Abstract:
This dissertation intends to examine Susan Sontag and Mary McCarthy as two
representative, powerful women in post-war America, both as American public intellectuals
in the second part of 20th century and as human beings. Despite their well-known status and
celebrity, decreed by the acclaim of their published writings – the diaries of the first and the
correspondence of the latter, they reveal a split persona. This thesis aims at exploring this
split in representation and argues that, if properly explored, it prompts a change in the eyes
of the readership and a revision in the public perception of these authors. Hence, the
ambivalence between public and private will be thoroughly investigated throughout the
chapters. Through an analysis of their public profile first, an effort is made to explore their
real selves, the so-called personas behind the authors, by comparing and contrasting their
constructed personas and their private writings. Critics and scholars commonly determine
the official portrayal and consequent value of a writer but, unofficially, private writings are
the red thread that directly connects the human beings and the literary masks and eventually
intertwines their public and their private lives. In fact, both Sontag’s diaries and the
correspondence between German-American philosopher Arendt and McCarthy shed a light
on the actual construction of their personas and are fundamental in order to define their real
self-portrayal. Finally, I will focus on a core aspect: the essentiality of these private sources
and their dialogue with both the society they lived in and the scholarship throughout the
time.
