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- Title
Exis-tensions: Surviving the "Red Shoes" Syndrome in Margaret Atwood's "Lady Oracle."
- Authors
Kapuscinski, Kiley
- Abstract
As the earliest and most sustained of Atwood's attempts to examine the potentially deadly conflict between a woman's artistry and female identities, "Lady Oracle" has often been read as a text that must necessarily be considered alongside Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's influential film, "The Red Shoes." Yet absent from previous analyses is a discussion of how this conflict is perpetuated though the female artist tradition, and how Joan Delacourt's habitual overeating indicates her self-destruction, rather than her self-empowerment, in the face of conflict. Moreover, while Joan's obesity aligns with the self-harm anticipated by what Atwood terms 'the "Red Shoes" syndrome,' her projecting her creative talents onto alternate identities can be read as a dissociative survival strategy that, for a time, permits her to maintain her divided identity as a woman artist.
- Subjects
CRITICISM; RED Shoes, The (Film); ATWOOD, Margaret, 1939-; LADY Oracle (Book); WOMEN artists in literature; FEMININE identity; WOMEN'S roles; PROJECTIVE identification
- Publication
University of Toronto Quarterly, 2009, Vol 78, Issue 3, p902
- ISSN
0042-0247
- Publication type
Literary Criticism
- DOI
10.3138/UTQ.78.3.902