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Depathologising female depression: colonising women’s psychic space in Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You

Women have long been disproportionally pathologised as melancholic or depressive as if they are naturally passive or deficient. Specifically, depressed mothers are usually believed to be responsible for their children’s abnormality. Celeste Ng’s novel Everything I Never Told You (2014) portrays simi...

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Main Authors: Zhou, Qiaoqiao, Omar, Noritah
Format: Article
Published: Department of English Language and Literature, International Islamic University Malaysia 2022
Online Access:http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/100893/
https://journals.iium.edu.my/asiatic/index.php/ajell/article/view/2646
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spelling my.upm.eprints.1008932023-07-26T03:13:54Z http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/100893/ Depathologising female depression: colonising women’s psychic space in Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You Zhou, Qiaoqiao Omar, Noritah Women have long been disproportionally pathologised as melancholic or depressive as if they are naturally passive or deficient. Specifically, depressed mothers are usually believed to be responsible for their children’s abnormality. Celeste Ng’s novel Everything I Never Told You (2014) portrays similar predicaments of three generations of mothers and daughters. While many researchers mostly blame mothers for their daughters’ depression and/or suicide, they fail to explain the vicious cycle that perpetuates the blame-the-mother myth and more specifically, the mechanism of social oppression in stigmatising women. Using Kelly Oliver’s conceptualisation of social melancholy and colonisation of psychic space, this study explores the relationship between social complexity and its consequences on the psychic space of women. This study argues that Ng’s female subjects suffer “social melancholy” as a result of the colonisation of their psychic spaces. Without a supportive social space where positive representations of womanhood and motherhood are valued, those female subjects regard themselves as defective and depressed. The reductionist attribution of responsibility to the mothers is criticised, as it risks individualising and decontextualising the pathology of society in denigrating women in general and mothers in particular, and ultimately rendering them depressive and even suicidal. Department of English Language and Literature, International Islamic University Malaysia 2022-12-26 Article PeerReviewed Zhou, Qiaoqiao and Omar, Noritah (2022) Depathologising female depression: colonising women’s psychic space in Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You. Asiatic: IIUM Journal of English Language and Literature, 16 (2). 25 - 40. ISSN 1985-3106 https://journals.iium.edu.my/asiatic/index.php/ajell/article/view/2646
institution Universiti Putra Malaysia
building UPM Library
collection Institutional Repository
continent Asia
country Malaysia
content_provider Universiti Putra Malaysia
content_source UPM Institutional Repository
url_provider http://psasir.upm.edu.my/
description Women have long been disproportionally pathologised as melancholic or depressive as if they are naturally passive or deficient. Specifically, depressed mothers are usually believed to be responsible for their children’s abnormality. Celeste Ng’s novel Everything I Never Told You (2014) portrays similar predicaments of three generations of mothers and daughters. While many researchers mostly blame mothers for their daughters’ depression and/or suicide, they fail to explain the vicious cycle that perpetuates the blame-the-mother myth and more specifically, the mechanism of social oppression in stigmatising women. Using Kelly Oliver’s conceptualisation of social melancholy and colonisation of psychic space, this study explores the relationship between social complexity and its consequences on the psychic space of women. This study argues that Ng’s female subjects suffer “social melancholy” as a result of the colonisation of their psychic spaces. Without a supportive social space where positive representations of womanhood and motherhood are valued, those female subjects regard themselves as defective and depressed. The reductionist attribution of responsibility to the mothers is criticised, as it risks individualising and decontextualising the pathology of society in denigrating women in general and mothers in particular, and ultimately rendering them depressive and even suicidal.
format Article
author Zhou, Qiaoqiao
Omar, Noritah
spellingShingle Zhou, Qiaoqiao
Omar, Noritah
Depathologising female depression: colonising women’s psychic space in Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You
author_facet Zhou, Qiaoqiao
Omar, Noritah
author_sort Zhou, Qiaoqiao
title Depathologising female depression: colonising women’s psychic space in Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You
title_short Depathologising female depression: colonising women’s psychic space in Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You
title_full Depathologising female depression: colonising women’s psychic space in Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You
title_fullStr Depathologising female depression: colonising women’s psychic space in Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You
title_full_unstemmed Depathologising female depression: colonising women’s psychic space in Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You
title_sort depathologising female depression: colonising women’s psychic space in celeste ng’s everything i never told you
publisher Department of English Language and Literature, International Islamic University Malaysia
publishDate 2022
url http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/100893/
https://journals.iium.edu.my/asiatic/index.php/ajell/article/view/2646
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score 13.211869

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