Endless Becoming: Identity Formation in Michèle Roberts’ Flesh and Blood
Journal Title: Çankaya University Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences - Year 2019, Vol 13, Issue 1
Abstract
Working with a Chinese box narrative structure, Michèle Roberts creates a set of embedded stories in her 1994 novel, Flesh and Blood that would seem like a loose collage of unrelated stories of women at first sight, but are actually interwoven by the novel’s protagonist, Frederica Stonehouse. The multitude of histories responds to a variety of needs: personal, cultural, social or religious, all alluding to the narratable self and its desire for recognition and change. Roberts offers an alternative account of the Cartesian subject by introducing Frederica’s character as an ‘agentic subject’ who embarks on a psychological journey and moves freely through different identities. The plurality of voices presented in the text alludes to the fragmented and contextual nature of the self and shows how a contingent identity is able to escape the notion of a single and stable meaning in a literary narration. The endlessness of the embedded cyclic narration and its explicit function as a force of transformation allows Frederica to become able to eventually re-invent herself, find self-recognition and to formulate herself in her own terms, even if only temporarily. By utilising recognition theory and focusing primarily on Axel Honneth’s critical social theory of recognition and idea of autonomy, I investigate the ways in which particular characters express their expectations for appropriate levels of recognition. In choosing to weave my paper around the histories of specific characters—namely, the protagonist Frederica, who journeys from daughterhood into motherhood, and the late nineteenth-century painter character of the embedded stories, Georgina, whose story most powerfully portrays a struggle against social subordination—I wish to examine how the characters face struggles between social obligations, family roles, and individual desires and scrutinise the means by which the text questions a fixed, stable, and homogeneous identity. Roberts’s fluid view of the self emphasises the fact that we, as human beings, are formed through multiple discourses of identity and always in-process, devoid of a complete inner, secure or authentic self.
Authors and Affiliations
Krisztina Kitti Tóth
Keywords
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Editor’s Preface
Çankaya University Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences has reached its 12th issue this year with the contributions of the colleagues who shared their valuable studies with us, the reviewers who devoted their valuab...