The conflict between the private and public self: Sontag's and McCarthy's rebirth

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.