Hovelmeier, Sinéad Katherine2024-08-182024-08-182023-08Hovelmeier, Sinéad Katherine. (2023). The ‘madness account’: An examination of madness and writing within the fictional and autobiographical works of Bessie Head and Janet Frame. [Master's dissertation, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg]. WIReDSpace. https://hdl.handle.net/10539/40178https://hdl.handle.net/10539/40178A dissertation submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Arts, to the Faculty of Humanities, School of Literature, Language and Media, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023.Bessie Head and Janet Frame are two writers who have not been read comparatively. Despite this, both authors engage in writing about ‘madness’. Bessie Head presents madness in her fictional work A Question of Power (1973) as well as in her various life-writings (letters). Janet Frame presents madness in her fictional work Faces in the Water (1961) and her autobiography An Autobiography (1982). The current field labels these fictional works as ‘autobiographical’, and it pays close attention to madness as one area where the supposed commonalities between life experiences and fictional accounts justify this labelling. Current research on autobiography is divided along the individualist tradition of ‘male’ autobiography and the newer forms of autobiography, which not only employ the ‘autobiographical pact’ but stretch the conventions of autobiography into a whole host of emerging subcategories (autofiction, confessional literature, faction etc.). The current field does not consider that equating a ‘mad’ author with a ‘mad’ character in fiction is a limited approach to representations of madness. Focusing on ‘scriptotherapy’ and the ‘madness account’, my research addresses this gap in the literature. Reading the texts comparatively produced varied results for ‘madness’; Frame’s account of madness is richest in the fiction she decidedly claimed as not autobiographical, while Head’s life-writings reveal her fictional account of ‘madness’ as autobiographical but dissatisfying, it fails to express her real-life experiences accurately. Reading all four texts together and applying ‘scriptotherapy’ to each provides insights into the role of ‘madness’ within each text and its impact on each author. This research fills a gap in the current research by revealing a broader view of ‘madness’ in the works of both Frame and Head.en©2023 University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.Bessie HeadMadnessJanet FrameWomen’s writingAutobiographyLife writingUCTDSDG-4: Quality educationDissertationUniversity of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg