Alice in Bed

by Susan Sontag

Dramatizes the plight of Alice James, who was confined to a bed by illness and whose genius was confined by nineteenth century conventions and expectations

Genres: Plays, Drama, Fiction, Feminism, Womens, Theatre, Historical Fiction

117 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1993

About the author

Susan Sontag was born in New York City on January 16, 1933, grew up in Tucson, Arizona, and attended high school in Los Angeles. She received her B.A. from the College of the University of Chicago and did graduate work in philosophy, literature, and theology at Harvard University and Saint Anne’s College, Oxford.

Her books include four novels, The Benefactor, Death Kit, The Volcano Lover, and In America; a collection of short stories, I, etcetera; several plays, including Alice in Bed and Lady from the Sea; and nine works of nonfiction, starting with Against Interpretation and including On Photography, Illness as Metaphor, Where the Stress Falls, Regarding the Pain of Others, and At the Same Time. In 1982, Farrar, Straus & Giroux published A Susan Sontag Reader.

Ms. Sontag wrote and directed four feature-length films: Duet for Cannibals (1969) and Brother Carl (1971), both in Sweden; Promised Lands (1974), made in Israel during the war of October 1973; and Unguided Tour (1983), from her short story of the same name, made in Italy. Her play Alice in Bed has had productions in the United States, Mexico, Germany, and Holland. Another play, Lady from the Sea, has been produced in Italy, France, Switzerland, Germany, and Korea.

Ms. Sontag also directed plays in the United States and Europe, including a staging of Beckett's Waiting for Godot in the summer of 1993 in besieged Sarajevo, where she spent much of the time between early 1993 and 1996 and was made an honorary citizen of the city.

A human rights activist for more than two decades, Ms. Sontag served from 1987 to 1989 as president of the American Center of PEN, the international writers’ organization dedicated to freedom of expression and the advancement of literature, from which platform she led a number of campaigns on behalf of persecuted and imprisoned writers.

Her stories and essays appeared in newspapers, magazines, and literary publications all over the world, including The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, Art in America, Antaeus, Parnassus, The Threepenny Review, The Nation, and Granta. Her books have been translated into thirty-two languages.

Among Ms. Sontag's many honors are the 2003 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the 2003 Prince of Asturias Prize, the 2001 Jerusalem Prize, the National Book Award for In America (2000), and the National Book Critics Circle Award for On Photography (1978). In 1992 she received the Malaparte Prize in Italy, and in 1999 she was named a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government (she had been named an Officier in the same order in 1984). Between 1990 and 1995 she was a MacArthur Fellow.

Ms. Sontag died in New York City on December 28, 2004.

Reviews

[Duru]

"Sessizliğin asıl kaynağı kadınların tanımlanma ve dolayısıyla çoğunlukla kendilerini tanımlama biçimlerinde­dir. Çünkü fiziksel olarak çekici, sabırlı, evcil, duyarlı ve ba­balara, erkek kardeşlere ve kocalara karşı saygılı olma yükümlülüğü, büyük bir yaratıcı gücün gelişebilmesi için ge­rekli ben merkezcilik, hırs ve kayıtsızlıkla karşı karşıya gelir ve mutlaka çatışmak zorundadır."

[Kat!e Larson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this book up off the shelf in the library with mild curiosity, and ended up sitting on the floor between the shelves reading the entire thing. As someone who has spent a lot of time ill and in bed, this book really connected with me. Alice's dry humor about her illness and her mild threats to commit suicide felt like things I had thought before. Even the trippy tea party felt familiar. This play made me feel like maybe I'm not so alone as I thought I was.

[Beril Heral · Rating 4 out of 5]

ilk susan sontag'ımda (her ne kadar kısa olduğu için garantici davransam da) nokta atışı yapmanın haklı gurur ve sevincini yaşıyorum...

sessiz kalsa ezilmeye mahkum, sesini çıkarsa delilikle suçlanan kadınlar, kadınlarımız, sürpriz cameolar ve Alice Harikalar Diyarı'nda referanslarıyla harmanlanıp önümüze bir tiyatro oyunu şeklinde sunulmuş, keşke benim aklıma gelseydi dediğim bir fikir oldu bu

nadiren derim "keşke ben yazmış olsaydım bu metni" diye, bunu da o derece içselleştirmişim

[Kat · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fascinating premise and source material, but execution falls a bit flat. Nevertheless, it is still a great achievement to have almost cobbled together enough dramatic material to sustain an entire play when the whole thing happens in a bed.

Though a little let down by the play's unfulfilled promise, I was glad to have read it. Thank you, Susan.

