Susanna’s Husband Character Analysis in Girl, Interrupted

Susanna is set up with her future husband by a friend’s brother before she is diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder and admitted to McLean. Though they have a connection and spend a night together, they live in different places and end up losing touch. Then, Susanna is admitted to McLean, and she forgets about him. When her future husband graduates college, however, he calls on Susanna, but she is in the psych ward and does not want to see him in such a state. She rebuffs his attempts to reconnect, believing that he has a future while she has none. Eventually, after several more months, Susanna has gained some privileges which include time away from the ward. She and her future husband begin dating, and soon he proposes marriage, which she believes is the main reason she was able to be discharged from the ward, noting that, “in 1968, everybody could understand a marriage proposal.” Years later, Susanna and her husband separate when she begins to feel that she needs to be by herself.

Susanna’s Husband Character Timeline in Girl, Interrupted

The timeline below shows where the character Susanna’s Husband appears in Girl, Interrupted. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.

...yet been hospitalized. A friend’s brother takes Susanna to the movies, where she meets her husband-to-be. Her friend’s brother and her future husband went to high school together, and when the... (full context)

When her future husband returns from Paris, Susanna is in a bad state. She has just endured her “bone”... (full context)

...life will “just stop” once she’s married. In the end, she reveals, she lost her husband—on purpose. She needed to be alone, she found, as she headed into her future. (full context)

...lived for a time at a women’s commune, but eventually married. Once, Susanna and her husband travelled to visit Georgina and her husband on their farm in western Massachusetts. They spent... (full context)