Date of Award
Summer 8-2019
Degree Type
Honors College Thesis
Department
English
First Advisor
Emily B. Stanback
Advisor Department
English
Abstract
In recent years, illness narratives have risen in popularity. Women’s medical narratives in particular have gained momentum in the literary world, and they often share commonalities including the inherent theme of medical resistance and an emphasis on the power dynamic between patients and physicians. This thesis will examine two pathographies, Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted and Porochista Khakpour’s Sick, in the contexts of gender and disability studies, as well as theories of illness narratives. I examine how each text resists medical authority, and I also closely survey the physician-patient relationships within each text. The themes of gender and disability emerge in both Khakpour’s and Kaysen’s texts, but in other ways the texts approach illness differently. Using documents from her institutionalization in the 1960s, Kaysen humanizes her fellow patients and challenges medical authority using humor. In contrast, Khakpour uses a storytelling mode, emphasizing location and dislocation and the importance of her Iranian immigrant status and drug addiction to her experience of Lyme disease. These pathographies challenge medical authority through personal narrative.
Copyright
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Recommended Citation
Elliott, Anna Claire, "Women’s Resistance: Patient Pathographies and Medical Authority" (2019). Honors Theses. 683.
https://aquila.usm.edu/honors_theses/683