To October2015 Final

Textual Overtures
A Journal Encompassing the Teaching, Interpretation, and

Production of Texts
Exploring Narratives
October 2015
Issue 3 Volume 1
Textual Overtures
A Journal Encompassing the Teaching, Interpretation, and Production of Texts
Edie-Marie Roper, Editor

Kerry Clark, Tech Consultant
Hallie Kaiser, Literature Editor
Lauren Kelly, Rhetoric and Composition Editor
Washington State University

http://textualovertures.wordpress.com/
Editorial Board
Scarlet Anguiano, David Tagnani, Miriam Fernandez, and Johnna Lash.
About Textual Overtures

Textual Overtures is dedicated to creating a space in which rhetoric, composition,
and literature can coexist, and further, create a harmony of textual explorations.
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envision Textual Overtures as a cacophony of scholarship which forms a stage for
interdisciplinary and multi-perspectived inquiry. We invite graduate students from
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Design, layout, and cover illustration by Jennifer Lin OBrien.
Textual Overtures
Volume Three Issue One
October 2015
1 Review of Beyond Classical Narration: Transmedial and

Unnatural Challenges
Maria Alberto
5 [C]ompletely worn out in mind and body: Disability,
Femininity, and the Gothic
Lauren Bailey
19 Family Food
Kayla Sparks
32 Away from the Shadowy Path: Narrative Identity in the

Deepwoods
Rebecca Long
Review of Beyond Classical Narration:

Transmedial and Unnatural Challenges
Maria Alberto
Beyond Classical Narration:Transmedial and Unnatural Challenges
edited by Jan Alber and Per Krogh Hansen.
The author is an M.A. student
and teaching assistant at
Cleveland State University.
Her research interests concern
intersections between canonicity
and culture, and her thesis
examines the transmedia presence
and regeneration of Sherlock
Holmes.
In their edited collection, Beyond Classical Narration, scholars Jan

Alber and Per Krogh Hansen assemble thirteen diverse papers that
consider narratology s definition, function, and value across diverse
media such as films, filmed musicals, graphic novels, computer
games, drama and theatre, internet productions, photography,
unnaturalstories, and alternate reality games (ARGs). All papers
were originally presented at the 2011 European Narratology
Network conference, and thus represent many of Europe s
established and emerging narratologists as these scholars consider
narratives that somehow deviate or differ from a traditional norm
. . . [and] go beyond classical narration (Introduction 4-5) and
endeavor to explain their significance in contemporary narrative
and media theory.
Alber and Hansen begin by outlining their project as a foray into two
distinct categories of post-classical narrative, types that they call the
transmedial and the unnatural. They define transmedial narratives
as those that seek to rebuild narratology so that it can handle new
genres and storytelling practices across a wide variety of media
(2) and contend that unnatural narratives represent impossibilities
and thus challenge the parameters of literary realism (5). Alber and
Hansen conclude their introduction by noting that transmedial and
unnatural narratologies are valuable because they acknowledge
and incorporate genres and interpretive strategies that would
have been irrelevant, unimportant, or even unavailable to earlier
theorists. Such narratologies, therefore, bolster contemporary
narrative, media, and even literary theory by examining how both
readers and critics make use of pre-existing critical frameworks to
begin considering the challenges of story-telling in contemporary
media. After Alber and Hansen s introduction helpfully situates
readers with the background and value of transmedial and
unnatural narratologies, the thirteen collated papers then build
successfully from this premise. Each paper examines specific
challenges or concepts from a single medium, examples from a
Textual Overtures 3.1 | October 2015
15
combination of media, and/or the overarching medium or media

in question: this approach is highly successful because authors can
leave readers with either a sense of how the narratological study
might further develop or a specific example of how transmedial
or unnatural narratology can be applied. Wolf Schmid s paper
The Selection and Concretization of Elements in Verbal and
Filmic Narration, for instance, leaves readers with a liberating aha! moment as he explains why it is possible that In reviews of
mainstream movies, we can often read that notwithstanding all the
beautiful pictures the film suffers from a weakly developed story
(19). By considering the possibilities of transmedial narratology,
Schmid succinctly delineates the difference between film and
textual narratives. He contends that concretizing details for film
can dictate their meaning for viewers where readers were left to
make the connections themselves, and that this potential can lead
filmmakers to under-develop narratives by over-focusing on solely
visual details to dictate that viewer experience.
Schmids conclusion about unsatisfying but beautiful film
experiences demonstrates one of this collection s greatest strengths:
its authors can effectively employ strategies of transmedial and/or
unnatural narratology to illuminate many otherwise unexplained
phenomena that readers will recognize from their own experiences
with contemporary media. Another strength, though, lies in authors
serious, critical examinations of apparently simple, unremarkable
media experiences, as in Markus Kuhn s paper about personal
web series. Examinations such as Kuhn s are both remarkable and
valuable because they successfully show readers that all media
somehow adhere to formal, stylistic, and thematic patterns (144)
even if these authors are among the vanguard to define such
patterns in critical terms, as when Kuhn contends that transmedial
web series are the next generation of paratexts. Other authors will
examine and redefine familiar terms such as unreliable narration
(61-2), narrators positions within or beyond their texts (120),
and collaborative story-telling (161-2) before applying the newly
redefined terms to questions raised by new media forms.
Despite its strengths of definition and application, readers may also
find this collection intimidatingly dense. The intended audience
is unmistakably intensely academic: the language throughout
is articulate but compact with conceptual and referential terms,
and authors draw on a host of resources that may be unfamiliar
particularly to American scholars, including primary texts and
media from foreign studios and producers as well as translated
studies and theories from other scholars in this primarily
European field of study. Another potential drawback stems from
a disproportionate focus on the transmedial rather than a balance
26
with the unnatural: eleven essays focus on the former, and only
two on the latter, though the bibliographies appended to both of
the unnatural narratology essays can also offer readers a sense of
where to begin further reading.
Overall, Beyond Classical Narration effectively presents readers
with relevant studies in a fairly new area of critical narrative and
media theory, no matter their individual level of study. Hansen s
concluding definition of the under-theorized and uninvestigated
genre is especially relevant. His claim that certain genres and
media are dismissed from formal criticism with a bad reputation of
being escapist and reactionary (221) could be extended as a tagline
for the entire collection, as its concepts and claims in transmedial
and unnatural narratologies may be among the first in these fields
that many American audiences encounter.
37
Works Cited
Abler, Jan, and Per Krogh Hansen, eds. Beyond Classical Narration.
Transmedial and Unnatural Challenges. Berlin, Boston: De
Gruyter., 2014. Print.
[C]ompletely worn out in mind and body:

Disability, Femininity, and the Gothic
Lauren Bailey
Lauren Bailey is an English

doctoral student at the CUNY
Graduate Center. She focuses
on representations of women
as economic figures in British
literature of the long 19th
century. She is currently
researching Victorian era family
bookkeeping.
Eighteenth through mid-nineteenth century gothic stories featured

most women as trapped in castles and mansions, their houses
entombing them in one way or another. However, Fred Botting
and other critics have noted the nineteenth century gothic saw a
turn toward the interior: ones mind. Thus mid-to-late nineteenth
century gothic tales began to feature women trapped within their
own bodieshelplessly held in states of madness, including
invalidism, languor, stupor, hysteria, delirium, or just unnamed
illness. These forms of disability are heightened not only by their
intersections with gender, but also often with class.
The functioning of these tropes within the gothic framework is
to evoke in the reader a specific responseto excite and terrify. It
creates something resembling that of Edmund Burkes notion of the
sublime: that which can cause horror and pain, and consequently
pleasure in its relief. The gothic is sensational, relying on the
truest meaning of sense, affecting its readers and often causing a
physiological response. Thus, I have found it curious that womens
madness and languor appear as functionaries of these gothic tropes.
Womens disability, both of mind and body is meant to stir in the
reader emotions of not only terror, but excitement and thrill.
And, the very power of gothic rests in its effects on readers. The
reader is often enlisted as an agent in the text itself. This idea
becomes unsettling, thus, when the reader is implicated in the
violent structure and/or climax of the text, in its lack of resolution, or
in the emotional responses that the text invokes. In Thomas Hardys
1891 collection of gothic tales, A Group of Noble Dames, readers are
indirectly involved from the onset within the frame narrative; I
argue that readers also are indicted not only for their participation
in and presumable enjoyment of the stories, but also their complicit
role in the suffering of these heroines. However, this critical gaze is
not limited to the nineteenth century. No, we today are witnesses
to accounts of similar acts of horror and must evaluate our own
responses.
Why Another Feminist Reading?
Gothic tales are about a great many thingsfrom enclosed,
repressive structures to passions and poisonbut at the heart of it,
they are about men and women. Despite the perhaps more blatant
themes of murder, betrayal, disgust, and horror, or the perhaps
more subtle discussions of the postcolonial and abject, they are
often also about what makes men men and women women
and just what value we attach to those signifiers within different
situational contexts and historical framework.
Why gothic tales tend so often to focus on the plight of a woman or
women in general is an interesting thought by itself. In What Does
a Woman Want? Shoshana Felman argues Frueds Interpretation of
Dreams reveals his lack of knowledge of woman in his dream analysis.
In this dream analysis, the woman functions as a nodal point, a
point at which the meaning of the dream can be unraveled, but
also a point that marks the beginning of something utterly strange,
completely Other, and perhaps unknowable (Felman 75-85). By
relation, it is possible that many male writers of the past authored
gothic storylines in part to explore the perceived darkness and
unknowability of womens experiences and thoughts. The women
suffer, then, as either penalty of their sex or perversion by way of
male curiosity. This tradition, though, is deeply problematized
when women narrate. The text then somehow gains a different
level of seriousness, authenticity, and fear when it becomes rooted
in even the most miniscule amount of possible truth or reality.
The purpose of reading a text for its commentary on gender is
often to uncover what misconceptions and gross miscalculations
society is apt to make at the expense of innocent peopleto learn
from, and to question. When we turn to women, when we read
women so-to-speak, it is not to valorize them and forget their
mistakes. Rather, it is to question what humanity we all have and
how much further we can take it. There is no denying that women
are often at the brunt of the patriarchal joke, and they tend to be
victimized in unique and irrevocable ways. Namely, that with their
minds and especially bodies, they suffer an incomparable sense
of vulnerability that their male counterparts do not. Julia Kristeva
explains that sexual politics is the process whereby the ruling sex
seeks to maintain and extend its power over the subordinate sex
(163). Or as Simone de Beauvoir argued, woman thus seems to be
the inessential who never goes back to being the essential, to be the
absolute Other, without reciprocity (92). Yet, feminism today, just
as it was with the Victorian womens movements, is just as much
10
about men as it is about women. Thus, I hope to facilitate a critical

discussion of both femininities and masculinities, past and present.
Hardy and his Noble Dames in the Context of Victorian England
Hardy was well known for his focus on women, particularly the
New Woman and fallen women of the late Victorian era. Tess
Durbeyfield, the title character from the 1891 Tess of the DUrbervilles,
and Sue Bridehead, cousin and love-interest of the main character
in Hardys 1895 Jude the Obscure, are female characters notable for
their complex interiority and problematic sexual pasts. Though
neither character meets a happy fate, it is precisely their suffering
that pulls the reader in and if not completely serving to dismantle
the repressive patriarchal social structures of marriage, sexuality,
and patrilineageat least invokes a feeling of sympathy for women
with similar plights.
Hardy was well aware of not only the Woman Question in
Victorian England, but also its contexts in history. Critics and
writers of all sorts in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were
engaged in the debate about women. Mary Wollstonecraft declared
that men wanted to keep women in a perpetual state of childhood
(44-45). George Eliot remarked that subjection and ignorance have
debased her (woman), and with her, Man (81). The discussions and
social currents of Hardys time were ripe with controversy about
womenstories that I argue he pulls from and adds to, or as Sarah
Nicholson posits, Hardys writing aligns itself more comfortably
with writing by and for women (28).
There was a dramatic restructuring of the home, family unit, and
institution of marriage from the time of the Reformation to Victorian,
becoming at first considerably more conservative and bringing into
play the separate spheres ideology that Catherine Hall and Leonore
Davidoff theorized in Family Fortunes. However, as the era neared
its close at the end of Queen Victorias reign, the contexts for and
understandings of women and marriage were significantly altered.
From the Reform Act of 1832, which effectively disenfranchised
women altogether, to the Married Womens Property Acts, this era
was one of radical change and feverish passion, despite its looming
reputation as an era of repression and propriety1. This is not to say,
though, that there were not multiple socio-political structures that
served to delimit both womens and mens roles within the societal
systems at large.
After all, the Victorian era was one in which women were
systemically denied agency and autonomy. The John Ruskins,
Coventry Patmores, and Sarah Stickney Ellises of the time saw it fit
11
for women to fulfill the role of angels in the house or background

