Present Women/Absent Men in Siri Hustvedt’s The Summer without Men (2011)

Authors

  • Britta Bein Philipps-University Marburg

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5283/copas.160

Keywords:

Illness, Gender, Postmodernism, Narrative Medicine, Identity, Crisis

Abstract

This article analyzes how Siri Hustvedt’s protagonist Mia Fredricksen in the novel The Summer without Men “(2011) falls ill from the absence of her husband and men in general and how the presence of women helps her to cope with her illness. Mia’s illness is seen as a postmodern crisis that must be dealt with by means of narrative expression.

Author Biography

Britta Bein, Philipps-University Marburg

Britta Bein is a doctoral student at the Institute of English and American Studies at Philipps-University Marburg, Germany, where she is also an adjunct lecturer. She has started her dissertation project “The ‘Unknowable’ in the Writing of Siri Hustvedt: Coping with the Illness of Absence“ (working title) in 2011. Her research focus on gender and identity already developed during her participation in an interdisciplinary BA program at the Leibniz University Hanover, Germany. She extended her interests to matters of illness and medicine in literature during her studies in Marburg. In 2011, Britta finished her studies at Marburg with the degree of the German state exam (1. Staatsexamen). She now profits from this in her academic teaching of students of English within the teaching degree program.

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Published

2013-05-15

How to Cite

Bein, Britta. “Present Women Absent Men in Siri Hustvedt’s The Summer Without Men (2011)”. Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies, vol. 14, no. 1, May 2013, doi:10.5283/copas.160.

Issue

Vol. 14 No. 1 (2013)

Section

Articles

License

Creative Commons License

Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work’s authorship and initial publication in this journal.

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