Breaking the Spell of an Icon: Annette Schlichter’s Dissertation on Female Insanity

Abstract

Annette Schlichter’s study of madness and representation analyses older works on women and madness, drawing on both fiction and theory. Using Sylvia Plath’s novel The Bell Jar as an example, she demonstrates the weaknesses of Phyllis Chesler’s and Elaine Showalter’s socio-cultural approach which reproduces the analogy of femininity and insanity. According to Schlichter, the genre of theory-fiction—such as Luce Irigaray’s essays “This Sex Which Is Not One” and “When Our Lips Speak Together”, or Kathy Acker’s novel “Don Quixote—which was a dream”—provide one possible solution to the dilemma of representation, as these works show beginnings of a resignification of femininity.