What is it about?
In this chapter, I examine the use of the language of madness in Anna Kavan's Sleep Has His House, a Late Modernist work, in order to challenge gendered expectations in postwar Britain. The story is told by a female child who refuses to assimilate into the expected national identity for her, and who remembers her deceased mother in order not to be like her.
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Why is it important?
This chapter adds a feminist reading to this understudied work by a relatively unknown author such as Anna Kavan, besides drawing on the existing scholarship. It also discusses the uses of state-led psychiatry as a tool to foster conformism and assimilation. It also establishes an intertextual reading with Alice in Wonderland.
Perspectives
This chapter incorporates the term of the "madgirl" to foster a reading of the female child who refuses to grow up and follow national and gendered expectations. It combines the lenses of gender studies and the history of psychiatry to this end.
Laura de la Parra Fernández
Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Through the Looking Glass: Narrating the Madgirl in Anna Kavan’s Sleep Has His House, October 2024, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004519886_003.
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