figures to the men in their lives, powerful only through their
influence (Ellis 105). They are to be passive, mere property to own
(Cixous 110-111), or objects to win according to those like Lord
Uplandtowers in Hardys tale. With the popular circulation of
Thomas Malthuss theory on overpopulation in the increasingly
industrialized England, the notion of the redundant woman
circulated, so that women could be seen of so little value as
to actually be unnecessary in their very existence (Perkin 20).
Femininity as a whole came into question repeatedly in this
time. Hardy himself contributed to the discourse by engaging in
discussions and representations of the New Woman, a figure
which represented a strong, often educated, independent woman
who need not rely on men. Though the real-life versions of the new
woman were most likely suffragettes or those lobbying for better
work opportunities, the caricatures of these women often included
descriptions of iconoclastic women who were viciously working to
destroy monogamy and family altogether.
Yet, masculinity in nineteenth century England was no less
problematic. John Tosh argues in response to Davidoff and Hall that
there was not only a divide between the masculine and feminine,
but that the patriarchal and patrilineal pressures faced by men, in
conjunction with the proto-feminist movements, contributed to a
mass flight from domesticity. Male identity was entirely linked
with heritage, bloodline, and class, necessitating a withdrawal
from both the private sphere and all the qualities (and emotions)
that were associated with it. Aristocracy and high-level social
status were constitutive to the masculine ideal. Hardy was heavily
critical of all of the above, which we can see in his stark criticism of
Uplandtowers and valorization of Willowes in Dame the Second:
Barbara of the House of Grebe. Additionally, Hardys Squire
Petrick in Dame the Sixth: Squire Petricks Lady is so utterly
consumed by the obsession with bloodlines that he was willing to
sacrifice his own son, a trait that not only makes him gothic, but
inspiring of horror and repulsion.
In the same way that men were expected to uphold certain class
values, women were held accountable for maintaining class
civilities, and both sexes were expected to marry within their
respective social standing. Hardy took issue with not only the
inadequacy of the class system in England, but the marriage
institution itself, particularly the rules against those that may not
be well-suited or properly matcheda critique that is apparent in
both Tess of the DUrbervilles and Jude the Obscure (Brady 107). Hardy
also manages to weave into his texts a thorough critique if not utter
derailment of the British aristocratic system and privileging (and
12
existence) of landed gentry (Boumelha). His commentary on class

within these short gothic tales is more nuanced in that the fates of
the women often coincide with their fall in class ranking; however,
I posit that this does not detract from my reading of Hardy as being
firmly against class privileging in England. Rather, the fact that
Hardy paints his heroines in such sympathetic light implies that
the conditions adding to their disastrous fates are opportunities for
the re-evaluation of social conditions.
Interlude of Personal Narrative
With this nineteenth century historical perspective in mind, it is
important to take a moment to reconnect the significance of these
events with the present. I would like to add to this framework a
story of a contemporary female figure with a rather gothic story
one who has also seen the intersections of gender, class, and
disability in her life and has suffered both body and mind in her
experiences of such.
Bonnie Louise Perkins was born in 1948 just outside of Louisville,
Kentucky. She mostly grew up in Fairview, Tennessee where her
father, a wounded World War II veteran who quit middle school
in order to work and survive the Great Depression, owned and
operated an auto-repair shop for large vehicles and farm equipment.
She was one of five children, all two years apart, and her parents
fostered many more still. Everyone had their respective chores, and
as the oldest, Bonnie had the most responsibility. She was a surrogate
mother for the foster children and more frequently, her own
siblings. Their mother was ever-present, but she was never warm.
Bonnie never escaped her scowling tongue or judging eye. This
God-fearing woman was a devout Christian, deeply conservative
in all ways. She expected her daughter to live a Southern Baptist
life full of Biblical values and strict moral codes (and prejudices).
Some things were simply never to be talked about, including the
ongoing molestation that Bonnie and her baby sister suffered from
their grandfather and uncle.
She married at eighteen to someone she had met in church and
known since she was young. But she did not love him. And he
did not love her. They had two children and five miscarriages. She
learned of his ongoing affair after the third miscarriage, when her
husband left her bleeding in pain and fever to work in her fathers
repair shop. Her father turned his beaten-up Ford pickup truck
around and drove back to his daughter, picking her up from bed
and carrying her to the hospital. It was the kindest action that any
man ever did for her.
13
When her son was six and daughter one, Bonnie left her husband
and did something that no one expected and her family certainly
would never approve of: she got a divorce. She knew that he would
never pay child support, but she took what freedom she could get
and ran with it. She moved a couple hundred miles away from
the pain and the past. She worked full time, over-time, and went
without a winter coat, but she took care of those kids and pushed
on. She became a lead secretary in a successful engineering firm and
was the Joan of Mad Men in her time. She was strong, intelligent,
and able to care for herself. She was, for the first and last time in her
life, confident and independent.
... And then she met my father.
He was suave and handsome. Clever enough to win over anyones
heart and cruel enough to leave them broken apart when he had
finished with them. But something about Bonnie was special; she
would not escape his control or abuse for nearly three decades. But
before that time was over many things happened: she would fall in
love, wed my father (or so she believed at the time, unaware of his
previous un-annulled marriages to others), be forced to move to
the opposite coast of the country away from all that she had ever
known, suffer a half a dozen more miscarriages, be forbidden to
step outside the house if not for groceries or kids, develop a few
chronic conditions, become increasingly terrified of both my father
and eventually her own shadow, and years later, give birth to me.
Her suffering did not end in my childhood. Away from her
family and unable to keep many friendships, especially since my
father kept us moving every year or so, which served as both a
method of control over my mother via isolation and a crafty con
of debt collectors, my mother developed a fearful and inevitable
dependency on my father. He had ways of convincing her that he
was always right and she was always wrong, no matter what or
why. My father would torment my mother with an array of threats,
some more creative than others, such as when he told her that he
would throw away what little grocery money we had if she did
not apologize for disrespecting him as the head of the household,
his God-given right as a man. He sold her belongings for a few
extra bucks here and there until all that she had left were clothes
from thrift stores, potted plants, and photos from years long gone.
He kept her living below the poverty line; he kept her in a state of
helplessness and hopelessness. She had fallen not only in terms of
socioeconomic class, but in agency altogether.
He was careful to monitor any outgoing mail or phone calls, never
afraid to destroy correspondence or change our home number
without my mother knowing. She went many a holiday believing
14
that her family no longer cared. She gradually lost touch with
everyone, including my two older siblings, her own children,
understanding it to be her own fault. Something that she had
done had made them cease to love her. Or maybe love was never
there in the first place. After all, a second cheating husband, and
this one worse than the first, who really was to blame? She was
trapped inside: in a sham of a marriage, in a shack of a house, with
what little shelter her deteriorating mind could offer her from own
destructive thoughts.
She was bedridden off and on from the time I was seven until I
was fifteen. They told us it was her diabetes, high blood pressure,
high cholesterol, psoriatic arthritis, malnutrition, and so on. And
without any form of regular health care, maybe it was, but I knew
it was more. Something worse. I knew it was chronic depression;
I knew even before I had the rhetoric to articulate it, that it was
something she was experiencing in response to my fathers physical
and psychological abuse.
By the time my mother returned to work, I was eighteen and she
was fifty-six; I was away at college and my father was long gone
back to the South, to another woman and set of children. She was
left ill, without insurance, without rent or food or a working car in
a built-down trailer in an RV park in a part of Southern California
that no one recognizes. After her first marriage, she was able to rise
up and thrive from the independence. But this time was different.
She was left beaten-down, irrevocably damaged and traumatized
by my father. She was straddling life and death and had no clear
idea of how she would survive. I helped her fill out an online
application to the new Wal-Mart, where she was grateful to work
in a gardening center. That is, until her first stroke a year and a half
later.
This time, she was taken to the hospital by a neighbor who had
only by chance stopped by at the time to find her seizing on the
floor. She was comatose for a week and awoke with no concept of
time or place. She did not recognize me, confusing me with both
her sister and my sister. She imagined ghosts surrounding her and
heard conversations that no one else did. She was deep in a state of
delirium.
Her time in this hospital was ripe with confusion and disorder that
was not merely her own. The staff was unwilling to accommodate
her many needs and aware that she lacked a coveted insurance
carrier; they tried repeatedly to discharge her without any diagnosis
or destination. She could not remember her last name, her daughter,
whether she had eaten, and could not move her left arm or half
of her face, but the hospital insisted that she needed to leave. All
15
the while that the battle with the hospital ensued, my father had
somehow gotten wind of the situation and was sending threatening
emails and calls. When we found out that he had boarded a plane
to come confront us, my mother changed hospital rooms four
times. Somehow he kept tracing her location, probably through his
charming phone conversations with naive young nurses who still
believed that husbands rarely hurt their wives. Believing that he
had some sort of life insurance scheme set up in case my mother
died, and knowing that he meant no good and almost certainly
some sort of harm, my mother and I boarded a plane to live with
her sister in Oregon, even though she had not spoken to her sister
for nearly twenty years.
In Oregon, she suffered three additional strokes, two grand-mal
seizures, and developed an epileptic condition that put her into miniseizures every thirty-to-sixty seconds without heavy medication.
Though to this day she has no clear recollection of these six months
from her first to last stroke, she can still recall the pain and fear
she experienced in those waking seizures that confounded even the
doctors who studied her, a condition of her remaining in their care.
So there she sat: in a cold, white, sterile bed with a thin mattress
on the other side of a plexi-glass window that had a medical team
behind it taking notes on clipboards. She rested, if you can call it
that, with nodes attached to shaven parts of her head, slipping in
and out of consciousness, withering away about thirty pounds,
seizing and writhing frequently until the dosages were adjusted,
feeling pangs and pulsations in her head, knowing that she had
lost all sense of even relative control over both her mind and body.
When she was finally able to leave the hospital, she had accrued
sixteen different prescriptions for daily use. Her sleep was
interrupted by nightmares, her ability to eat impeded by a
constant state of upset stomach, her speech slurred and bordering
nonsensical, and her perception of reality severely weakened, but
without these drugs, there was even less quality-of-life than with
them. She returned to living with her sister, leaving behind the sense
of who she was and all of her possessions except two suitcases.
She remained under the resentful and neglectful care of her sister
for a few years. Her cognitive abilities improved in some ways and
declined in others. She was able to draw and paint again, something
that had given her great comfort when I was younger. She could
even recall memories from years past, but she could no longer
remember events from the day-of, often forgetting whether she had
eaten, taken medicine, or spoken to someone. She had difficulty
differentiating certain hallucinations and dreams from waking life,
but at least she was alive. Maybe she could rebuild.
16
And then she had an accident which would change her life yet
again.
She suffered a bad fall, shattering her pelvis and right shoulder.
Once more, only from the compassion of neighbors was it that my
mother ended up in the hospital, since her sister ignored her cries
for help and wails of pain, sitting inside the house believing that my
mom was simply complaining about something. It was then that
my mother knew she could not stay with her sister any longer. My
mother remained in a physical rehabilitation center for two hellish
weeks of maltreatment and misinformation from physicians who
viewed her more as a payout from state medical care than a patient
or even a person. After much fighting and many complications
with the state and rehab center, my mother moved to an assisted
care facility where nurses could attend to her and she would not be
left alone.
Why Punish these Women? Why Disable them?
The minds and bodies of the women in A Group of Noble Dames
are used, consumed, and disposed of by the men in the stories.
The women experience insanity, delirium, and severe illness. The
rhetoric of mind and body appears six times throughout the
stories, with the heaviest emphases in the following tales. First
Barbara, who is driven into convulsions and madness, having no
control over her own body. After an intensely traumatic series
of torturous abuses, she births eleven children in nine years to
someone whom the narrator makes clear that she does not love,
but has become hauntingly attached to in what psychoanalysts
may read as something resembling Stockholm Syndrome. Annetta
suffers from a form of delusion (162) in childbirth and Laura of
mental troubles (232). Anna is driven mad and enraged by her
husbands infidelity. Emmeline is struck ill of fever and delirious
(205) when her lover abandons her. Worse yet, she follows him
aboard a ship and dies of sickness. Her body is then burned and
put out to sea to prevent disease among the ships men. And
lastly, there is Penelope, who withers away in pain and hysteria
during pregnancy and at the loss of her husband: wasting away
of some mysterious disease, which seemed to be rather mental than
physical (186-187).
Was this level of extreme suffering necessary in order to convey a
need for social changeor even in order to invoke a gothic tension?
According to disability theorist Tobin Siebers, [e]stablishing the
fragility of the mind and body as the foundation of a universal
human rights has significant advantages (183), meaning that in
this case, perhaps Hardy presents such disability in part to establish
17
a continuum of experiences (183) but predominantly to argue

