (button
being pressed)
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Sane or Insane? (Lisa Rowe)
Diagnosis Sociopath Symptoms Indifference,
disregard for the consequences... Susanna Her
eyes are empty now
10
Sane or Insane? (Georgina Tuskin)
Diagnosis Pathological liar (my father is the
head of CIA) Susanna G lies to people who want
to keep her hereSometimes I think she wants to
live in Oz forever.
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Sane or Insane? (Polly Clark)

• Diagnosis Unspecified
• Symptom Refuse to grow up
• Possible Cause Childhood trauma (burn victim)
• Innocent?
• Curious about sex? trigger her memory
• Susanna sweetness and purity arent genuine
  at all, but a desperately attempt to make it
  easier for us to look at her

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Dependence Escape

• Dependence
• Lisa rebellion against the institution others
  dependence.
• Daisy Colace (a stool softener) chicken her
  father.
• Polly doll Ruby
• Georgina and many others Lisa
• Escape, Regression and Mutual Support
• They smoke constantly, swear, bully and console
  each other.
• Susanna finds no comfort from her family ? finds
  Lisa a pal.
• Play child games.
• Rebellion reading the diagnoses.

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Causes? Constructions of Girlhood

• 50s -- relatively conservative
• ? viewed their children's world with
  alarm and confusion and embraced few of the
  cultural changes.
• 60s Peace, love and sex.
• -- drafting, death and Anti-war ?
  hippy
• -- Rise of feminism
• 70s ? Conservative

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Womens Choices

• More opportunities?
• 1) Education -- Going to college (RadcIiffe.
  WeIIesIey) ? Pro.s wife Women should make up
  their mind.
• Teacher Women nowadays have more choices.,
  S No they dont.
• ?Between being like her mother and burning
  bras and going for demonstration, Susanna is
  forced to make a choice. Bias on females
• 2) Definition of promiscuity

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Suzannes Diagnosis

• Diagnosis Increasing patternlessness of life,
  promiscuous might kill self or get pregnant
  (11).
• (film chap 18) How many girls do you think a
  seventeen-year-old boy would have to screw to
  earn the label compulsively promiscuous? Three?
  No, not enough. Six? Doubtful. Ten? That sounds
  more likely. Probably in the fifteen-to-twenty
  range, would be my guessif they ever put that
  label on boys, which I dont recall their doing.
• And for seventeen-year-old-girls, how many boys?
  (158)

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Treatments --

• Hospitalization Necessity? ? Susanna
• Admission ? Voluntary? She signs herself in has
  no right to leave.
• Discharge qualification ? Daisy?
• Standardized management
• (medicine administration, name calling,
  room checks, indifferent attitude and no privacy.
  fascist torture chamber)

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Treatments
Exercise, Narrative therapy Medicine Necessary?
? abused in treatment ? cause abuse (e.g.
addiction to Valium) Electroconvulsive Therapy
(ECT) and Seclusion treatment or punishment?
ETC possible permanent
amnesia. damaging
neurons
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Treatments

• Counseling
• (Ther-rapist, their-rape-me,
• diag-non-sense,
• criticizing Freudian therapy confessing
  ones secrets. clip 4000))
• Dr. Melvin unsuccessful, without
  understanding patients.
• Dr. Wick understanding, insightful?

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Alternative Treatment

• Interpersonal bonds like being in a girls school
  (chap 15) -socializing
• Nurses orderlies Valerie (talks about her
  family), the other one, about her boyfriend
• Sisterhood (Tunnel Adventure, Ice Cream Shop,
  Playing Guitar)
• Others
• pet -- Ruby
• TV

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Turning Points for Susanna

• Tobys visit Susanna decides to stay because
  she has friends in here.
• (Sisterhood / Toby is not the one)
• Runaway with Lisa? borderlines drug,
  homosexuality / Returning start to realize the
  deadly consequences ? seeing death
• (Jamie / Daisys death / Lisas
  cruelty)
• Valerie narrative therapy Susanna learns to
  get it out and put it away talk cure
• 2nd Tunnel Press others buttons

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The Films ConclusionFinding her Way Back (1)

• Self-Correction
• Dr. Wick and Valerie S as a "lazy,
  self-indulgent little girl driving herself crazy"
  
• The girls have to find their ways home (Wizard of
  Oz)
• Sympathy for Daisy (how it hurts to smile)
  knows the seriousness of death
• Avoid Self-Distortion
• Lisa"So many buttons to press so why is nobody
  pressing mine?"
• To Lisa Youre dead already.

