Worlds, Dress and Things in Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation

Abstract: This thesis aims to analyse dress in Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation, both in its independent being and in its relation to the characters of the novel. Thing theory is the main methodology of use, with the support of the Heideggerian concept of ‘world’. Together they open up for a treatise into the ontology of dress: what clothes exist like, as an object fixed in time, and how clothes are encountered, as a thing manifested through time. Via the novel’s protagonist, we follow how things, but also being itself, are dependent on how she perceives time. The thesis ends with a short inquiry into the potential relations between body and dress.