REINTERPRETING PATRICIA HEARST’S KIDNAPPING STORY BY PSYCHOLOGICALLY MIRRORING IT WITH SUSAN CHOI’S 2003 “AMERICAN WOMAN”
REINTERPRETING PATRICIA HEARST’S KIDNAPPING STORY BY PSYCHOLOGICALLY MIRRORING IT WITH SUSAN CHOI’S 2003 “AMERICAN WOMAN”

Summary/Abstract: The present paper does not intend to contradict FBI-led investigations which claimed the possibility that Patricia Hearst deliberately committed acts of violence in parallel with the brainwashing procedure she might have endured during her disappearance. Indeed, it will support Susan Choi’s initiative in granting Patricia the presumption of innocence not because she would not have voluntarily participated in a number of armed robberies in which she assumed various roles generated by the needs of the radicals, but because the explanation for her decision not to escape when she might have noticed such an opportunity, triggers old and unhealed wounds in her past. What no one took into account in all the investigations carried out against her or in her favor, was the likelihood that the lack of real maternal, paternal, and conjugal affection that she experienced during her childhood, have irremediably left their mark on her personality as an adult. Therefore, since Susan Choi’s literary protagonist, Pauline, is a reflection of Patricia Campbell Hearst, I allow myself, through the association of the two characters, to primarily penetrate the nets of their childhood. The analysis that follows thus represents the core of a teenager's revolt against her parents.

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