Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen

Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
paperback 169 pages
published in 1994 by Vintage (originally published 1993)
ISBN-13: 9780679746041

Type: {Commuter Read: format lends easily to starting/ stopping.}
Rating: {An Unputdownable: Couldn’t eat or sleep until I finished this book.}

Why You’re Reading It:

• You’ve seen (and enjoyed) the movie
• You’re interested in women’s psychiatric stories
• You’re interested in Susana Kaysen
• Curiosity about McLean Hospital lured you here, and you want an inside look
• Mental wards and the like intrigue you

What I Thought:

In 1967, Susanna Kaysen tried to kill herself with fifty aspirin. She ended up in a mental institution for two years. It was the same mental institution that had (famously) housed Sylvia Plath, Ray Charles, Zelda Fitzgerald, and James Taylor (yes! that James Taylor). From literature and diaries of past eras, we know that it was quite a bit easier to be put into a mental institution (especially if you were a woman) pre-1980′s. A woman might be “difficult” or “promiscuous” and her parents would find it easiest to ship her off to an institution. What else was there to do with a woman who didn’t fit into the norm of society of her day?

Susanna Kaysen had an affair with a teacher. Did anything happen to the male teacher with whom she had an affair? We don’t find out, but this eighteen year old girl is labeled promiscuous and is thrown into a hospital, being visited only once in her two year stay. On her ‘Inquiry Concerning Admission’ form it is stated (as reasons to keep her in the hospital) that Kaysen “might kill self or get pregnant,” as though they are the same level of danger.

Though troubeling for many reasons, Kaysen’s stay in the hospital created a safety net for her. She didn’t want to escape, she didn’t want to go live with her boyfriend, Toby, and she (technically) signed herself in — though she didn’t realize, at the time, that not doing so was allowed. In the hospital, Kaysen met the cast of characters made famous by the movie released in 2000 (by the same name and based on the book); Lisa, Daisy, Georgina, Cynthia, and Polly. These girls, who were rejects of society, became Kaysen’s community, her friends. Along with Nurse Valerie, they formed a cocoon for Kaysen (the most normal among them). She knew what to expect from them and they kept her company (and the reader entertained). Though Kaysen admits that her life was interrupted (the book is named after the title of a Vermeer painting, “Girl Interrupted at her Music”), what she doesn’t clearly admit was that it probably needed to be. Today, that might look different from admitting someone in to the psychiatric ward of one of the most famous mental institutions in the country, but none-the-less, Kaysen did need help. Whether or not she had Borderline Personality Disorder*, or was just a depressed, lost teenager we can’t know. What we can know is that Kaysen gives us an honest intriguing view into an era and lifestyle that is no more.

The movie (to see a trailer of the movie, click the link) took liberties and changed some names and dates (the hospital name and the year this took place). It elaborated some stories and added a few that weren’t in the book. But, besides Ryder’s Kaysen being a bit more outspoken than the book Kaysen, the actors portrayed their characters pretty consistently with the real girls. Angelina Jolie’s, Lisa, being the best of all. After reading about the real Lisa, it is no surprise that Jolie received the myriad of awards that she did in 2000 for her portrayal of this spirited young woman. However, if you have only seen the movie, you are cheating yourself. The book is short, but revealing, with insight only gleaned through reading the words that the actual woman put on on paper herself. It is only through the book that the reader can see how easily any of us could have had our years interrupted in the way that Kaysen’s were: “as my life had been, interrupted in the music of being seventeen … one moment made to stand still and to stand for all the other moments, whatever they could be or might have been. What life can recover from that”(167)?

* “An essential feature of this disorder is a pervasive pattern of instability of self-image, interpersonal relationships, and mood” (147). Show me a teenage girl who doesn’t fit that description and I’ll show you a flying pig.