for the rights and human status of those persecuted (183). As
Martha Stoddard Holmes notes in her text on disability in Jane
Eyre, nineteenth-century novels can be notably ambiguous about
some conditions of the bodynot only pregnancy but also illness
and disability (161). Hence it is not only powerful that Hardy
would be so explicit about the illnesses and bodily conditions of his
heroines, but controversial that he would vividly detail the horrific
experiences specifically surrounding their sexuality, including
pregnancy. Moreover, Nicholson claims:
An illustration of the manner in which Hardy succeeds in
constructing a subversive feminine is the fact that Hardys
female characters are physically `real in a way that goes
far beyond the portrayal of female characters of most other
male Victorian novelists. in Victorian England women
were, from infancy, kept in ignorance of their own bodies
to experience puberty, defloration and sexual intercourse as
mystery but Hardys women are demystified. (29)
Thus it is with the very connection to the body that Hardy is able
to authenticate the women in his stories and attest to their need for
agency.
These women face an exaggerated type of mental and corporeal
punishment, however. And, as a removed narrator, he often
presents his opinion on their fates in an ambiguous manner:
Yet there were some severe enough to sayand these not
unjust persons in other respectsthat though unquestionably
innocent of the crime imputed to her, she had shown an
unseemly wantonnessthat the untrue suspicion [which
in this tale is a rumor that a wife committed infidelity]
might have been ordered by Providence (who often works
indirectly) as a punishment for her self-indulgence. Upon
that point I have no opinion to offer The reverend Vice
President however offered his opinion that her fate ought
to be quite clearly recognized as a chastisement. (Hardy 188)
Yet, this conclusion seems to suggest that the narrator and author
not only find this ending unsatisfactory but deeply upsetting. The
reader is meant to experience frustration, shock, horror, and grief.
Hardy also argues the necessity of representing these experiences
by having three of his male narrators reflect on the fact that affairs
political, sporting, domestic, or agricultural would exclude for a
long time all rumination on the characters of dames gone to dust
for scores of years, however beautiful and noble they may have
been in their day (235). With Hardys textual background of
writing about fallen women and providing readers with heroines
18
who were complex and dynamic, it seems that Hardy suggests that
it is not only womens experienceswomens tortured sensations
and dulled senses in traumabut truly terrifying, the fact that their
tales may fade from memory.
I have heretofore presented Hardys tales as gothic for the affect
and moments of sublimity in the texts, but these sensations are
also coupled with depictions of literal decayprimarily that of the
aristocracy and patrilineage. Hardy uses the rhetoric of decay and
antiquity in order to underscore the failings of a society that depends
on these sorts of structures (Hardy 218-219). Perhaps the gothic
framework is so effective here precisely because Victorian society
could relate to the idea of a falling aristocracy and strong critique
of the family, and therefore associate it with feelings of disgust
and horror. Additionally, the Victorian woman reader would have
had a kindred understanding, a grasp for the frightfulness of these
heroines trauma given the events in their own social milieu relating
to the treatment of women. By the same token, the contemporary
reader now can relate these sensations to our own social systems
and understanding of womens suffering.
Her Story, Their StoriesThe Connection?
My mothers story has become less and less about her regaining
the energy and vivaciousness of her youthful self. Her sassy,
lively, smart conversation has slowly been replaced by comments
of paranoia and delusion. She has anxiety frequently and mostly
about inconsequential things. Confusion has crept in and with it
came anger and frustration, further and deeper depression. She
was convinced for quite a while that she did not belong where
she ended up, that something was wrong, a grave error had been
made. She often forgets about the strokes, about her conditions,
and sometimes even my father. I do not like to remind her of these
things. That is not who she is, anyway. She was someone before
these men, and especially before my father.
Her story has become something that it shouldnt have: a story
more about the culture from which she came, the problems with
the systems and society in which she lives, and most certainly, a
critique of the type of horror that women can be subjected to in the
same way that the heroines in Hardys gothic tales were and have
since become gothic tropes. Her access to care and autonomy has in
every way been affected by her social position, intersected by her
gender and socioeconomic class, just as with the women in A Group
of Noble Dames. She is, like they are, now a tragic cautionary tale
about misguided affections that somehow led to a delimited state
of physical and cognitive disability. While women in the nineteenth
19
century fought for any recognition in the medical community,

with stories like those of Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Simone de
Beauvoir arguing that womens bodies were not places of hysteria
post-pregnancy or during menstruation, women today still fight for
proper access to and representation within the medical industrial
complex. Women readily suffer at the hands of male medical
practitioners, both in their misdiagnoses and their complete lack
of understanding for a womans standpoint or experiences. Female
illness is still connected with visions of madness of the past and
roped in with conceptualizations of womens health and needs,
especially in terms of childbirth or sexuality. Moreover, women
experience a unique sense of vulnerability with their bodies that
men do not, a fact which is often used against them to further
marginalize their positions in even contemporary patriarchal
society (i.e. our current rape culture). The conceptualization of
women has had a marked progress, but there still exist problematic
presumptions about innate female qualities and abilitiesand
responsibilities to male counterparts (rhetoric that we can often see
coming from those of a particular religious and political movement
in the U.S.). Men, as Jackson Katz has argued, face expectations of
a violent, aggressive sort of masculinity that has erupted in our
popular culture, which Susan Douglas would add is at least in part
a response to the feminist movements of recent decades.
Gender constructs, paired with the oftentimes more debilitating
limits of socioeconomic status in terms of access, resources, and
epistemology, can significantly hinder ones ability to escape an
unpleasant or life-threatening situation. Furthermore, a disabled
body in our still ablest-minded society is another body that faces
oppression, discrimination, and danger. The intersections of these
categories can indeed inspire something entirely gothicjust as it
did in the nineteenth century.
Thus, I have shared this personal narrative in order to relate the fact
that the circumstances that could spark the events in Hardys tales
are not unlike circumstances that any one of us could experience
today, and the onus is on us as both as readers and witnesses to
understand not only why we find these interesting, but why and
how they have become possible. As we move forward, we can begin
to reexamine the functioning of disability and horror, especially
given class and gender, in the contemporary narrative.
Notes
1. Proto-feminist suffragettes and rights activists accomplished
increased access to education, employment opportunities, and
the opening of the medical field to women.
20
Works Cited
Botting, Fred. Gothic. London: Routledge, 1996. Print.
Boumelha, Penny. The Patriarchy of Class: Under the Greenwood
Tree, Far from the Madding Crowd, The Woodlanders. The
Cambridge Companion to Thomas Hardy. By Dale Kramer.
Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999. 130-144. Print.
Brady, Kristin. Thomas Hardy and Matters of Gender. The
Cambridge Companion to Thomas Hardy. By Dale Kramer.
Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999. 93-111. Print.
Cixous, Hlne. French Feminist Theorists. Sexual/Textual
Politics. By Toril Moi. London: Routledge, 2002. 108-112. Print.
Davidoff, Leonore, and Catherine Hall. Family Fortunes. London:
Routledge, 1985. Print.
De Beauvoir, Simone. French Feminist Theorists. Sexual/Textual
Politics. By Toril Moi. London: Routledge, 2002. 108-112. Print.
De Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. Feminist Literary Theory
and Criticism: A Norton Reader. By Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan
Gubar. New York: W.W. Norton, 2007. 305-307. Print.
Douglas, Susan. Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message That
Feminisms Work Is Done. New York: Times, 2010. Print.
Eliot, George. Margaret Fuller and Mary Wollstonecraft. Feminist
Literary Theory and Criticism: A Norton Reader. By Sandra M.
Gilbert and Susan Gubar. New York: W.W. Norton, 2007. 80-90.
Print.
Felman, Shoshana. What Does a Woman Want?: Reading and Sexual
Difference. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1993. Print.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. Why I Wrote The Yellow
Wallpaper? Feminist Literary Theory and Criticism: A Norton
Reader. By Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar. New York: W.W.
Norton, 2007. 118-19. Print.
Hardy, Thomas. A Group of Noble Dames. 1891. Lond: Macmillan,
1972.
Hardy, Thomas. Jude the Obscure. 1891. London: Macmillan, 1974.
Print.
Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the DUrbervilles. 1895. Harlow: Longman,
1998.
Jordan, Ellen. The Womens Movement and Womens Employment in
21
Nineteenth Century Britain. London: Routledge, 1999. Print.

Katz, Jackson. The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and
How All Men Can Help. Naperville, IL: Source, 2006. Print.
Kristeva, Julia. French Feminist Theorists. Sexual/Textual Politics.
By Toril Moi. London: Routledge, 2002. 108-112. Print.
Malthus, Thomas R. An Essay on the Principle of Population. 1798.
Oxford: Oxford UP, 1993. Print.
Nicholson, Sarah. The Woman Pays: Death and the Ambivalence
of Providence in Hardys Novels. Literature and Theology 16.1
(2002): 27-39. Print.
Perkin, Joan. Women and Marriage in Nineteenth-Century England.
London: Routledge, 1989. Print.
Perkin, Joan. Victorian Women. New York: New York UP, 1995.
Print.
Showalter, Elaine. A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists
from Bront to Lessing. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1977. Print.
Siebers, Tobin. Disability Theory. Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan, 2008. Print.
Stickney Ellis, Sarah. The Daughters of England: Their Position
in Society, Character and Responsibilities. 1842. The Broadview
Anthology of British Literature: The Victorian Era. Ed. Joseph L.
Black. Peterborough: Broadview, 2006. 104-07. Print.
Stoddard Holmes, Martha. Visions of Rochester. The Madwoman
and the Blindman: Jane Eyre, Discourse, Disability. By David Bolt,
Julia Miele Rodas, and Elizabeth J. Donaldson. Columbus: Ohio
State UP, 2012. 150-170. Print.
Tosh, John. A Mans Place: Masculinity and the Middle-Class Home
in Victorian England. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999.
Print.
Wollstonecraft, Mary. Vindication of the Rights of Women.
Feminist Literary Theory and Criticism: A Norton Reader. By Sandra
M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar. New York: W.W. Norton, 2007. 4060. Print.
22
Family Food
Kayla Sparks
The author is a graduate student

at Arkansas Tech University
seeking an MA in English with
TESL Certification. My husband
is John, my dog is Huck, and our
home is a barn.
My first teaching job was not just teaching English. It was teaching
11th Grade English and AP English Language and Composition.
Fantastic, right? Sure, except I was a nontraditional teacher
returning to the field after years of bartending my way to some
degree of self-discovery. My high school lacked an AP curriculum
when I graduated, and the latest rhetorical turn had not yet taken
hold at my undergraduate alma mater during my matriculation, so
the word language as it pertained to anything other than naming
languages, English, Spanish, Greek, or Hindi, escaped me.
I spent most of that first summer, and all of my first year at Waldron
High School trying to teach myself applicable rhetoric, rhetorical
analysis, and the art of persuasion. The study of rhetoric and the
practice of rhetorical analysis rounded out my English education.
It filled a number of gaps in my holistic understanding of analysis,
and I began rhetorically analyzing commercials, t-shirts, and ball
caps. My skills progressed from there and I realized rhetoric is
ubiquitous. Soon, I found myself discussing the rhetoric of camera
angles and wardrobes, of the bright, sometimes garish, colors of
Chicano art, and, most recently, of food. Since adding rhetoric as a
filter for my experiences, its undeniable that food, prepared for an
audience, is anything other than rhetorical. As rhetoric, rhetorical
devices, and the persuasive beauty of my world revealed itself, I
understood why I was naturally gifted.
I had been unwittingly trained my entire life.
* * *
How was it? Mom asked from the dining room.
The truth? Its hard to tell. God dont say that. The truth isnt hard to tell;
its hard to know. Interpreting every minute detail of an interaction
with my mother or her mother is an exercise fit for a corporate
attorney. Every diction choice, every slip in tone, every squinting
or widening of the eye, every thing could mean something. Or
23
nothing. Really, the whole thing is exhausting.

It was good. One would think telling my mom about baking
chocolate pie with my grandma would be relaxed, but my reply
ran with unconvincing nonchalance despite being nonchalant. Crap
shell hear that and think it means something, but it doesnt. Shit, I must
be just as exhausting to talk to as they are. These interactions are the
minefields of my life.
* * *
Are you on your way? I started the crust; it really needs to sit. When
I talked to Gran on Saturday to set up the cooking lesson she said,
Just come on whenever youre ready. Bring two cups of milk.
She didnt specify a time. She didnt mention that starting with a
homemade crust meant it needed to sit before we could roll it out.
She didnt mention that the crust needed to completely cool after
it was baked, but before we poured the pie filling in. She didnt
mention that she wasnt going to church that Sunday.
So, when my Facebook Messenger alerted me on Sunday morning
at 10am, I wasnt expecting Gran. I definitely wasnt expecting Are
you on your way? Do you see what she did there? Five words.
Five. They were all she needed to imply: you guessed wrong, we
will not be starting when you get here we will be starting whenever
I want whether you are here or not; also, leave now since I know
you havent. I wanted to ask if I got bonus points for being awake,
but that would have hung a lantern on her passive-aggressive
question, and well, lantern hanging and telling Gran when she acts
like her mother are unforgiveable sins.
Speaking of Maw Maw, I suppose she cooked, but her rhetorical
legacy is in her silences rather than her food. Gran sometimes
engages in Maw Maws tactics, but in food, Gran found a readily
available, easily manipulated rhetorical situation in every dish she
created. With Gran as the speaker and the diner as the audience,
any rhetorical purpose Gran could imagine could be effected with
ingredients, cooking times, beauty, and taste. But Gran, as a master
of culinary rhetoric and an inheritor of silent subversion, could also
communicate a purpose by withholding food. Her own version of
what her family deemed The Maw Maw Treatment. See, the problem
with culinary rhetoric is that it requires a face-to-face meeting, and
those cant always be arranged, and it is in these times when Gran
wields her mothers weapon of choice. The Maw Maw Treatment is
a technique of not really speaking to someone all while speaking to
her. In a family steeped in meaning and meaningfulness, glib, short,
surface conversation is worse than actual silence. Maw Maw would
utilize this particular tactic to show disfavor, and my grandmother
would, in frustration, tell her children, You better tell me if I ever
24
act like that!

