Unsettling Femininity in Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation

This thesis covers how Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation critiques traditional understandings of femininity and the inadequacy of neoliberal feminism to address the systemic issues that women face. Using Lauren Berlant’s concept of femininity as a genre, this thesis traces how Moshfegh implements disgust and abjection to reject mandates of cleanliness and emotional labor that are central to traditional femininity. Moshfegh also utilizes disgust and the narrator’s attempt at a year-long sleep to resist the ideals of productivity and self-care that are central to neoliberal feminism. In employing these affects, Moshfegh resists the social structures that exploit women’s labor with the false promise of empowerment. However, the novel refuses to give an alternative or offer a resolution for these failures and instead portrays the narrator’s resistance as futile. The lack of resolution resists traditional narrative arcs of transformation, creating an unsettling reading experience. The unresolved nature of the novel then functions as a critique of the inescapability of restrictive frameworks when met with individual resistance, thus calling for a broader consideration of collective resistance towards oppressive systems.