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The Films ConclusionFinding her Way Back (2)

• 2. Self limitation (The point is control) in
  order to fit in the fucked-up world
• Others pretends to not see purple people
  anymore
• Lisa FloridaCinderella and Snow White.
• Suzanne works at a bookstore, stays in touch,
  sees Dr. Wick twice a week, and plans to write.

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The Films ConclusionFinding her Way Back (3)

• Definition of madness Matter of degree. Social
  standard majority norm.
• Crazy isn't being broken...... or swallowing a
  dark secret. lt's you or me......amplified. lf
  you ever told a lie......and enjoyed it. If you
  ever wished you could be a child forever. They
  were not perfect...but they were my friends.

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Deleted Scenes in Film

• Susannas hallucination
• (blood flood in supermarket, boneless hands)
  ? She looks more normal in the films final
  version
• Fewer coincidences ? Film is more realistic
• No museum scene ? no explanation to the topic

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From the Memoir to the Film

• Dramatization and Addition
• Going to Daisys house and Lisas final threat to
  Suzanne
• The memoir juxtaposition of the hospital
  diagnosis
• Introduction Lines
• Fiction ? self in parallel universe ? more
  social critique
• Film ? unclear boundaries ? self-development
• Endings
• The film Lisa -- "I'm playing the villain,"
  "They were not perfect but they were my friends."
• The memoir's endings
• Suzanne out of the hospital because of her
  engagement
• seeing Lisa with her baby on the street

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Parallel Universe

• There are so many of them worlds of the insane,
  the criminal, the crippled, the dying, perhaps of
  the dead as well. These worlds exist alongside
  this world and resemble it, but are not in it
  (Kaysen 5). ? those excluded by normality in
  social discourses.

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Kaysens disa Kaysens Resistance the social
views

• My self-image was not unstable. I saw myself,
  quite correctly, as unfit for the educational and
  social systems. But my parents and teachers did
  not share my self-image. Their image of me was
  unstable, since it was out of kilter with reality
  and based on their needs and wishes. They did not
  put much value on my capacities, which were
  admittedly few, but genuine. I read everything, I
  wrote constantly, and I had boyfriends by the
  barrelful. (155)

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Kaysens Resistance Borderline Personality
Gender

• Re. the doctors views
• Many disorders, judging by the hospital
  population, were more commonly diagnosed in
  women. (157)
• In the list of six potentially self-damaging
  activities favored by the borderline personality,
  three are commonly associated with women
  (shopping sprees, shoplifting, and eating binges)
  and one with men (reckless driving). One is not
  gender-specific, as they say these days
  (psychoactive substance abuse). And the
  definition of the other (casual sex) is in the
  eye of the beholder. (158)
• A chapter on

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Borderline Personality

• something of a catchall, describing people with
  intense narcissism, unstable personal
  relationships, self-damaging behaviors, and a
  need to create conflict among those around them.
  People receive the diagnosis because they manage
  to succeed at basic life tasks even though they
  often appear to be crazy.
• Some psychotherapists will say, however, that the
  term borderline personality disorder is just
  another way of expressing that they hate the
  patient. Unfortunately, borderlines do not
  respond well to pharmacotherapy, unlike people
  suffering from more common diagnoses such as
  depression, now treated almost exclusively with
  medication. (Krin Gabbard)

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Interrupted by Whom? The Teacher
Vermeers Girl Interrupted at Her Music

• Its the painting from whose frame a girl looks
  out, ignoring her beefy music teacher, whose
  proprietary hand rests on her chair . . . I
  looked intoher brown eyes and I recoiled. She
  was warning me of something she had looked up
  from her work
• to warn me. Her mouth was
• slightly open, as if she had just drawn a breath
  in order to say to me, Dont! (166) ? the
  affiar with the teacher

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Interrupted by Whom? Painting as a Social
Discourse
Vermeers Girl Interrupted at Her Music

• Interrupted at her music as my life had been,
  interrupted in the music of being seventeen, as
  her life had been, snatched and fixed on canvas
  one moment made to stand still and to stand for
  all the other moments, whatever they would be or
  might have been. What life can recover from
  that? (167).
• (ending) we cant see her clearly.

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Reference

• Marshall, Elizabeth. Borderline Girlhoods
  Mental Illness, Adolescence, and Femininity in
  Girl, Interrupted. Lion the Unicorn 30.
  1(2006 Jan) 117-133.
• Gabbard, Krin. "Therapy's 'Talking Cure' Still
  Worksin Hollywood." Chronicle of Higher
  Education (11 Feb. 2000) B9.

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Next Time

• Two Chapters by ???
• Faces of Madness
• Quiz due in two weeks (very likely at EngSite).