So, Mom did.
* * *
What are they all whispering and laughing about? Gran asked
Mom. The boys had all gone outside to smoke, and Grans hands
and eyes never left the dishwater as she asked.
Trying to laugh it off, Mom said, You were acting just like Maw
Maw and they wanted to know which one of us was going to tell
you.
I was NOT! Gran spun towards my mom slinging soapsuds and
water in an arc across the counter when she did. Mom had tried
to make the truth sound funny, but Gran cant laugh at herself.
Unfortunately, she also couldnt separate my mom as the messenger
from the message. The rest of the day she was acerbic with Mom,
but the boys escaped unscathed despite their instigating laughter.
To this day, Mom is adamant that Gran was lying when she told
them to tell her when she acted like her Mother.
* * *
When Gran employs the Maw Maw Treatment the duration of the
instituted punishment is apparently determined by some kind of
complicated algorithm that accounts for the severity of the inciting
incident, the length of time that elapses between face-to-face
meetings, the degree to which Gran is pleased or displeased with
any one of her other four children at the time, and any and all acts
of redemption performed by the defendant. A way of addressing a
particularly heinous exigence, the silence would often have to be
delivered over the phone. My mother would often wonder how the
hell one called someone to tell them you arent speaking to them. I
still dont have an answer, but I was always pretty confused by the
whole thing. Its easy to see why Gran would choose to use food
when time, and a strategically placed meal, would allow.
* * *
Rhetoric is a tricky thing, at least the study of it is. Every fouryear-old worth her salt can spin a sentence in her favor when
the need arises, but recognizing rhetoric when wielded by others
is exponentially more difficult. I spend a great deal of my time
with sixteen and seventeen-year-olds, and while they often think
everything is about them, they struggle to see that rhetoric could
be purposefully directed at them. Maybe the study of rhetoric, the
recognition of rhetoric, the analysis of rhetoric are all more adult
pursuits, and maybe thats why I was an adult before I noticed
25
Grans culinary rhetoric.

Growing up I was always aware of the Maw Maw Treatment, but I
thought it was the only way Gran communicated disfavor. Part of
that was because my grandmother hosted most of our family gettogethers when I was young and therefore cooked for an army so
specific dishes werent noticeable except to their intended audience.
At one such family dinner, held at Mom and Dads because of the
sheer number of people that would be attending, Gran was in
charge of dessert. She asked what Mom and Dad wanted her to
make and Mom asked for fudge. Now, before you decide you know
what fudge is, let me tell you about Grans fudge. It is a sugar fudge
that one can only get to set in just the right mixture of temperature
and humidity. It is not even remotely creamy, but rather, melts or
disintegrates in the mouth quite like sugar, except it tastes like
chocolate. Grans is the only fudge of this kind Ive ever seen, and
the whole family loves it, but Mom more than most. It should be
noted here that Mom hates peanut butter, and thus, rarely likes the
creamier fudges because they are often made with peanut butter.
Anyway, Mom asked for fudge. Gran said she would make it.
On the day, Gran showed up with creamy fudge. She opened the
container as we all looked on with salivating anticipation, and she
said sorry when we all groaned in disappointment at the creamy
fudge. Mom, more of a diplomat than shell give herself credit for,
asked if the fudge was made with marshmallow cream.
Gran looked at her and said, No, with peanut butter. She paused
a beat before exclaiming, Oh you dont like peanut butter do
you? Well, you said you wanted fudge, and I just didnt feel like
fighting the other kind today, so I made this. Mom just said it was
okay, and went back to mashing potatoes with gusto. Rhetorical
situation: Speaker=Gran, Audience=Mom, Purpose=to illustrate
that just because Mom was hosting the dinner didnt mean she
was in control. That meal was the first time I remember having an
extended family meal that wasnt at Grans house. As the family
got older, larger, and more spread out, we gradually moved most
of the dinners to Moms house, and Gran played out this rhetorical
situation again and again. There was a lull about four years ago
when the men of the family rededicated their lives to deer hunting,
because Gran was again manning the Cook Tent at Camp Wagner
and felt in control again. A couple of years ago though, Pa died and
took the Cook Tent and Grans last culinary bully pulpit with him.
But she always brings dessert.
After all, desserts are the key to any good culinary-based rhetoric.
I blame culture. Were just people who like desserts, but culture
dictates that all good causes deserve dessert for celebration. For a
26
dessert family, cultural acceptance of the dessert reward necessitates

that we step up our game and have dessert when were mad, sad,
glad, bored, stressed, busy, or because its a day that ends in y.
This provides ample opportunity to fold disdain, disappointment,
pride, or pleasure into every meringue.
* * *
We made chocolate pie. The nonchalance is still genuine, but I
manage to sound less fake the more I talk. Moms still looking at me
as I fill my glass with ice from the freezer door, so I scramble to add
to my brief description. We had fun, and the pie turned out really
well. I think I asked her too many questions about it.
Did she answer them?
Yeah, as best she could.
Maybe it was better because you are her granddaughter and not
her daughter. I dont know how many times Ive gone down there
and asked her to show me how she makes things. She always gets
pissy and says, I dont know; I just do it. I cant tell you how I do
it.
I dont know what mom is doing while she says this. Looking Mom
in the face now would be the equivalent of challenging the pack
alpha. Eyes averted and hands busy, I pour my glass of water and
sit at her table for our standing Saturday, Wedding Planning and
Doing appointment. These meetings have been going surprisingly
smoothly because we turn our regularly scheduled get-togethers it
into Us vs. The Wedding Vendors, and we both desperately need to
win. See, my wedding, like our lives, needs to reflect a certain ease
of spirit, without looking cheap, but it also has to require little effort
from us without being exorbitant. Rarely do we ask for much.
When John and I discovered that the Oklahoma Aquarium would
host our wedding, set everything up, and clean everything when we
were done, we knew it was the perfect choice for the wedding. As
the location of our first major outing as a couple, the Aquarium was
sentimental enough, unique enough, and reasonably priced enough
to work for everyone. Bonus, because of specific rules about food
they were required to abide by because of the fish, the caterer was
assigned to us. For the reception, I would be the speaker-by-proxy,
guests would be the audience, and the purposein a statement
containing an infinitive verb that would make my students proud
would be to encourage people to fellowship and engage, but to
quickly move to other activities like dancing, photo-boothing, and
drinking. Gourmet sliders, spinach dip, chicken kebobs, and a fruit
tray were the answer. My mother, in a show of just how much she
27
has moved away from Grans need to control a menu, had no desire
to cook, cater, find a caterer, or have anything to do with the food
other than writing the check. In fact, Moms financial ability to pay
people to handle the event was a purposeful gesture in liberation
from her mothers life.
* * *
I think the reason I was nervous about telling my mom about
cooking with Gran is because we have a tumultuous history.
We have tried to work together in the past, and been marginally
successful in home do-it-yourself projects, but largely unsuccessful
professionally. At one point we were both working oil and gas in
north Texas, and I was driving from the job to our hotel. We had
been together far too long, and the job was oppressively stressful.
I knew Mom had an opinion of where, and how, I should park the
car, and I picked a fight with her about it before she said anything
by stating, Im just going to park at the side of the building. There
was a parking spot available close to the front of the hotel, but it
was tight, and I was driving Moms car, so I opted not to try to park
there.
She wasnt angry. She wasnt judgmental; she just asked, Why
dont you park there?
I stopped the car and gesticulated violently while saying, Just tell
me where you would like me to park! I know you know what you
think I should do, so why dont you just go ahead and tell me, so I
dont have to try to guess! I picked up the argument in the middle.
I had decided she would be mad, so I made her mad.
Contention is part of my birthright, and Im far from the only
Wagner Woman prone to escalation.
My mother once gave me the curse. She said her mom had given
it to her, and I could give it to my daughter if I had one. We were
standing in her kitchen, in front of the sink and my mother said, I
hope you have a daughter just like you some day. Come to think
of it, it doesnt sound all that ominous. Im not sure what I did to
provoke the curse, which also detracts from the ominousness of the
statement, but I will never forget her face, or how her voice ground
through a throat tight with anger to roll out through lips that barely
moved. I will never forget feeling bad for what I had done, and
scared to death of ever having kids.
The curse sounds like it is cursing me. That I should suffer for what I
had put my mother through. And, on a level, it is. However, I think,
now, the curse is in raising a strong, smart, opinionated woman in
the culture where my mother and grandmother grew up. Yes, its
28
Scott County, but I think it is a great deal of the traditional, rural

south. Mom describes people, no, men, like that: Hes so, Scott
County. What she means is that hes a member of the patriarchy,
and he feels entitled to a wife who cooks and cleans for him, and
who follows instructions. I dont know how it happens, if they are
groomed that way, or if male dominance is in the water. I know
women who ask their husbands for permission to do things, to
buy things, to make decisions. I understand the value of marital
communication, but one party asking the other party for permission
is so far from healthy and equal communication that it is laughable.
At lunch one day, my fathers father said to me, Why arent you
at home making lunch? I dont think I would marry a woman that
wouldnt make me lunch.
I looked at him across the ubiquitously complementary chips
and salsa, and attempted to sound amused when I said, Funny, I
wouldnt marry a man that couldnt make himself lunch. Papaw
just looked at me. He was shocked that I didnt see the need to run
home to make lunch, and that I had confronted him about it. My
grandfather, at this point, had known me for thirty-one years, but I
guess he thought marriage negated every one of those years I had
lived, every degree I had earned, every independent choice I had
made before. There is some insight into my father here: the man
raised by his father, who chose my mother as his teammate, and
helped raise me, but that is a different essay.
The difficulty here is that I like to cook, and I happen to really
like sandwiches, especially sandwiches for lunch, but the two
have become too symbolic. If I cook for my husband, Im being
a good wife. Rather than risk creating some idea of myself as a
quintessential wife I almost never cook. I had to do that. I had
to move away from some weird idea that my worth was measured
in my ability to feed and care for others. My grandmother would
never have thought to separate herself from her worth as a wife and
mother, instead, she measures everyone elses worth in her cooking,
in her relationships, in her interactions. My mom did think to break
away, to be other. Unfortunately, it wasnt until after she was deeply
entrenched in her life. She went to college for a semester after high
school. She had fun, and she dreamed big. Then, she let my father
talk her into leaving college and returning home. A few years, an
almost for good sized break up, and a wedding later she became
his wife and, very quickly thereafter, my mother.
I was always aware that her sense of responsibility to my brother
and me was the glue that held their marriage together. Growing
up, my mother insisted on two things: see something of the world,
and never give up me for a man. In hindsight I get it. Mom was
29
afraid she had given up her chance to be other than a wife, but her
sense of responsibility, andtruth be toldher love for Dad kept
her from running away from it. I have two distinct memories of my
mother crying when I was rather young. Once, when she wanted
me to take a nap and I wouldnt. I looked at her and noticed black
streaks running down her face and asked why her tears were black.
She said, When you have children your tears will turn black, too.
There are multiple possible meanings here, but the four or fiveyear-old that I was thought I had given her black tears. I had done
that to her.
Another time, sitting in our living room in the early 90s, I watched
those same black tears run down my mothers face, but I was older
and knew they werent for me. She was watching the music video
to Reba McEntires Is There Life Out There. She cried while Reba
sang wistfully to the window above her kitchen sink, as she sang
the words my mother wanted to scream everyday. But, she couldnt
bring herself to verbalize that she didnt want more just for me,
she wanted more for herself. Looking back, I learned two things
watching my mom cry: 1) non-waterproof eyeliner and existential
crises are not friends, and 2) my mother was a person, a person in
a hellish liminal state between love and claustrophobia. Between
feeding her family and feeding her soul.
Most of the unhappiness in my mothers and grandmothers lives
has been a result of the constraints of their culture, of pushing
and pulling against boundaries, traditions, and glass ceilings, and
the curse is in watching another cog in the wheel grow up. The
curse is in having to encourage certain aspects in their daughters
while tempering others, because they were all too aware of what
society thought of them and how society treated them. My mom
did not really want me to suffer; she wanted me to understand
the possibilities she gave up for me, the possibilities she feels her
society took from her, and what I would be asked to give up if I
chose to live a life similar to theirs.
Fortunately, Mom got far enough away that I am less burdened by
the curse at thirty-two than I was at fifteen when she first flung it
at me. I am still deciding if my lack of desire for children is a result
of that curse, but Im certain my lack of desire to cook regularly is
a result of it.
* * *
I think Im going to make that Mexican casserole you had with
Gran last weekend. She keeps talking about how good it is, Mom
tells me.
It was pretty good. It has refried beans in it, and you know how
30
I feel about beans. But I could eat it so it must have been pretty
good. Was it good? I mean I ate it, and liked it well enough. It had beans
and tomatoes, so I definitely didnt love it.
Well, I told your brother to go get hamburger meat on his way
back from getting his hair cut. Whenever that will be. Im going to
try to make it for lunch and see how good it is. She sounds like
she doubts how good the casserole is. She keeps talking about it
desperately, almost begging someone to say, I dont really want
that or Its actually not that great. But Gran says its wonderful
and easy.
Though I dont know when your brother is ever going to get here
so we can make it.
Cort shows up eventually, though the casserole is now for dinner
rather than lunch. Moms mood has grown more sour with each
passing hour that Cort does not come home, and by the time he
arrives she. Well, who can blame her? He has spent so much time
in and out of jail, in and out of drug induced states of existence.
Cort isnt a criminal. He would never steal from anyone, hold
anyone at gunpoint, rape, or murder anyone. Nope, hes the worst
kind of family member: the kind that doesnt like any of the rest
of us more than he hates himself. Hes been out of jail for almost
two and a half years now. Hes kept the same job for more than a
year. He rarely misses work, he makes more money than me, and
his benefits are incomparable. Corts one of those always-lands-onhis-feet, come-out-smelling-like-a-rose kinds of people. Irritatingly,
sunshine often shoots straight from his ass. We know he isnt clean
and sober, but he seems to be managing it this time. Still, its hard to
blame Mom for getting all antsy when he disappears for hours. He
would disappear like this when he wasnt in control.
Despite being unreliable, Cort has always benefitted from Grans
culinary rhetoric. He gets way more dessert than the rest of us.
After he first came back from jail, while the rest of us were all trying
to figure out how accountable to hold him, how to talk to him,
how to have him in our lives again, Gran was making him Four
Layer Delights. Those are his favorite. Simple as they are, Grans
combination of those sweet layers is the perfect mix of textures.
Balanced and controlled, the Four Layer Delight is everything
Cortland wasnt. And every time he was going to be at a meal, and
sometimes just because, Gran would make one for him. In a way
I get it. He got out of jail, and each week managed not to go back.
Thats a dessert worthy achievement, but I think it was more than
that.
Cort isnt the only one of us with a problem, but some of us work
out our control issues in more socially acceptable forms. Most of us
31
smoke, or have smoked. I literally need food to function, not just

