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Britta Bein (Marburg): "Present Women/Absent Men
in Siri Hustvedt’s The Summer without Men (2011)"
Abstract
As the title of Siri Hustvedt’s latest novel, The Summer without Men (2011), suggests, the work is most centrally concerned with the absence of men. There is one particular man whose absence narrator Mia Fredrickson cannot bear: that of her husband Boris, who leaves her for a “pause” of their marriage with a much younger colleague. In response to this, Mia falls into ‘madness’ and spends a week and a half in a psychiatric ward. Although she is released from the psychiatry after two weeks, she remains a patient for most of the summer, which she tries to use for recovery in her hometown in rural Minnesota. This summer is not only a summer without Boris, but a ‘summer without men’: while female characters of all ages ranging from three to 102 play important parts in the novel, men never appear ‘on stage’. As the title suggests, their absence is crucial to the story. In my talk, I want to analyze in a close reading exactly what it is that makes Mia ill, and how the presence of women helps her to come to terms with this illness. I argue that her coping strategies are particularly connected to the act of writing.
My analysis of the possible functions of men’s absence (and women’s presence) in The Summer without Men is meant to contribute to my overall research project of looking for meanings of what Hustvedt calls the “Unknowable” in her writing, particularly with respect to illness as a consequence of absence.
My analysis of the possible functions of men’s absence (and women’s presence) in The Summer without Men is meant to contribute to my overall research project of looking for meanings of what Hustvedt calls the “Unknowable” in her writing, particularly with respect to illness as a consequence of absence.
Bio
Britta Bein currently is a doctoral student at the Institute of English and American Studies at the Philipps-University Marburg, where she is also an assistant lecturer. She has begun her dissertation project dealing with “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 began already in her participation in an interdisciplinary BA program at the Leibniz University Hanover and was continued in gaining the degree of the German state exam (1. Staatsexamen) in Marburg.