Overwhelmed, unhappy, and disconnected women and higher education in contemporary short fiction

Abstract

Looking at women’s relationships with academia through the lens of the short story, one finds students, graduates and professors who are all dissatisfied with their lives. Why?

I explore the women and higher education motif by analyzing works by Flannery O’Connor, Alice Walker, Kristen Roupenian, Mary Gordon and a number of other authors. I use this analysis to contextualize by interpretations of a number of stories published between 2015 and 2017. My thesis will explore the causes of unhappiness that educated women characters experience, including limited bodily autonomy and breakdowns in communication, their careers and even their identities. All the women are trapped by the idea of “having it all,” a concept introduced by Helen Gurley Brown in 1982. Since then societal pressures have caused all of these women to attempt to pursue perfectionists, who show conceal their weakness and have total control over all areas of their lives. Their education, which initially serves as a way to achieve these goals, eventually limits their opportunities to connect with others and form meaningful connections. Unfortunately, the endings of the stories reveal women who cannot move past a body-mind conflict and are unable to thrive.