[Hannah Spangler · Rating 4 out of 5]

A play about rage, grief, and freedom. I enjoyed reading this very much, particularly from the tea party scene on. The scene 6 monologue is a stunning piece of writing and stands out from the rest of the script in my opinion. The references to Alice in Wonderland were just subtle enough that the plot of Alice in Bed was still its own.

[belisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

metnin sonuna yerleştirilmiş "oyun üzerine" bölümünü kitaba başlamadan önce okusaydım daha çok keyif alabilirdim,
benden sonra okuyacaklara tavsiye ederim, oyunun gidişatı hakkında temel bir şeyler söylüyor ama metne adapte olabilmek için o bilgiye ihtiyaç var, emily kimdir bilmek iyi olurdu...
oyun okumanın zorluklarından biri bu, yeterince açıklama olmuyor, diyaloglar metnin içine girmeyi zorlaştırıyor...

[Timur Markowitz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thematically great, but I thought it didn’t use the format of playwriting to its advantage.

[June · Rating 5 out of 5]

i need to star in this or stage this or write my own play that centers a trans girl in bed or something. obsessed with this. favorite play i think i’ve ever read, because it is all about the woman genius!

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

short lil play about Alice James thru the lens of Alice in Wonderland, there’s a scene where she smokes opium and hallucinates a tea party with Emily Dickinson + other women where they all talk about death, also a great monologue about Rome toward the end

[Ali Lloyd · Rating 4 out of 5]

I stumbled upon this having never heard of it and surprisingly loved it? Going to be crazy and say this is actually wildly underrated. Think Judith Shakespeare meets a woman against the void. If you've ever longed for an existentialist play packed with feminine anguish and rather specific literary references here you go. Upon this first reading, my overall impression is that Alice's "illness" is largely a metaphor for her feeling diminished and less celebrated intellectually (particularly compared to her brothers). While that's a wild generalization of the entire play, Sontag explores this theme incredibly well and creatively. The interactions with other literary women, toiling with Alice's suicidal thoughts, and even Alice imagining herself outside of her bed truly convey these captivating feelings of being trapped and maybe enchanted(?) by one's own suffering.

Loved honestly!

[Alexia Lucia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like a short book. I like a meaningful story. And I particularly liked this analysis of the anguish of a very privileged lady, maybe because I am fighting not to be her. And I love a trippy history spinoff, so thank you Ms Didion.

[lily · Rating 4 out of 5]

okay knock-off room of one's own.

[Ruzica · Rating 2 out of 5]

Susan Sontag said she had been preparing to write "Alice in bed" her whole life. After having read the play, I think I could only partially grasp the reasons and idea behind the play. I assume she didn't only have Alice James in mind when she was writing this, but rather all those gifted 19th century women who remained subservient to men although they were capable to give something valuable to the world themselves.

If she wasn't a woman, would Alice James be as equally successful as her well-known older brother Henry? Why did she deliberately create a mental prison for herself when everyone in her surrounding seemed supportive of her? If she weren't coming from a wealthy family, would she have an opportunity to stay in bed for 24 years and do nothing?
Naturally, I could understand and empathize with 19th century women and their position within the society, but I can't empathize with Alice James. Everyone can have an accuse for being week. Everyone has something going on in their lives and only women like Alice James can make something more meaningful and special from their weakness and laziness. In the world of poor she wouldn't last more than one day. The world of poor doesn't tolerate feebleness and lethargy. For working class women of 19th century life was an endless round of dull, exhausting work and there was so little time for contemplation, enjoyment or some other 'privileges' we take for granted these days. No hysteria or suicidal thoughts would have been taken as an excuse for doing nothing, for becoming nothing.

Alice had the problem of feeling inferior to men and that is where her illness began. The fact that she actually wasn't submissive (or was equally capable) to her father or her brothers couldn't save her. She needed something more. In that kind of world she needed to be a man.

[Mohammad Ali Shamekhi · Rating 2 out of 5]

داستان در مورد زنان است. زنانی که استعدادی دارند اما نمی توانند آن را ظاهر کنند - به خاطر تلقی ای که دیگران از زن بودن دارند و تعهدی که خود زنان به این تلقی نشان می دهند. آلیس همیشه در بستر است - نشان از ناتوانی - و پس از شنیدن داستان سفر رم از مارگارت، تنها در ذهن و خیال خود سفر به رم را مجسم می کند. و ... .

پایان نمایشنامه برای من قابل فهم نبود - پرده ی آخر. و از کلیت نمایشنامه هم چندان خوشم نیامد. چیزهای خوبی برای نقل قول کردن درش بود اما روایت در موارد زیادی به دل من ننشست.

