Narcissistic Women In Search of Lost Selfhood: A Study in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century American Fiction

“Narcissistic Women In Search of Lost Selfhood: A Study in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century American Fiction” proposes an interdisciplinary inspection of the figure of the narcissistic woman in modern American fiction. Revisiting and revising psychoanalytic insights, the project engages contemporary work in affect theory and feminist theory. I reclaim narcissism as a productive force that responds to the social conditions and failed empathy of modern heteropatriarchy. An intersectional project that reinvigorates textual portraits of the narcissistic woman, the work breaks new ground in thinking about “selfish” racialized women in American literature.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century American fiction, there was a noticeable rise in the number of modern non-conformist American female characters dissatisfied with the pre-established domestic roles. These women are reluctant to live according to conventional values and revolt against them. Their struggle to understand, maintain, and nurture their selfhood has often been perceived as selfishness in texts, reviews, and audience reception of the era. These modern narcissistic women express the social and psychological conflicts inherent to a time of transition, in which women refrain from solely playing domestic roles without any reservation. Studying the narcissistic resisters in modern American fiction reveals the impact of the social hegemonies on women’s identity formation, highlighting the new feminist attitude that had a slightly positive perception of narcissism and regarded it as a powerful resistance strategy that allowed women to detach themselves from traditional emotional responses and concentrate on their selfhood. Moreover, it helps us distinguish between narcissism and selfishness and ponder their impact on each other and women’s social status and independent identities.