because my body needs food, but because my psychology needs
something, and I was blessed with food rather than illegal drugs.
I have an uncle who overdosed and killed himself, another who
couldnt be found while we were waiting for Pa to die, because
he and his girlfriend were robbing a house so they could buy
drugs. I also have a cousin who became involved with criminals
and drug dealers, and disappeared. Well, he disappeared for about
four months. After four months a poor unsuspecting first grader
found his skull while she waited for the school bus one morning
in October. So see, when compared to all of that, the grandson who
went to prison, served as a GED tutor, and appears to have his life
together is a cut above the rest. In some way, I think his redemption
is somehow the familys redemption, so let him eat cake.
Mom doesnt agree.
She loves Cort, sometimes she likes him, but he reminds her of her
brothers too much for her to like him all the time. She gets mad that
Cort gets more dessert than the rest of us, but I think its because
she misunderstands the specific rhetorical situation. Mom, who
watched her brothers get a similar preferential treatment growing
up, sees the purpose of the desserts as Gran encouraging Cort to feel
loved. She sees the Four Layer Delight as an ineffective rhetorical
device that inadvertently reinforces Corts bad behaviors rather
than calling him to action for new ones. Moms interpretation
validates what he has done; Grans sees the desserts as proverbial
carrots. Neither is a great approach to addiction, but its the best
weve got.
* * *
It isnt very good. I definitely dont think its the best Mexican
casserole Ive ever had. Is this what hers was like? Mom says from
the living room.
I tried the casserole. I dont think it has enough chips, and I dont
remember there being this many beans, I call down to the living
room. Mom yells back that she followed the recipe and all Gran
told her was to follow the recipe. Well, Im pretty sure Gran used
Doritos or tortilla chips instead of Fritos, I tried.
What? She said CORN CHIPS! Fritos are corn chips!
I decided not to press that tortilla chips and Doritos are also
made of corn and nomenclature could be at the heart of the
misunderstanding. After all, Im the granddaughter. My desserts
always let me know how much Gran loves me. Im predisposed not
to want Gran to have tried to sabotage Moms recipe. I dont want
32
Gran to be capable of that kind of overt sabotage.

Mom, though, with each word, sounds more and more suspicious
and accusatory. She is ready to believe that Gran would misrepresent
what she did to the original casserole recipe just so Moms attempt
would not be successful. Im not so sure. I do believe that Gran
doesnt always realize when she modifies a recipe. She does it
effortlessly and without much thought. She might have sabotaged
the casserole, but I cant believe it was intentional. Mom gives
away the entire panto me. She then declares she will never make
that recipe again and will follow the recipe Cort has for Mexican
casserole. I have no idea why he has a recipe for Mexican casserole,
but in this twilight zone of reality, my addict brother not only
keeps a job, but plans meals and cooks around where his crew
will be working and what amenities the hotel room will have. He
apparently makes Mexican casserole regularly and carries it with
him to eat during the week. Mom is certain his recipe will be better.
She needs his recipe to be better. She needs to control the menu in
her home.
* * *
Ok, now, take that beater and start beating the egg whites until
theyre stiff. Then well add in a couple of tablespoons of sugar.
Some people put cornmeal, but I dont like that so well just put
sugar. Gran is giving directions from the old bar stool that sits in
the corner by the microwave. The stool has been there almost as
long as I can remember.
Im beating the egg whites and it dawns on me that all of the old
practices of presentation in cooking were purposeful. The meringue
is a mountain of pretty white perfection, but it also keeps the pie
from drying out. Its then that I start to think about how functional
became attractive. In a way, pie meringue parallels the study of
rhetoric. Plato focused on function, discourse, and logic while the
Sophists valued the art of rhetoric. The Sophists understood that
the way a thing is said is as important as the thing that is said.
The speaker has complete control over the beauty, intelligibility,
medium of her message, and rarely is a message impaired by being
beautiful. Such is the pie meringue. Whether its Italian, Swiss, or
simply whipped cream, is the sole whim of the cook, but the choice
can affect the balance, flavor, and ultimately the reception of the
pie. Realizing that Gran is more Sophist than Plato, I look at her
over my arm holding the hand beater and say, Seriously, before
there was electricity, who the hell said, I think Ill beat the shit out
of some egg whites and see what happens?
Gran laughs, I dont know, but Im damn glad we have electricity!
33
* * *
Looking now at the remains of the Mexican casserole that my mom
really did not want to like, I realize that the rhetoric isnt just in the
food, its in the soul. When Gran wants food to be good, it is. The
opposite is also true. Mom didnt want the casserole to be good,
so it wasnt. She didnt care if we liked the casserole. Actually, she
didnt want us like it, so she wouldnt have to make it again. Gran
wants people to like her food, sometimes, so sometimes its good.
* * *
We finally got the meringue on top of a chocolate pie that isnt picture
perfect, because the filling is far from the dark brown perfection
of most chocolate pies. Why? Because Gran says, Desserts arent
supposed to be bitter. Why would I want to eat bitter pie? So she
backs the amount of cocoa off and makes a milk chocolate pie rather
than a dark chocolate pie. Because of her method, I dont think she
would use the chocolate pie as a piece of rhetoric. For a staple, she
could alter its taste to affect meaning, but I think the Chocolate Pie
transcends such pettiness. If Gran wants someone to know she is
not pleased with them, she wont make chocolate pie, because she
refuses to bastardize it. Its Holy Pie.
After we get the pie out of the oven, I stand there and look at it for a
while. Its beautiful, but Im not sure how it will taste. After all, half
of it is me. I am not sure it would set. The me variable could have
messed up everything. But I want it to be good, and Gran wants it
to be good, so it is.
* * *
The rhetoric is still in the language, its still in the tone, its still in
the body language, but the food, the food may say more about the
cook than the audience. Just like this essay says more about me
than either of the dominant women in my life. I want them to know
that I see it. That I know they want more from me. That I can hang
lanterns and still love them in the light.
After all, they each helped to make me.
I am the culmination of years of working against each other, and for
each other, of quietly fighting against the traditional role of women,
and of fighting to make their families work. Thankfully, when they
helped to make me, they both really wanted me to be good.
34
Works Cited
Reba McEntire. Is There Life Out There. For My Broken Heart.
MCA. 1991. Web.
35
Away from the Shadowy Path: Narrative

Identity in the Deepwoods
Rebecca Long
Rebecca Long is a first year PhD

Student and Government of
Ireland Postgraduate Scholar in
Trinity College Dublin studying
Irish childrens literature. She
hopes her research will promote
and advance the development of
literacy skills for children.
Paul Stewart and Chris Riddells The Edge Chronicles (1998-2010)

- and Twigs trilogy, Beyond the Deepwoods (1998), Stormchaser
(1999) and Midnight Over Sanctaphrax (2000) in particluar - are
representative of a trend in childrens literature which utilises the
idea of the journey as a key metaphor for the development of the
self. The journey as a prevalent theme is a central, vital element
(Hunt, 11) of the canon of childrens literature. As a metaphor
for the development of selfhood and identity and as a means of
articulating the passage from childhood into adulthood, themes of
travel and movement through landscapes fantastical or otherwise
become especially relevant to childrens literature and to the
relationship between space, place and character the Twig Trilogy is
founded on.
Comprising thirteen texts in total The Edge Chronicles have sold more
than ten million copies to date. Initially published in the United
Kingdom the series was later distributed in the United States,
Canada, and Australia, and has never been out of print. Yet despite
their popular success, wide appeal and canonical scope there is a
distinct lack of critical material available on The Edge Chronicles.
This article attempts to redress this balance, focusing in particular
on the Twig Trilogy.
Twigs story is one of many within The Edge Chronicles. His trilogy
is in some ways symptomatic of the series as a whole; each separate
trilogy deals with issues of urban dystopia, industrialisation,
the desire for flight and knowledge, the complexity of familial
relationships and the connection between landscape and identity.
But Twigs story is unique within the series as he becomes the focus
of his own narrative within the Edgelands and experiences a deeper
level of engagement with the landscape than any other character.
Unlike the Chronicles other protagonists Twig is often alone in the
landscape; his physical body matures in it and his selfhood is formed
36
by it. More than any other, his trilogy constitutes an exploration of

the dialectic between narrative, landscape and identity even as he
himself explores the geography of the Edgelands. Abandoned in
the depths of the Deepwoods as a small baby, Twig is adopted by
a family of woodtrolls; though he is a human boy, he is raised as a
creature of the woods. As his naming ceremony approaches, he can
no longer ignore the strangeness and isolation he feels within the
community. He confronts his mother and learns the truth. Stepping
off the forest path something no woodtroll has ever done Twig
unwittingly embarks on a journey into the uncharted woods; a
journey of exploration and self-discovery.
By examining the way in which these texts engage with the
development of identity in relation to landscape, a focus can be
brought to bear on the significance of the symbiotic relationship
between body, narrative and journey which is prevalent in
childrens literature; in Lewis Carrolls Alice in Wonderland (1865)
Alice journeys into a world that is both physical and imaginary
even as her body is changing: she literally grows up and grows
down. The idea of the body in childrens literature is incredibly
powerful. Child figures such as Twig can be empowered by the
ways in which their bodies engage with landscape. The relationship
between body and landscape resonates with potentiality; in C.S
Lewis The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952) while on a journey to
the end of the world, Eustace Scrubb is transformed into a dragon,
a transformation and a journey which prompt him to re-engage
with the idea of his selfhood. The body becomes the signifier of
change within the landscape as children grow and mature within
it. In Jenny Nimmos Magician Trilogy (1986-1989) Gwynns
connection to the powerful magic inherent in the Welsh landscape
affects his physical maturation; his mental capacities expand even
as his bodys growth is stunted. Critics such as Bachelard, Casey,
Trigg and Tuan have produced critical studies on the relationship
between the body and landscape, on the way in which environment
structures the development of identity. But the connection between
the body, the narrative journey and the landscape, and the way in
which it influences the development of identity and selfhood has
never been explored in relation to The Edge Chronicles.
Taking the Edge Chronicles as a kind of test series for a study of
the relationship between landscape and identity in childrens
literature brings a new and unique perspective to that study;
the emphasis the trilogy places on perception and subjective
experience facilitates a focus on the connection that exists between
the body, the landscape, and the narrativisation of the self. This
new approaches allows me to assert the importance of the journey
as a metaphor for exploration and for the development of selfTextual Overtures 3.1 | October 2015
37
awareness in childrens literature. This approach opens a new

