Though the female character has long been a tool of the writer, she has yet to be recovered as a representation of the women of flesh and blood for whom she has stood as allegory, example, and fate. Through alternative lenses, such as psychoanalysis and especially through feminist psychoanalysis, one can find the beginnings of a reclamation. Among the work of thinkers, theorists, psychoanalysts, and writers Judith Butler, Hélène Cixous, and Bracha Ettinger lies a pantheon of female literary figures upon which theories such as performativity, écriture feminine, and the matrixial space have been applied. By using female figures to explore psychoanalytical intersections, thinkers like Butler, Cixous and Ettinger are reclaiming the history of psychoanalysis as a field built on the exploitation of female psychotherapy patients— the hysterics of science. This thesis intends to analyze how these thinkers go about re-creating psychoanalysis through a feminist lens and create a pantheon of female figures that embodies this work within the field of literature. In doing so, this work will establish, among other notions, how eliminating heteronormativity for Antigone eliminates the living death for the woman, how restoring agency for Medusa restores a creative space for the woman, and how failing to capture Eurydice ensures a freedom for the woman.
