Department of English

This thesis analyzes the 2015 novel A Little Life’s numerous connections to melodrama, drawing links between Hanya Yanagihara’s writing and historical characteristics of the melodramatic mode. Beyond a basic conception of melodrama as exaggerated and over-the-top, there lies a complex history dating back hundreds of years. Yanagihara does not, however, simply provide an overview of melodrama’s past in A Little Life ; she also looks forward into melodrama’s future. The central argument of this thesis concerns our traumatized main character, Jude: what if we dare read his repeated self-harm as a kind of art that pushes the limits of melodrama to the body? Backed by close readings of Jude’s cutting, I will propose that his daily private acts of masochism can and should be read through the lens of artistic creation, as he navigates an aesthetic realm defined by both immense pain and utopian possibility. I will suggest Yanagihara queers melodrama by imagining Jude’s cutting—an act of intense feeling he deliberately performs without an audience—as an anti-theatrical, yet melodramatic art form. In making this argument, I will touch upon multiple facets of art history ranging from the body-art movement of the 1960s and 70s, to the earlier history of the modernist closet drama originating in the 19^th century. By theorizing Jude’s self-injury as art, we allow for the queer possibility of a nonnormative, audienceless melodrama that ultimately allows Jude to glimpse a utopian world where he is no longer afflicted by his childhood trauma.