Issues about the prescribed norm for females bring us back to the Gothic theme about escape. Taking readerly participation into consideration, David Punter
reexamines the relation between reality and the imagined world in the Gothic to redefine the term “escape.” He considers how, when the character’s grasp on reality is doubtful, readers are then forced to figure out reality by themselves; hence the Gothic is “not an escape from the real but a deconstruction and dismemberment of it, which we as readers can only put together by referring its materials to our own assumptions about the relations between world and mind and by entering actively into the
self-conscious play of the text” (97). Joan, a Gothic character as well as a reader who tends to equalize reality with Gothic fantasy, now confronts reality directly. How is she going to figure out the nature of reality and find the way out of the maze built on patriarchal ideology? Furthermore, how are we as readers of Joan’s tale going to distinguish Joan’s imagination from the facts, so as to see Gothic fantasy’s attachment to reality?
Fleeing from her mother, Joan, no longer with any incentive to defeat her mother, is eager to be a normal woman, stating “I didn’t want anything too different or startling, I just wanted to fit in without being known” (138). She is glad to have sex with the Polish Count because it proves that she is “normal” (149). Ironically, bending to get rid of her mother, Joan’s new life turns out to be a duplication of her mother’s.
Thus she is destined to undergo the ambivalence of the gender construction that her mother once experienced. She realizes the gender construction stipulates a mold of femininity that is too difficult for her to achieve. But even if it is pathetic to obey the gender regulations, its recognition is still what Joan longs for. The Fat Lady forced to
Huang 55 walk on the high wire in her dream forces her to reflect on her own situation:
How destructive to me were the attitudes of society, forcing me into a mold of femininity that I could never fit, stuffing me into those ridiculous pink tights….
How much better for me if I’d been accepted for what I was and had learned to accept myself, too. Very true, very right, very pious. But it’s still not so simple.
I wanted those things, that fluffy skirt, that glittering tiara. I liked them. (99) Joan, like the Fat Lady walking with caution on the high wire, sacrifices herself to fit into the model of feminine image simply because of the temptation of the happiness that patriarchy promises. While she does her best to conform to others’ expectations, her life then becomes a test of this promise.
During her exploration of the regulations of dominate ideology, the first rule she perceives is the logic of dichotomy. For example, after Arthur’s roommates discover Joan has cleaned their kitchen, they no longer regard her as “politico of sorts” with respect, but tease her as a woman instead. From a male point of view, it is impossible for a woman to look after both domestic and public sides. A woman can be either an aggressive intellectual or a modest wife but never both. Joan thus concludes,
“One could not, apparently, be both a respected female savant and a scullery maid”
(169). And it is apparent that men prefer a vulnerable woman to an intelligent one.
Arthur has always enjoyed Joan’s failure; as Joan says “He wanted me to be inept and vulnerable” (88). Longing for Arthur’s acknowledgement, Joan therefore performs her clumsiness to please Arthur. As a result, Joan’s failure grows into a show with Arthur as the audience.
However, obviously the world is never as simple as the dichotomous thinking demonstrates. While yearning for the recognition of dominant ideology, Joan wishes to be fat again after experiencing various sexual harassments, because at least by being fat, she need not worry about being molested. She thus has to develop fear of
Huang 56 men artificially when she is a slender woman. Relearning how to arm herself, Joan misses her shelter—obesity which is “an insulation,” “a cocoon,” and a “disguise”
(139). Moreover, surrounded by dichotomous thinking, she is unable to make up her mind about which role she should choose: a domestic one or a public one. Her favorite movie, The Red Shoes, which focuses on a ballet dancer torn between her career and her husband, parodies an analogy to her dilemma. She also associates it with Andersen’s fairy tale, the Little Mermaid. Both of them feature a heroine with a desire to be recognized by dancing in public, which is a mistake, as Joan realizes belatedly, and results in their failure to please the heroes.
In order to dance and be loved simultaneously, Joan decides to be a lovable woman in public and to “dance” in private. Her fabricated identities are her tricks.
Joan gives herself different names, a method corresponding to her mother’s naming strategy, so as to be Arthur’s wife and a Costume Gothic writer at the same time. With Arthur, she is Joan Foster, a wife fitting social expectations, while in front of readers, she uses Aunt Lou’s name to publish her Costume Gothic novels. Joan’s fabricated identities thus form a parody to the manipulation of the reality in the Gothic novels.
Both “reality” in the Gothic novels and that in her real life are made up. Afterwards, Joan is even asked by Arthur’s friends in Resurgence to use a fake identity to
implement the dynamite plan of blowing up Peace Bridge as a gesture. Turning their trick against the gang, Joan makes up stories for them since they never figure out how to carry it out but only stay cautiously at the level of theory. Ironically, Joan’s fake death eventually gets her friend into jail. Deceits are treated as truth; the line between reality and imagination has never been clearly distinguished. Nevertheless, those made-up identities do not free Joan from the ideological constraints but make reality more difficult to deal with. Getting lost in the maze built on her various fake names, she fearfully realizes what others like about her is her disguised self, since she always
Huang 57 pretends to be someone else to meet their expectations of her.
It is noteworthy here that the lesson Joan needs to learn now is not how to draw a line between Gothic fantasy and reality. Instead, she knows it, as she once sates, “I kept Arthur in our apartment and the strangers [imagined heroes] in their castle and mansions, where they belonged” (215). Besides, she has always tried to “keep [her]
two names and identities as separate as possible” (30). In fact, it is the coexistence of two identities—Joan Foster and Louisa K. Delacourt —that maintains the balance of Joan’s married life:
As long as I could spend a certain amount of time each week as Louisa, I was all right, I was patient and forbearing, warm, a sympathetic listener. But if I was cut off, if I couldn’t work at my current Costume Gothic, I would become mean and irritable, drink too much and start to cry. (212)
She realizes that she needs both of them, reality and fantasy. But this kind of
separation cannot satisfy her. Though her double identities maintain the balance of her life, she cannot help but feel that “neither of them was completely real” (216). Joan confesses:
The difficulty was that I found each of my lives perfect normal and appropriate, but only at the time. When I was with Arthur, the Royal Porcupine seemed liked a daydream from one of my less credible romances….But when I was with the Royal Porcupine, he seemed plausible and solid. Everything he did and said made sense in his own terms, whereas it was Arthur who became unreal; he faded to an insubstantial ghost, a washed-out photo on some mantelpiece I’d long ago abandoned. (259)
The balance coming from the division of fantasy and reality is not what she pursues.
The problem she encounters now is not how to distinguish reality and fantasy but how to define who she really is among her various fabricated identities. She wants to bring
Huang 58 her fragmented life together and be acknowledged as a complete and true self. She does not want others to like a disguised Joan; nor does she wish to lead an artificial life. Joan falls into a contradictory complex of her multiple selves. On one hand, she longs for the right timing to tell Arthur her story, but on the other hand she makes her utmost efforts to protect her secrets. At this point, Atwood transcends the traditional moral issues about overindulgence in Gothic fantasy and successfully puts emphasis on the topics of female subjectivity in this parodic Gothic of Lady Oracle.