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Abstract
Psychoanalytic criticism has often relied on pathography in order to cast women writers such as Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath as “crazed” authors who suffered from debilitating mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression. These critics have used and appropriated both Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath’s impairments in order to justify their writing abilities and productivity, arguing that their works were only possible through their mental differences. I argue that these psychoanalytic readings are driven by patriarchal norms and institutions, such as the academy and psychiatry, and are a product of a patriarchal attempt to silence the voices of disabled women. Using a framework of feminist disability studies that I articulate as madwoman theory, I argue that scholars and teachers of literature alike should refrain from using medicalized terminology to describe fictitious characters and their real-life authors. Primarily concerning women writers who are viewed as “mad” by the canon, this thesis attempts to deconstruct the psychological criticism that has been published and canonized regarding Woolf and Plath, which argues that their works were merely a product of their madness. These psychological criticisms, I argue, both commit violence towards each author and memorialize Woolf and Plath as merely “crazy” women writers who could not escape their disabilities and deaths by suicide. This thesis will describe these ableist readings of Woolf and Plath, and negotiate a madwoman theory analysis of their works, which privileges the voices of disabled women writers over these ableist readings. Further, I argue that an analysis of writing about lived experiences with disability enables a future in which the voices of disabled women are privileged over these diagnostic categories.