series of questions; how does the act of narration affect the way
in which a character moves through the landscape of a text? How
does a characters interaction with edges, borders, and homespaces
within a landscape influence the development of that characters
identity? How does the relationship between the landscape, the
physical body and the subjective consciousness contribute to the
creation of identity? If memory is constituted by the experience of
place and time, how does this affect the act of self-narration? Using
the Edge Chronicles and Twigs trilogy specifically to engage with
these questions offers a new way to examine the role of landscape
and the development of identity in childrens literature.
Children construct their perception of the world by storying their
subjective experiences by narrating their movement through the
landscapes they encounter, both physical and emotional (Tuan 12).
The connection between phenomenology and childrens literature is
a vital one and yet it remains largely understudied and unexplored.
The Edge Chronicles are particularly and fundamentally concerned
with the relationship between body and space, and the way in which
we narrate and articulate that relationship. As a series of childrens
books in which individual texts are intertextually connected
through the re-appearance of significant themes and characters
and in which there is a coherent and well-developed consensual
reality, they are the idea test-case for a study of phenomenology
in childrens literature. This approach becomes especially relevant
when applied to the Twig Trilogy as Twigs identity is formed
through his interaction with the landscape and the narrative journey
he embarks on; his phenomenological perception of the landscape
influences the way in which he moves through it and the way in
which he stories his experiences.
The narrative, the journey, the myth, even the creation of selfhood
and identity, are part of and express a series of coherent
affirmations about the ultimate reality of things (Eliade, Eternal
Return 3). The world creates and perpetuates its own reality and
within the world the objects we interact with and the actions we
commit only acquire a value and in doing so become real when
they participate in a reality that transcends them (3); the reality
of the external world. Twig participates in the reality of his own
narrative even as he creates it through the movement of his journey.
That journey is a series of movements out from and back towards
centres; Twig makes physical and emotional connections between
edges and centres as he moves between them. If reality is conferred
through participation in the symbolism of the centre (5), then
Twigs journey towards the centre confers reality on his movement
in the landscape and the identity he creates for himself. Because we
38
are emplaced and connected to the landscape we necessarily live

in the midst of the world (Hearn 318). Our existence is bound to
the environments we find ourselves moving through; we engage
with the world because we can live no other way (318). For
Eliade reality and sacredness are connected. The transformation of
profane space into transcendent space assures the reality and the
enduringness (21) of that space and the objects we situate in it.
The centre becomes the site where concrete time is transformed
into mythical time (21); sacredness is achieved not only when
space and time are transcended but when they are perpetuated in
the reality of that transcendence. If important ritual acts involve
moving towards the sacredness of the centre and the individual is
truly himself only during these occasions then self-knowledge is
sacred in itself and growing up is the act of moving towards the
centre of ones own life. The act of remembrance becomes an act
of narration, an ordering of past events and a mapping of past
movement through the landscape, a grounding of experience in
that landscape.
The narrative of Twigs personal growth in the landscape of the
Edgelands is based upon interconnected stories about relationships
between the self and others and how they are representations of
subjectivity (McCallum 3). The meaning of a journey lies in its
presentation of the contrast between the virtues of lastingness
and the values of transience (Casey, Place 238), in the connection it
creates between the place that is left and the place that is reached.
The journey itself, engaging with the concepts of space and time
becomes a physical symbol of the maturation of the traveller
in the landscape. The Edgelands are comprised of landscape
narratives which structure reality and compel [characters] to
perform in certain ways (Tindall,48) as they move through them.
Twig is compelled to move into the landscape and that movement
essentially becomes an act of exploration. If narratives shape
the way children find a home in the world (Watkins 183) then in
the context of Twigs narrative, the idea of exploration is linked
intrinsically to the idea of a home. Imagining and remembering are
actions which take us out beyond or back behind ourselves
(Casey xvi). They take us out of the here and now of the present
into the there and then of the past and future. But we are always in
place, even while this existential displacement occurs. Imagining
and remembering become acts of narration in a landscape that links
Twigs past, his present and holds the key to his future. Le Guin
writes that narrative language is used to connect events in time
(Dancing 38). Narrative language imposes a kind of order on those
events, a temporal order which corresponds to a spatial order in
terms of directionality. Narrative language facilitates a movement
through time and space: narrative makes a journey (38).
39
Narrative allows us to comprehend time as meaningful (Le Guin

39). Stories are journeys out of the past and into the present. This
forward movement (38) out of the past mirrors Twigs movement
through the landscape of the Edgelands: the physical momentum
of his journey influences the progression of his narrative. Twigs
ability to create his own narrative as he moves through the
landscape is connected to the way in which he sets about creating
his own identity in the midst of that landscape: he discovers himself
through the language of story and through his interaction with the
geographical space of the Edgelands. Peter Hollindale writes of
how children construct childhood as they go along (68) as they
move through their lives as they journey through their childhood
they narrate and story their experiences. If childhood is a stage
en route to being something else (68) then growing up is itself a
journey and the progression into adulthood becomes all the more
meaningful as part of a movement into life. We story our movement
through the landscape of our childhood, just as Twig does as he
moves through the Edgelands. The creation of Twigs identity is
intimately connected to his physical negotiation of the landscape
which is in turn influenced by the nature of his narrative journey.
His story narrates his movement; narrative links events and in
doing so becomes a temporal journey. Likewise, because journeys
link places and can be conceived of as spatial narratives then
stories traverse and organize places (de Certeau, 115), mapping
the landscape and providing a structure through which it can be
interpreted. A story like Twigs transforms places into spaces or
spaces into places (118); his progression through the landscape
narrates the development of his identity. Journeys make stories
out of places. For Casey, the journey becomes a way of translating
place itself into temporal terms (Casey 273); journeys narrativize
the landscape. We reach reality through our grounding in place;
place therefore connects us to the reality of landscape and to the
reality of our own existence within it. Placing and being placed
(48) involve connecting; not only to the landscape but to our
perception of ourselves in that landscape. The journey becomes the
ultimate expression of the bodys relationship with the landscape
even as it unfolds as a narration of the universal quest for selfhood.
In that context, Twigs journey functions as a touchstone moment
in the canon of childrens literature; his movement through the
Deepwoods and into a greater understanding of his own identity
becomes a template for the consideration of narrative journeys in
childrens fantasy texts.
In The Edge Chronicles, the paths through the forest not only link
communities and villages and indeed different areas of the
Deepwoods; they link time as well. Past, present, and future
are connected through movement along these paths Twigs
40
journeys are an example of this. His childhood is thus connected

to his passage into adulthood by the path which unites them both.
Narratives become paths back into the past and forward into the
future. Language and narrative allow Twig to recount and structure
the past, not only to himself but to others (Mace 268). It is only
through language and narrative that Twig can gain access to his own
personal history. Within that history, that personal story, meaning
is only potential until it is actualized [by] dynamic involvement
(Appelyard 5). Twigs dynamic involvement in his own narrative
takes the form of his journey into the Deepwoods and beyond: his
journey therefore creates meaning in his narrative. He is moving
towards the edge of the Deepwoods, the boundary between his old
life and his new destiny.
To a certain extent, the Deepwoods is a narrated space (Bradford
et al. 129) in that the communities which call it home attempt to
understand and order it by telling stories about it. But it is perhaps
more accurate to say that the Deepwoods compromises narrated
spaces and that a figure like Twig, journeying between those spaces
creates an overarching story or even a metanarrative within the
forest itself, connecting space, place, and story through movement.
Twigs journey is embedded in place: he is journeying through the
Deepwoods and beyond. Journeys are place-bound and placespecific, so Twigs movement through the landscape becomes a
story of place (Casey 273-274). His movement becomes a form
of narration. By putting [his] experiences into words (Meek,
Warlow, and Barton 41), Twig can impose a certain kind of order on
them. He begins to represent the world to himself as he experiences
and perceives it, creating his own narrative reality. If stories create
meaning by recreating scenarios or experience and linking those
experiences, then narrative is fundamentally linked to movement
in the landscape because Twigs experiences are predicated on that
movement.
Twigs story begins in the Deepwoods, branches out beyond it and
comes full circle when he returns to the forest and the woodtroll
home he initially left behind. Journeys connect different points in
the Edgelands as characters create narratives by moving between
points and centres in the landscape. Twigs journey is ultimately
circular he leaves the Deepwoods as a child only to eventually
return to them as a young adult so the story which narrates it
reflects that circularity and in doing so reveals a certain open
space in [its] centre (Williams, 491). This open space is the void out
of which Twigs identity develops. The meaning of his narrative
journey resides in that centre: the relationships he engages in and
the impact they have on his identity within the landscape resonate
outward from that centre. In Beyond the Deepwoods, the Snatchwood
41
cabin is Twigs reality, the home space he has known since he was
an infant. It is significant then that this is the space within which
Twig learns the truth about his own identity. His adoptive mother
Spelda says, I want to tell you the story of how you got your name
(Stewart and Riddell, Deepwoods 13). This is the story of Twigs
origins, of the development of his identity and his assimilation
however problematic into the woodtroll community. More than
a story, it is the narrative which will frame his entire existence and
the manner in which he interacts with the Deepwoods itself and the
characters he encounters within it.
For the duration of Twigs childhood, Spelda has been telling her
version of his story. Every time she has told Twig her version of
the story she has been reconstituting an image of him her image
of him drawing him into what is, for all intents and purposes, a
fictional world (Murphy 47) which attempts to fulfil her own wish
for a normal existence for him. Her censored re-telling of Twigs
story becomes an attempt and perhaps a subconscious one to
normalize his presence in the woodtroll community. There is a gap
then, between what is and what [her] language says (Meek et
al. 8). The reality-creating potential (Knowles and Malmjaer, ix)
of her language does exactly that: it creates the reality in which
Twig functions. He is fundamentally constituted bylanguage
(Lesnik-Oberstein 2), her language, and the story she creates with
it. Twig is drawn back inside that story despite himself (Stewart
and Riddell 16) and despite the fact that he knows it by heart. Spelda
pauses before she begins to talk about the silence he maintained as
a child and he himself vocalizes this articulation of the fracture or
break in the continuity of his identity as he whispers But... (16):
the moment his narrative branches off from the narratives of every
other woodtroll child and the difference that marks him out from
the rest of the community is narrativized.
It is this gap in his identity, the void he skirts throughout the text
that he is ultimately drawn to in his search for that true identity.
Every time this narrative fracture is retold, rearticulated, Twig
shudder[s] and hold[s] his breath (16) as though he is experiencing
some kind of trauma. He shivers wordlessly as his mother
articulates the fear she felt for him as though, even now, his first
impulse is not to speak but to use his body to express his emotions.
He tugs at his twist of hair a visual signifier of the artificial nature
of his constructed woodtroll identity as though he does not know
how to express himself, chaffing at the restraints of his own body.
Here, this narrative break or gap is predicated on the fact that as
an infant, Twig would not speak.not a single word (16). Twig
holds his breath, his mother sighs: almost-silences and pauses such
as these constitute telling gaps in narratives throughout the texts,
42
gaps which produce meaning.

Yet once Twig discovers his voice and his ability and his right
to speak he hardly stops. Speaking is linked expressly to identity
and to the beginning of identity development. Woodtroll children
are not named until they speak: they are not properly initiated
into their own community until they have articulated their first
words, their first thoughts. Twigs silence ironically speaks towards
a resistance of the identity that he must take upon himself. Until
he speaks that identity is formless, yet full of potential. Once he
speaks, it becomes predicated on the differences which divide
him from the community. Just as myth is essentially about the
unknown and looks into the heart of a great silence (Armstrong
4), Twigs narrative initially looks into the heart of his own silence.
That silence endures as the defining aspect of his infancy. It is only
when he leaves the village and strikes out into the Deepwoods
that Twig begins speaking aloud; to literally narrate his own story
and to constitute his own sets of meaning in language (4): If
conversation becomes, the site on which the self and other meet,
negotiate and embrace (Stephens 247), then Twigs habit of talking
to himself in the woods can be interpreted as a subconscious
attempt to actually address himself, to engage in a dialogue with
the conflicting aspects of his own selfhood. That dialogue exposes
the tension between experience, memory, and expectation in which
all these elements are unstable (Hollindale 71). If we construct
our selfhood through memory then our identity is connected
to our ability to stabilise or ground our memories of ourselves in
time and place: by storying our lives we attempt to consolidate
our sense of personal continuity in our own narratives (69). He
has heard the story of his naming so often he [is] no longer sure
what he [can] remember and what he [has] been told (Stewart and
Riddell, 108). The centrality of memory to identity is already being
established; Twig may not have had the verbal skills or language to
articulate himself as an infant but his memories function as visual
and emotional images. But these memories have been influenced
and perhaps compromised by Speldas narrative. Memory, gaps in
memory and gaps in knowledge lie at the heart of Twigs complex
identity. That identity then is initially constructed around a gap, a
void, a lack. Gaps separate spatially, temporally and materially
(Malpas 94): they signal a discontinuity, not only in the landscape
but in the narrative of that landscape and the narrative of Twigs
journey within it.
Later in the series, in Midnight Over Sanctaphrax, Twigs own
memory will experience a similar kind of aporia. His ordeal in and
his return out of open sky compromise not only his memory but
his sense of self and his control over his own narrative. In seeking
43
to fill the gaps in his knowledge he turns to the Riverrise myth:

