Alice in Bed: Susan Sontag Collected Works

Author: (American) Susan Sontag (Sontag, S.), translated by Feng Tao
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2007-01-01
Features: Alice in Bed is a play about women, about women's suffering, and about women's self-awareness. It is a fantasy based on a real person, Alice James—the youngest sister of Henry James, one of America's greatest novelists, and William James, one of America's greatest psychologists and ethicists. At the age of nineteen, her mind was overwhelmed by waves of melancholy; she once tried to take her own life, she endured various inexplicable and extremely tormenting illnesses, she traveled overseas, she lay in bed, she kept a diary, and she died at the age of forty-three. In Sontag's play about women, Alice James is once again conflated with the Alice from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in imagination. Additionally, Sontag summons the spirits of two 19th-century American women writers: Emily Dickinson and Margaret Fuller, and two representative angry women from the 19th-century stage: Melinda (from Gustel) and Kundry (from Wagner's Parsifal), to attend a "tea party of madness." Alice in Bed is Sontag's only play, yet she said, "I felt my entire life was preparing me to write Alice in Bed." Alice in Bed consists of eight acts and is a "fantasy based on a real person," the character being Alice James, who came from an outstanding American family. She had two renowned brothers—one was the 19th-century famous writer Henry James, and the other was the 19th-century great psychologist William James. Like her brothers, Alice was exceptionally intelligent and also a well-known feminist icon, but she was tormented by depression from the age of nineteen, once tried to take her own life, and finally died of illness at the age of forty-three. The play also features several appearances by Alice's younger brother, Henry James. In this brilliant fictional story, the dialogue is witty and concise, and the plot is tightly paced.