ترجمه ترجمه ی متوسطی است و انتظار زیادی نباید از متن فارسی آن داشت ( قضاوتم صرفا به حسب ظاهر متن فارسی است و گرنه تطبیقی ندادم )

[Pardis · Rating 2 out of 5]

«آلیس در بستر» تنها اثر سانتاگ در حوزه نمایشنامه‌نویسی است که به‌قولی ادای دین او به هنر تئاتر محسوب می‌شود. این‌نمایشنامه درباره زنی به‌نام آلیس است که مبتلا به بیماری است و جهان رویایی‌اش در تضاد با جهان واقعی به تصویر کشیده می‌شود. واقعیت بیرون که در مقام تضاد با واقعیت خیالی آلیس قرار دارد، بستر بیماری و انبوه ملحفه‌هاست.

[Sarah Fonseca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Second reading begets higher rating.

[Sophia Eck]

Alice in Bed by Susan Sontag is a play majorly inspired by Henry James’ sister Alice, and her long relationship with her depression and her growing resignation towards its omnipresence, combined with the canonical Alice in Wonderland; This Alice feels metaphorically too big and too small for the rooms she refuses to step out of, both similar to and conflicting with our classic Alice, who becomes physically big and small to escape the rooms she craves to leave.

The play, written primarily in sparse dialogue, subtly captures the ways in which women recognize feelings in themselves and resign themselves to their grand or meager fate, and the ways in which this outward acknowledgment can be shocking, humorous, freeing or limiting.

Being personally limited by a vague illness, seemingly both mental and physical, our fictional Alice James employs her odd imagination in order to seek experience, and likely in a state of opium induced hysteria, pontificates the anguish of womanhood with writers like Emily Dickinson, exemplifies her own dejection in the face of a robber in her own room, and inwardly travels to Italy, yet these imaginative moments still never fail to be under-lied by her recognition of a certain idiosyncratic illness, an upsetting existentialism.

There are complaints of this play being too pretentious, too referential, poorly executed; The former I find to be common in Sontag’s works as she is generally concerned with more pretentious topics, the latter two probably also true in some ways, considering how short the play is and the way this shortness prematurely cuts off lots of potential philosophizing and nuance, and the reimagining being of two existing stories, existing personalities to harp on, but I still liked it, still found lines worthy of underlining, had thoughts provoked. It speaks to certain complicated feelings but in a simple and suspended way.

[Jim · Rating 2 out of 5]

sadly, the foreword is probably the better part of this dramatic piece... plays, like poetry, are a tough read for me... so much writing goes into the set-up/scenery, then there is the format (name#1:words spoken, name#2:words spoken, theatrical aside; scenery change; name#1:words spoken; scenery change/stage aside...) which makes for a jittery and sometimes labored reading... this play has little to recommend it besides its author, and i think she overstates the import, or at least the depth of content of the play itself as it lacks much strength of feeling or thoughtfulness... with her dramatis personae i expected more verbal/intellectual repartee... Sontag's lead-in to the piece says more about what she hopes the play says than what it actually says... i didn't get much of the drug-induced dreamscape, nor did i feel much angst from the females about their "lot in life" as females... i haven't read any other fiction by Sontag so maybe this medium isn't her strong suit... her non-fiction writing works better for me...

[cypher · Rating 1 out of 5]

pretentious dialogue, ridiculous details, highly melodramatic, on top of the fact that it's using someone else's character as a reference, which is something i don't particularly like ("Alice in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll, which is visible from the drawing on the cover of the book, at least the edition i have, an image similar to one i know of Lewis Carroll's Alice, so, even though the postface says it's based on a real person called Alice James, the connection is still there...regardless, even the author herself said in the postface that "Alice in Wonderland" inspired the story...so it's overall the sensational details of Alice James, from her diary, specifically telling her father she wants to commit suicide to get his opinion, that the author is using here to grab attention mixed with "Alice in Wonderland", another attention grabber), could have had an original main character at least...

"i think i have been preparing to write Alice In Bed my entire life"...not sure what to say about this, considering i did not really find it that good, or that original.

[Ali · Rating 4 out of 5]

I stumbled upon this having never heard of it and surprisingly loved it? Going to be crazy and say this is actually wildly underrated. Think Judith Shakespeare meets a woman against the void. If you've ever longed for an existentialist play packed with feminine anguish and rather specific literary references here you go. Upon this first reading, my overall impression is that Alice's "illness" is largely a metaphor for her feeling diminished and less celebrated intellectually (particularly compared to her brothers). While that's a wild generalization of the entire play, Sontag explores this theme incredibly well and creatively. The interactions with other literary women, toiling with Alice's suicidal thoughts, and even Alice imagining herself outside of her bed truly convey these captivating feelings of being trapped and maybe enchanted(?) by one's own suffering.

Loved honestly!