his attempts to recover his memory mirror the myths account of
the origins of the Edgelands themselves. As Twig recites the words
of the myth, his eyes glaze over as though he is entering a kind
of reverie of memory or imagination: this story of the origins of
the Edge itself is also associated with Twigs own origins. It brings
him back to his childhood. He remembers how Spelda would tell
him the story over and over again because of all the many tales
she told (Stewart and Riddell, Sanctaphrax 108) the myth was his
favorite. He knows the story by heart (108) just as he once thought
he knew his own story. Whenever Twig tugs at the scarf around his
neck, the action speaks to an uneasiness within him: to a tension
between his sense of self and the gaps in his knowledge. Here he
contemplates the idea of truths being buried in the old tales (108).
For Twig, stories have proved to be sites of revelation, of personal
insight and meaning. He has seen many strange things (108) in
the Deepwoods and in the Twilight woods, therefore why should
the myth of Riverrise not contain the truth he eventually found
in his own narrative? He stares into the empty sky beyond the
Edge (108) a sky that is empty of meaning precisely because he
has forgotten the narrative of what occurred out there. He knows
there is something [he] must remember (108) and that the gap
in the narrative of his own memory is potentially dangerous. By
contemplating the myth of Riverrise, Twig once again experiences
the urge to story his own experiences, to fill in the gaps his amnesia
has created. The myth of Riverrise is in fact an account of the retreat
and return of the Mother Storm and of the cycle of creation and
destruction which occurs each time. Told in every corner of the
Edge (108) and just like the story of the gloamglozer from the
Deepwoods, the myth unites communities across the Edgelands:
it is an attempt to make sense of things (108) through narrative.
Within the context of Twigs own story the myth becomes a narrative
template, one which illustrates the importance of memory and
narrative structure to identity. The Riverrise myth prompts Twig
to attempt to regain the memory he has lost, even as Speldas story
prompted him to question his own identity.
Back inside Speldas narrative, the sun is rising as she sets out on
her quest to name Twig. The path she takes is well-worn (Stewart
and Riddell, Deepwoods 19) and familiar: it leads to the anchor
tree which, crucially, stands as the point from which woodtrolls
venture out into the greater Deepwoods, the beginning of almost
every narrative journey into the forest. It plays a dual role in the
landscape, functioning as both the point of departure and the
point of return. The woodtrolls lives and customs are peppered
with references to ships and sailing, to open sky. These metaphors
become a method of navigation for them within the Deepwoods, a
44
way to tether themselves to the landscape just as Spelda literally

tethers herself to the tree while simultaneously allowing for the
possibility of release into an afterlife. Speldas quest is dangerous
not only because of the unseen perils (19) of the Deepwoods
but because of the possibility that the rope which represents not
only her journey along the narrative of the path but also stands for
memory, custom and tradition at work within the landscape might
break. It is her lifeline, her umbilical connection to the community
she has ventured out from. The rope is a fundamental necessity for
her journey: for woodtrolls, being lost in the landscape is their
deepest terror (19). They treat the Deepwoods as an inherently
hostile space which in turn inculcates a great respect within the
community for the boundaries they create between themselves and
the woods. By following the paths they ensure that their stories
continue without breaks, without gaps. Even in death they do
not cross boundaries or leave the path: they are sent upwards by
the buoyant wood of the native trees, transcending boundaries
and paths alike, without actually violating them. Using the knife,
Spelda hacks off a piece of the nearest tree. This is how her sons
name will be revealed (20). In the naming ritual the Deepwoods
should act as a site of revelation. But in this narrative, the landscape
resists Speldas efforts to engage it in the ritual: it refuses to name
her son and the piece of wood does nothing but crackle and hiss
(20) when she burns it in the ritual fire.
And yet, I have a name, (21) Twig states, breaking into the story
as though asserting the legitimacy of his own identity, even as he
is being told about the unorthodoxy of his naming. In order to be
named, Twig hands over his comfort cloth to Taghair the oakelf
and village elder: this cloth which represents his only connection
to his life before he was found in the Deepwoods. This symbolic
exchange of cloth for name is the moment in the text where the
infant Twig unwittingly surrenders the lost possibilities of his brief
former life and enters into the identity which will be his until he
himself strikes out from the village and into the woods, just as
Spelda did to name him. Taghair tells Twig that youre part of the
Deepwoods, silent one. The naming ritual has not worked but you
are a part of the Deepwoods (24). His repetition here is forceful and
insistent: though the Deepwoods have refused to give up his name,
if anything this strengthens their connection to Twig. Taghairs eyes
glaze over as he prepares to reveal Twigs name as though he is an
oracle channelling the sentience of the Deepwoods. The pause he
takes another significant gap - becomes an opportunity not only
for the boy to speak for the first time, but to name himself. In the
midst of Speldas story, Twig exclaims his own name, unable to
keep silent any longer (24) as though his silence while listening
to his own story has been a recapitulation of the original silence
45
he maintained and which must now be broken again as he names

himself once more. His own name was the first word he ever
spoke (24) and so ultimately it is not the Deepwoods which names
Twig but Twig himself. Now it becomes clear that hearing the
end of the tale will prove essential to the continuing formation of
Twigs identity. The bedtime story that he knew so well has now
become part of his new reality. If we force the past to tell the story
we want it to tell, to mean what we want it to mean, it loses its
reality (Le Guin, Earthsea xiii). In this case, the reality that is lost is
Twigs identity which he arguably only begins to accept when the
narrative of his past has been brought full circle: when he has been
reunited with his real father and an aspect of his journey is brought
to a conclusion, a journey which was motivated precisely by the
gaps in that narrative.
When he becomes lost in the landscape, Twig realises and states
that Ive also lost myself (Stewart and Riddell, Deepwoods 126). So
when Twig talks to himself, it is often part of an effort to understand
what is happening to him, to articulate his feelings or responses to
the environment he finds himself in: he stories the choices he must
make in the landscape. He speaks aloud and creates a narrative in
order to progress along his journey. In the narrative he creates to
understand his experiences, he links the moment he strayed from
the path to the current danger he finds himself in: not only has he
strayed from the path but now he has even managed to stray from
the forest (126). In his own mind, his inability to orient himself
in the landscape has direct consequences for his dream of being a
sky pirate. If he cannot negotiate the physical environment of the
Deepwoods, how will he ever make it beyond them - how will he
ever reach the sky? His dream of sky piracy is, on many levels, a
manifestation of his desire for independence from and out of the
landscape which has governed the manner in which he has been
made to live his life.
But in many ways, it is the caterbird who is the dominating
author of Twigs narrative within the text and not Twig himself.
It is the caterbird who first invokes the idea of destiny and who
connects Twigs destiny to his journey beyond the Deepwoods.
The birds stories prompt journeys into the landscape. The
caterbirds form a society of stories which span and interconnect
the environments of the Edgelands: what one knowsall know
(25). By sharing their dreams, they also share stories and in this
way they control - to a certain extent - how travellers engage with
the landscape which provides the setting for those stories. They
create a community of memory (Irwin-Zarezka 47): their shared
experiences and the reality of [their] past (158) binds them
together. Narration and knowledge are intimately connected: the
46
sharing of narratives becomes an act of knowing (Casey 277).

Narration creates, maintains and transforms our relationships
(Meek et al. 12). We arrive at knowledge by telling, untelling,
believing and disbelieving stories pasts, futures and identities
(13). The manner in which the birds share their memories, stories
and experiences through dream places an intense significance
on memory itself and its influence on identity and development.
History and narrative themselves become fluid concepts in the
context of the birds shared-time: they fuse history and narrative
together into stories which map the landscape. We rely on stories
told by others to understand events in times or places outside our
own experience (Le Guin, Earthsea xvi): but for caterbirds, nothing
is beyond their own personal experience. History, narrative, and
imagination are part of a complex engagement with the landscape.
Narration as a recurrent act of symbolic communication (Fry 105)
becomes an extremely powerful concept within the series: stories
facilitate communication between characters and are transferred
and shared through that communication. Relationships are
strengthened through these acts of communication, these shared
narratives. And if these communications are symbolic, based on
symbols that connect narratives within the landscape then home
and identity become powerful symbols within the text itself,
uniting diverse aspects of the landscape. The acts of sharing stories
and communicating narratives become acts of ritual.
Twig does not consolidate his identity until his confrontation with
the gloamglozer on the brink of the Edgelands where his battle
for that identity becomes a recapitulation of his narrative journey
through the landscape. The moment Twig leaves the path creates
a break in that projected narrative and alters the course of his
own journey. But because he has strayed from the path he has left
himself vulnerable to attack from the gloamglozer, the wildest
of all the wild creatures (Stewart and Riddell, Deepwoods 262) in
the Deepwoods. The woodtrolls tell stories about the gloamglozer
in an effort to understand the threat it poses: Twigs childhood is
structured by those stories. But the creatures power is augmented
by the fact that it too can tell stories, by lying it can influence the
way in which characters navigate the landscape and manipulate
the paths they take through it. Naming the gloamglozer does not
tame or neutralize it: naming it invokes the creature and by drawing
attention to it untameability, lends it power in the wild landscape,
which mirrors its own wild condition. When the creatures voice
comes out of the sulphurous mist Twig recognizes it. It is a real voice
and more than that, it [is] a familiar voice (262). The gloamglozer
has been a character in the narrative Twig has been creating for
himself in the landscape: the creature is a story in the Deepwoods, a
myth told to keep children in check but here, in the midst of Twigs
47
narrative, it is more than a story, it is a story come to life, embodied,

and emplaced in the landscape that lends it its power. In the misty
Edgelands, Twig cannot see the creature at first: he can barely
see his hand in front of his face (263). Crucially, at this moment
of such intense existential crisis, he is no longer grounded in the
environment he cannot even see or orient his own body in it. In the
figure of the gloamglozer, the landscape is embodied and sentient:
through the creature the landscape listens to and engages with the
narrative journeys which map it. Through the creatures actions, the
landscape itself responds to those journeys. It is Twigs marginality
that has made him so vulnerable to the creatures influence in the
woods: as a story which is shared by every community in the forest,
the creature is omnipresent, even omnipotent.
For the gloamglozer, that uniqueness which makes Twig so visible
in the landscape is connected to the overwhelming longing
[the] emptiness inside [him] (266) which he yearns to fill. His call
from the midst of the Deepwoods was motivated by this longing;
this emptiness in him which not only affects his identity but
echoes within the larger emptiness of the void he has been moving
towards. The creature tells him explicitly, thats why you left
the path, (266) to achieve that sense of belonging, to fill up the
void inside him. He went into the Deepwoods to understand. Twig
agrees dreamily (266) as though he is being lulled into a false
sense of that belonging as he listens to the creatures story. As it
continues, it adapts elements of the caterbirds narrative to suit its
own purposes: it tells him that the Deepwoods are not for him, that
the fear of everyone and everything outside (266) which defines
the woodtroll community he has left does not define him. In his
difference, the gloamglozer tells him that they are similar. They
are the same. They are adventurers, travellers, seekers, listeners.
Its voice becomes hushed and intimate (266) recalling Speldas
voice as she told Twig the ending of his story.
Its power over Twig the boy shudders as the creature exerts more
and more of that power over him takes its strength from what it
knows about him, from what it has observed. Transforming itself
into a woodtroll, complete with knotted hair and a button nose it
tells Twig that he could go home. He could fit in and have what
he wanted all along (270). In presenting him with the image of a
woodtroll, the creature is actually presenting Twig with an image of
himself: with his knotted hair and woodtroll clothes even his own
appearance becomes a signifier of his failure to fit in, to belong.
The gloamglozer is telling him that to fit in, to belong, he must
change. He must appear as others want to see you (271); he must
abandon the identity he has been struggling to find in the woods.
If he takes this last step, he can be always one step ahead (271)
48
in the narratives he will control. And still Twig does not respond
verbally. He swallows, standing at the very edge of the cliff
(271) as though words cannot express the emotional conflict he
is experiencing. He holds back, precisely because of the strength
and depth of his experiences in the Deepwoods: he remembers
the emotional connection he experienced with the banderbear and
the slaughterers. And crucially, on the brink of the landscape and
of his own mortality, he remembers that they saved his life. His
eyes well up with tears: his body cannot contain the emotion he
is experiencing. In that moment he realizes that he will never be
able to be what he is not: instead, he would become what they all
[fear] the most (272). He would become the embodiment within
the landscape of the stories they tell in order to try and understand
it. Instead of living his own narrative, he would be part of the
communal narrative of the Deepwoods: and yet never part of that
community. What the gloamglozer is offering him is not a chance
to belong: it is an irreversible confirmation of the marginality he
has experienced all his life, a chance to be alone in the landscape
forever. Significantly, he realizes that he would never again be able
to return (272) that he would become completely cut off from the
world of his childhood.
But in calling him beyond the Deepwoods the gloamglozer itself
invokes the destiny Twig has been searching for. Even as he steps
over the edge, the boy holds out his hand. His movement over the
edge is not an attempt to annihilate himself but rather a desperate
attempt to connect with a marginal figure like him: in falling for
the creatures story, its victims fall over the edge as well. There is
a moment of connection as the gloamglozer grasps Twigs wrist
but that contact is an exertion of the creatures power over the
boy: as he hangs suspended over the edge, it screeches at Twig,
you are nothing. NOTHING!...Do you hear me? (274). Even
in this moment of intense and mortal danger, Twig searches for
meaning in the creatures actions: he wants to know why. The beast
answers with an affirmation of its own nature: it is a gloamglozer,
a deceiver, a trickster, a cheat and a fraud (274). It seeks out
those who have entered proscribed spaces in the Deepwoods and
in their vulnerability lures them to the edge. The Deepwoods then
is definitively established as a space which is hostile to fragile
identities.
Twig is a child in the wild landscape of the Deepwoods. His
childhood is defined by its borders; by the limits those borders
exert on it, both temporal and physical. Stewart presents childhood
as a natural state of existence and as a way of being in the landscape
which is conducive to encountering and crossing boundaries,
to creating its own boundaries. So Twig is not only continually
49
encountering boundaries; he is continually crossing them. Like

