Women’s images in the medical discourse of the US autobiographical novels

Abstract

The aim of the research is to develop the typology and examine the features of women’s representations in the US literary works, focused on medical problematics.The research methodology is based on the application of modern literary studies in the fields of narratology, receptive aesthetics and literary hermeneutics. The paper analyses the author’s intentions and the role of the reader’s reception of medical discourse through the prism of gender studies and feminist literary criticism. We analyse the semi-autobiographical prose works by the American writers: “The Snake Pit” (1946) by Mary Jane Ward, “The Bell Jar” (1963) by Sylvia Plath, and “Prozac Nation” (1994) by Elizabeth Wurtzel. The theoretical significance of the research consists in the disclosure of women’s representations in the American literary and medical discourse in the diachronic focus. We examine the role of women as physicians, the peculiarities of representing women as nurses, as well as the narrative role of women as patients. The research is the first scientific attempt to examine the peculiarities of narrative representation of women in the literary and medical discourse of the US prose. The research demonstrates the transformation of women’s representations in the analysed novels, which directly reflects the emancipation tendencies over the course of the 20th century. These changes are naturally displayed in the narrative configuration of the prose works under consideration. The study of medical problems in a literary work through the prism of narratology and receptive aesthetics reveales the author’s intentionality and dimensions of the reader’s reception, as well as enables us to re-consider the socio-cultural phenomena, such as illness and health, norm and pathology. The results of the study will improve the content of training courses in the world literature and form a methodological basis for the development of special courses, theme-based seminars and academic syllabi.