[Katie Armstrong · Rating 2 out of 5]

Waiting for Godot type existential nihilism, over written but saying little. Not my vibe. As other reviewers have said, the play's note in the back makes this play much better and its direction clearer but unfortunately without it, it is sort of a grueling, nonsensical read. The note would be better placed at its beginning. Connects Alice James (the unremarkable yet talented sister of Henry James, author of Figure in the Carpet and Portrait of a Lady) to Alice in Wonderland to tell a story about women, lost potential, relation, and dread. Takes place mostly in a single room, the bedroom. Incidentally read this after *My Year of Rest and Relaxation* and while the premises are very similarly centered around deranged and ill, bed-ridden women, this 1993 version lacks luster.

[archive ☄ · Rating 5 out of 5]

"alice in bed is a play about the anguish and grief and rage of women, of women's consciousness of self..."

standing on a sidewalk in new york city a couple of days ago, rummaging through stacks and stacks of old, half-price paperbacks, i felt much like i had entered a vignette from just kids, wherein patti smith remembers the life-altering books she bought for a dollar or two in the new york of her youth, most notably if i remember correctly, a book of rimbaud's poems.

this book was for me as rimbaud was to patti ˙ᵕ˙

[Maede jadidi · Rating 4 out of 5]

ALICE JAMES Listen to me Father. Despair is my normal state.
FATHER That's what artists say. Maybe you are an artist.
ALICE JAMES An artist is someone who finishes something.
FATHER My poor child. All that talent. Our talent, the family's talent. What can I do. You truly want my, my permission.
ALICE JAMES You know what I want.
FATHER But you're not trying to want something else.
ALICE JAMES Aren't you impressed Father by how unhappy I am.
FATHER Make an effort. See things differently. With more distance.
ALICE JAMES Distance.

[Bees · Rating 4 out of 5]

Existential, dreamy and tragic, a tea party into the minds of intelligent women
Rage with arbitrariness, longing for death and hope for difference, the strangeness of the scenes sews together a wonderful backdrop to Alice's feeling of displacement in the world. Whether it's physical illness, or allusion to society's diminishment of women's intellect, Alice and her bed paints a surreal picture of what brilliant women had to endure.

I was torn by some of Alice's honesty with death, the scene where Alice asked her dad for permission killed me.

[Matthew Wilder · Rating 2 out of 5]

Susan Sontag wrote this long shortish play for Robert Wilson to produce at the Schaubuhne in 1991. I read it in the early 90s and recall it being sort of magical, as if Richard Foreman sentences had been sprinkled on majestic slo-mo Wilson tableaux. Seen a quarter century on, it is wheezy, blubber-ous, and, sadly, has the feel of an essayist turned poetaster: the program notes, reprinted at the end, are the most vigorous writing in the book.

[naviya · Rating 4 out of 5]

- I REALLY ENJOYED THIS
- it's been a while since i read a play and i gotta say that this makes me want to read more plays
- it's like the mad hatter's tea party with an ensemble of sick, tired and creatively frustrated/angry/burnout women
- it speaks about the lack of agency as sickness and depression and also just general depression
- WOW

[Hakkı Sayın · Rating 2 out of 5]

Susan ablanın fikir yazılarına hayranım; öte yandan, kurgusu çok kötü, çok karışık... Ne diyor, anlamak mümkün değil. O da kitabın son kısmına Attila İlhan'ın 'Meraklısına Notlar'ı gibi bir açıklama koymuş zaten. Entelektüellik şovuna dönüşen bu tür şeyleri sevmiyorum. Oyun bir ara parıldar gibi oldu, sonra yine anlaşılamazlığına geri döndü.

[Shiva nikseresht · Rating 5 out of 5]

آلیس در بستر روایتگر زنی بیمار است. انگار این بیماری بیشتر روحی است تا جسمی یعنی آلیس خودخواسته بیمار است و دلش نمی خواهد این بیماری تمام شود .
این نمایشنامه پر از دیالوگ‌های جذابه

«یادمه وقتی مامان مرد، کوچک‌ترین برادرم گفت که پدر همیشه به همه‌مون یاد داده بود که مرگ تنها واقعیت این جهانه و زندگی فقط یک اتفاق تجربیه؛ یک‌ چیز آزمایشی.»

[Jacquelyn Fusco · Rating 4 out of 5]

I should have read the "note" part at the back first to give me more context. I don't recall where I recently heard about the existence of this play, but I immediately borrowed it from the library. My feelings on it were more 3/5, but in fairness it probably deserves the 4. It's meant to be acted out, not read.

[Sofie Frydman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this!! I am new to reading plays and picked up Sontag's pretty randomly. It is a quick read that has a lot to say. I also appreciate that you don't need to know practically anything about Alice James, Margaret Fuller, or Emily Dickinson to understand what the play is getting at.