all landscapes, the Edgelands are made up of clearly demarcated
spaces whose boundaries are charged with energy and meaning:
crossing or reinforcing them becomes an act of engagement with
the landscape. This is how Twig moves through the environments
he encounters, by engaging with them. In doing so, he begins to
form his own identity which is distinct from the family-based
identity imparted by the homespace. The development of that
identity across the series is not only tied to the journeys and quests
he undertakes; it is structured by all of the movements he makes
within the landscape of the Edgelands. He leaves, he travels, he
returns. Although he has created an identity for himself based upon
his fundamental need to survive on his own in the Deepwoods,
this identity is challenged as he seeks to maintain it in the new
environments he encounters beyond the forest and when he finally
returns to the original homespace, he is forced to confront, adapt
and transcend that identity.
Twig is arguably overwhelmed by the Deepwoods environment:
his narrative, both in terms of his journey and his habit of literally
narrating what is happening to him is an attempt to draw a
boundary between himself and what is outside himself (Meek
et al. 8), between his own self and the intimidating presence of the
Deepwoods, a place in which solitude is a dangerous and vulnerable
state of being. He becomes a manifestation of loneliness (Kimball
559) in the landscape. The trauma of his departure from the path
and from his village home is augmented by the often violent
trauma of survival in the forest. Lost, both in the woods and in
terms of his own identity, his body loses its fundamental centrality
in place (Trigg xxiv) as it is constantly assaulted by its engagement
with the landscape. His embodied self (xxiv) is shaken to its
core. The wildness of the Deepwoods has a de-familiarizing effect
on those who enter it. Being lost can also be an opportunity for
growth; Twig has to find himself before he can truly find his way.
The deepness of the woods themselves promote this sense of being
lost, of being overwhelmed, of being out of depth in the midst of
the landscape; this is why sky-pirating is associated throughout the
trilogy with clear sight and perspective, with literally being above
the landscape. Twig must ease himself into his connection with
the forest environment by slipping in and out of the various home
spaces he encounters before he can exert an element of control in
his relationship with the woods. He enters the forest in a transitory
state, physically and emotionally. The forest is not a static place: it
too is constantly changing. The resonance between the changing
state of the individual and the changing state of the landscape that
individual finds himself in creates a unique space imbued with
potentiality. In this space of heightened changing energy, Twig
50
forges a new identity for himself even as he forges a new way

through the woods. Eventually, place comes to endure through
the lived-body (193). Twig gradually learns how to survive in the
Deepwoods. His maturing body becomes a signifier of the vitality
of the Deepwoods: even as it sustains him, it is sustained by him.
Centres in the Edgelands do not promote stasis or even permanence:
communities exist in dialectic with the danger of the wilderness, of
the untamed and unexplored landscape. Communities live on the
edges of their own borders with wild spaces. Similarly, centres do
not stabilize Twigs identity; once he gains them, he is constantly
moving away or out from them. He discovers his own centre before
he journeys to the centre of the various diverse environments he
encounters though he initially moves outwards from his home
in the Deepwoods, he does not journey to the centre of the forest
until he returns in the final text of the series. In fact, Twig moves
outwards and away from every homely space or centre he finds in
the Deepwoods. He does not take up residence in Sanctaphrax or
Undertown and even though Riverrise marks the focal point of his
ultimate quest and is thus a point that offers incredible rejuvenating
possibilities he does not stay there either. He is always on the move:
he becomes a kind of nomad within the landscape. He does not
dwell in the centres he finds or is given access to.
Twig is always drawn towards edges. He is the one who goes
beyond and comes back. He goes over the edge, over the boundary
of landscape and into the emptiness it borders on and he returns.
In the context of his experience in it and his interaction with it,
the emptiness beyond the Edge becomes the space in which he
confirms the functionality of his own identity. The emptiness or the
void becomes a hugely significant space, charged with potentiality
and energy. He engages with that emptiness by descending into it,
by falling. Falling is an abandonment of the self, an uncontrolled
movement through the landscape or as in this case, out of it. As
he falls away from the Edge and into seeming nothingness, Twig
experiences what Campbell describes as a realisation transcending
all experiences of formof the ineluctable void (190). It is in this
experience of and in the void that he is reborn, that his identity is
reformed. If being is everywhere full [and] nonbeing is nowhere
at all(Casey x) then Twig experiences a moment of nonbeing
when he steps off the earth and falls through the air. If being
guarantees place (x) then the relationship between existence and
the landscape it occurs in is not only complex but fundamental and
undeniable. Existence then necessarily involves an engagement
with the landscape and with Twigs own destiny.
The only map of the Edgelands Twig ever sees is the landscape
itself from the perspective of endless open sky (Stewart and
51
Riddell 140). He experiences this sensation physically, through his

body, and its interaction with the Stormchaser; riding the sky ship
is the ultimate way to experience the landscape of the Edgelands.
In the Deepwoods it was his childhood dream to rise up over the
forest canopy, to reach the sky, as if his body had known that this
was where he belonged (140). If he belongs in the sky then Twig
experiences a sense of harmony between mind and body, body and
soul only when he is in the sky. Flight is a source of meaning within
the text: flight facilitates revelation, narration, communication and
moments of harmony and balance. Flight allows Twig to see the
landscape of the Edgelands from above; to gain perspective. It is
a method of travel but it is also an existential movement towards
an exploration of the self; flight transcends the ultimate edge. As
a sky pirate, Twig moves through open sky, the unknown space
associated in the culture of his childhood society with death, with
spiritual release. In flight he engages with the limits of existence in
the Edgelands even as his body expresses his identity through its
actions on the various skyships he crews.
The development of Twigs identity is central to the series. The fact
that this development takes place within and through his interaction
with the landscape of the Edgelands means that landscape in
the series is more than just a site where the action occurs; it is a
fundamental, dynamic force in the creation of Twigs identity. By
negotiating that landscape through breaks, gaps and borders, Twig
finds himself exploring the void at the centre of his own identity
and in doing so begins to re-shape it. What becomes crucial during
these explorations is not only how Twig deals with the boundaries
he comes to but how he perceives those boundaries and the
actions they seem to demand from him; surviving in a wild space
promotes a kind of externalization of the self, an engagement with
the landscape that involves an expansion of awareness. Through
exploration and movement across the Edgelands and back, Twig
experiences equilibrium and transcendence within the landscape.
Moments of revelation or hierophany are intimately connected
to the development of his identity and so landscape becomes a
contributing force in the creation, maintenance and consolidation of
his selfhood. Identity is revealed and confirmed through interaction
with the landscape, certain environments become repositories of
identity, of emotional connection. Landscape is vital: it supports
life.
In order to engage with the questions regarding selfhood, body,
and narrative which make up the very core of The Edge Chronicles
it becomes necessary to do what Twig does; to interact with the
landscape. By privileging the meaning of his journey across, above
and beyond the Edgelands, a greater and deeper understanding
52
of the phenomenological nature of his connection with the

environments he finds himself is reached. The Edgelands become a
carrier of meaning with the texts and it is only by engaging with this
environment and its function in Twigs narrative that an insight into
its contribution to his maturation in the landscape can be achieved;
an examination of Twigs developing identity necessarily leads to
an exploration of the phenomenological nature of his journey.
As this article has shown, the journey motif is a valuable and
enlightening way of engaging with the concept of landscape in
childrens literature as a whole. Movement through the landscape
facilitates exploration, not only of the physical, the geographical
but of the self. Narrative journeys allow figures in the landscape
to interact with that landscape even as they articulate or story
their identities. The self, the narrative journey, and the landscape
are intimately connected and that connection resonates with
potentiality, with creative energy. Utilizing the energy of this
symbiotic relationship and applying it to the way in which
landscape functions in childrens literature as a whole deepens our
engagement with the developmental possibilities of narrative and
identity. Examining the phenomenological nature of journeys in
childrens literature and the way in which landscape influences the
development of identity imbues our engagement with texts with
the dynamism of movement through that landscape. This article
demonstrates how the journey is both a narrative motif which
structures texts and a critical approach: a metaphor for the ways in
which we access and engage with a storied landscape. Following
a path or embarking on a journey through the landscape of a text
means engaging and interacting with that text on a fundamental
and deeply meaningful level. We journey out of childhood and
into adulthood; identity develops as that journey progresses, as we
engage with the world around us, with the landscape of our lives.
Examining childrens literature in terms of the journeys which take
place within it allows us to interrogate the way in which landscape
influences the narration of the self and the development of identity.
This is because landscape and identity are connected. The narrative
journey facilitates that connection by allowing the body and the
self to engage with the landscape, to cultivate an organic harmony
between the physical, and the emotional which allows personal
identity to develop. By treating our engagement with texts
canonical childrens literature as a journey, as a movement through
the landscape of the text towards a goal or meaning, we gain access
to the relationship between narrative, landscape, and identity.
53
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Bradford, Kerry Mallan, John Stephens & Robyn McCallum.
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Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. London:
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Casey, Edward S. Getting Back into Place: Towards a Renewed
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55

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Textual Overtures

A Journal Encompassing the Teaching, Interpretation, and

Edie-Marie Roper, Editor

Washington State University

About Textual Overtures

Design, layout, and cover illustration by Jennifer Lin OBrien.

1 Review of Beyond Classical Narration: Transmedial and

32 Away from the Shadowy Path: Narrative Identity in the

Review of Beyond Classical Narration:

In their edited collection, Beyond Classical Narration, scholars Jan

combination of media, and/or the overarching medium or media

Textual Overtures 3.1 | October 2015

Textual Overtures 3.1 | October 2015

[C]ompletely worn out in mind and body:

Lauren Bailey is an English

Eighteenth through mid-nineteenth century gothic stories featured

about men as it is about women. Thus, I hope to facilitate a critical

for women to fulfill the role of angels in the house or background

existence) of landed gentry (Boumelha). His commentary on class

Textual Overtures 3.1 | October 2015

Textual Overtures 3.1 | October 2015

a continuum of experiences (183) but predominantly to argue

century fought for any recognition in the medical community,

Nineteenth Century Britain. London: Routledge, 1999. Print.

Textual Overtures 3.1 | October 2015

The author is a graduate student

nothing. Really, the whole thing is exhausting.

act like that!

Grans culinary rhetoric.

dessert family, cultural acceptance of the dessert reward necessitates

Scott County, but I think it is a great deal of the traditional, rural

smoke, or have smoked. I literally need food to function, not just

Gran to be capable of that kind of overt sabotage.

Textual Overtures 3.1 | October 2015

Textual Overtures 3.1 | October 2015

Textual Overtures 3.1 | October 2015

Away from the Shadowy Path: Narrative

Rebecca Long is a first year PhD

Paul Stewart and Chris Riddells The Edge Chronicles (1998-2010)

by it. More than any other, his trilogy constitutes an exploration of

awareness in childrens literature. This approach opens a new

are emplaced and connected to the landscape we necessarily live

Narrative allows us to comprehend time as meaningful (Le Guin

journeys are an example of this. His childhood is thus connected

gaps which produce meaning.

to fill the gaps in his knowledge he turns to the Riverrise myth:

way to tether themselves to the landscape just as Spelda literally

he maintained and which must now be broken again as he names

sharing of narratives becomes an act of knowing (Casey 277).

narrative, it is more than a story, it is a story come to life, embodied,

encountering boundaries; he is continually crossing them. Like

forges a new identity for himself even as he forges a new way

Riddell 140). He experiences this sensation physically, through his

of the phenomenological nature of his connection with the

Textual Overtures 3.1 | October 2015

Mace, John H., ed. The Act of Remembering: Towards an

Textual Overtures 3.1 | October 2015

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