I recently finished the memoir Girl, Inturrupted by Susanna Kaysen and enjoyed it thoroughly while I was away. I'm going to try and elaborate on this single question throughout, though- Why is it called "Girl,Inturrupted"?
In the end of this book, Susanna Kaysen tells a story to the reader a couple of years after she gets out of the hospital about her and her boyfriend (at the time) going to the Alexander Frick Museum:
"When we got there I recognized it. 'Oh,' I said. 'There's a painting I love here.'
'Only one?' he said. 'Look at these Fragonards.'I didn't like them. I left the Fragonards behind and walked into the hall leading to the courtyard.
She had changed a lot in sixteen years. She was no longer urgent. In fact, she was sad. She was young and distracted, and her teacher was bearing down on her, trying to get her to pay attention. But she was looking out, looking for someone who would see her.
This time I read the title of the painting: Girl, Inturrupted at Her Music.
Inturrupted at her music: as my life had been inturrupted in the music of being seventeen, as her life had been, snatched and fixed on canvas: one moment made to stand still and to stand for all the other moments, whatever they would be or might have been. What life can recover from that?
I had something to tell her now. 'I see you,' I said.
My boyfriend found me crying in the hallway.
'What's the matter with you?' he asked.
'Don't you see, she's trying to get out,' I said, pointing at her.
He looked at the painting, he looked at me, and he said, 'All you ever think about is yourself. You don't understand anything about art.' He went off to look at a Rembrandt.
This final part in the book really moved me, and I finally understood why the book's title was what it was. Susanna related to the girl in that painting. She related to her so much that they had some kind of a special connection, and she had such strong emotions towards their connection she cried over it. The little girl in the painting didn't get put in a hospital for having a personality disorder, she got inturrupted at something not so important, like practicing an instrument. But it doesn't matter- Susanna felt that girl's pain, because she knew how it felt to be inturrupted while doing something you love.
Susanna Kaysen was put into a Mental Hospital for two years for a Borderline Personality Disorder. Something that can't really be cured by pep-talks for the day and pills with funny names that make you drowsy, something that Kaysen knew all along. Yet she suffered in that home. She suffered because not only was she stuck there for two years of her life, but because she was stuck there for two years and she didn't even really need to be. Yeah, she had some issues like not talking that much or throwing a tantrum once in a while [not that other people don't], but it's not like you can just go to the doctor and have that fixed. Those things are things that are going to stick with you for life. Kaysen needed priveleges like going outside of her room, or going outside the ward. She needed to be escorted around the hospital if she needed to go to the bathroom or go to the cafeteria to eat. She was banned from the basic things in life like having a boyfriend, or seeing family.
Susanna Kaysen was a girl, inturrupted at doing...life. She was a perfectly happy seventeen-year-old, satisfied with who she was and who she thought she wanted to become. She had a boyfriend, a good family, and a life. The hospital took that all away, in the blink of an eye. It's crazy how you can just go from waking up at noon every Saturday in your own home in your own bed, to swallowing Thorazine- or another crazy pill- every night at nine o'clock because that's the mandatory time for bed everyday.
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