Gaze and Power in Women Writing about Mental Health Hospitals

Abstract

This bachelor thesis explores the themes of the gaze and power in Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar and Susanna Kaysen's Girl, Interrupted, novels that depict the experiences of women institutionalized in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s. Drawing on Disability Studies, Mad Studies, and Michel Foucault's theory of power, the thesis examines how these texts portray psychiatric institutions as sites of control, normalization, and surveillance. Primarily, it focuses on the tension between medical narratives and personal storytelling, emphasizing the use of figurative language as a means of narrative resistance.