The significance of Ottessa Moshfegh and Claire-Louise Bennett’s writing of feminine identity

ver the centuries, women’s true selves have been trivialised and suppressed. Only when female bodies fulfil the male gaze of film and literature, can it be discussed or presented to us, which is evident in the danger of the New Woman within the late 19th century, where Stoker’s overtly sexual vampire brides are voraciously evil. Or within didactic novels, this is also true, where the heroine in Rousseau’s Emile must be an ‘Angel in the house’: a quiet wife and mother, in order to survive. Female readers have been taught by the literary canon that to express their womanhood separate from men, is to be deviant. This is why contemporary stories written by women, following introspective heroines, who are admittedly flawed, are so important. We need a raw depiction of the woman, shattering the rose-tinted glass of the male gaze and repositioning femininity as existent in its own right We need a raw depiction of the woman, shattering the rose-tinted glass of the male gaze and repositioning femininity as existing in its own right. Two authors that I believe accurately pursue this detachment are Ottessa Moshfegh and Claire-Louise Bennett. Beginning with Moshfegh, I’m sure you have heard of My Year of Rest and Relaxation . And like me, you may have devoured in one sitting the story of her unnamed female narrator’s misanthropic, year-long sleep to escape reality. This undeniably popular text does not even touch the tip of what Moshfegh is capable of. She subverts the preferred amiable heroine who follows a didactic trajectory of remaining quiet and flourishing into the angel in the house. Moshfegh’s heroines are flawed and unlikable, sometimes obsessive, and bask in the disgusting capabilities of their bodies. Within Eileen , the eponymous character fantasises within explicit monologues of her unrequited lust for a prison guard, detailing the base lengths she would go to for satisfaction with him. She expresses disillusionment with her circumstances living with an antagonistic father and working an office job. Moshfegh topples the female protagonist trope in the literary canon. She writes of a neurotic heroine, one that will never […]

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