‘To have been always what I am – and so changed from what I was’: Beckett's Female Subject Formation and the Problem of Becoming

Abstract

The call for a new notion of personhood that goes beyond one's cognitive functions and a new account of human agency has gained interest with the impact of contemporary research in cognitive science over the last few decades. This paper aims to show that examining Beckett's female subject formation allows us to map out not only our changed perception of self, but also the changing patterns of reception of his works over time in relation to the issue of female agency. While Beckett's male subjects in his early novels are often preoccupied with their own journey to find a solipsistic world in their quest for their authentic self, his drama concerns his characters’ affective experience, namely how they live to go on. This paper, thus, will show that what Beckett perceives as gender difference plays a crucial role in his portrayal of personhood that is closely interconnected with other people and external artefacts, as well as his theatricality as a mode of perception that brackets moments of action and our affective experience of time.