“Death might, in fact, be looked upon as the great Emancipator”: Suicide and Female Agency in Mona Caird’s The Wing of Azrael (1889)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.28914/Atlantis-2025-47.1.5Keywords:
feminist literary criticism, literary representations of suicide, New Woman fiction, Mona Caird, symbolismAbstract
This article seeks to analyse the treatment of the literary theme of female suicide in Mona Caird’s novel, The Wing of Azrael. My aim is to propose a feminist interpretation of the protagonist’s suicide. By referring to determinist philosophical concepts, challenging cultural stereotypes about female madness, and reworking literary devices from Gothic and sensation fiction, Caird creates an empathetic tale that portrays suicide as a voluntary and rational choice. The novel counters prevalent cultural pathologisation and feminisation of suicide. Additionally, this emancipatory reading—which engages in dialogue with other female exegeses of suicide—is strengthened through the symbolic resignification of aquatic spaces as feminine and empowering realms. This reinterpretation contributes to the reconstruction of the myths of Azrael and Andromeda, fostering critical discourse on the unequal position of women within the institution of marriage and their struggle to develop independent identities in a patriarchal context that stifles debate and critical thinking. Ultimately, it prompts reflection on willpower, the influence of the environment on individuals and their capacity for decision-making.
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