Due to the mortality I'v experienced recently (again), I haven't explored this as fully as I should have but one thing that smacks me in the face.

"Mary" Shelley Jackson has lost control of her creation - PWG has a mind of her own. Did Yahweh feel this way after Eve bit the apple?

Do we as creators become God as we create?

Trevor Wallace,
t_rev2323@yahoo.com

1 - When the patchwork girl arrives in America and is taken to the Spiritualiste house, is she still veiled? I understand that she shed her garments at one point on the boat to swim nude, but was later re-veiled until the end of her voyage, at which she gave the captain her "clothes". Did this gift to the captain have her veil also? Does she come into America with her face exposed ?

2 - What kind of image do you guys have of the patchwork girl? Hideous? Slightly unattractive? Large? She talks of her large frame and how people mistake her for a man. Images I have of Frankenstein are pretty creepy looking, so I wonder if the patchwork girl, what I understand was the second attempt at creating a monster, turned out anymore physically appealing.

3 - What is the significance of Madame Q's take on identity, that we are made up of our memories, but that our memories do not last forever.

1. In "embryo boy", 'she' says that "I am not really here ... I am just a hanger on, a loose end, a remainder." Is Patchwork Girl "here" in any sense of the word? Is she a character, a subject, an object, or something else? Does she even exist, and in what capacity?

2. And furthermore, where is "here"? Traditional novels can be classified into settings; what about this one? Could the setting of the book be, in part, "F:\PROGRA~1\Eastgate\PATCHWRK\PATCHW.SSP" (the path to the program on my computer?)

3. In "conception", she asks "Wasn't writing the realm of Truth? Isn't the Truth clear, distinct, and one?" How does a hypertext question our notions of universality? I think that by making multiple pathways, we see how contingent experience is, but does this mean that we lapse into relativism?

1) Mary Shelley finds that the Patchwork Girl has a huge appetite "for food and for experience" that surpasses her own. "Her enthusiasm for life shames me," she says. However, I wonder if the reason behind that feeling is that the PWG was created as an adult, and as such, she wasn't allowed to go through childhood, which I think is the time when most people are the most excited about everything around them.
(Jackson, appetite)

2) I thought the dream of the body jungle and the episode where the PWG falls apart were kind of similar in a sense. In the former, she was looking from within herself at all the different pieces before they flew apart from within her (the person looking from inside of her), while in the latter, she watches from the outside as her body just breaks apart in a bloody mess.
(Jackson, body jungle/diaspora)

3) I think it's interesting that Jackson implies that while writing is "weakened speech [...] a living-dead" that it is hard to extinguish. "Zombies are hard to kill." Does this mean that while the force of writing isn't all that powerful that its simple persistance will win out in the end?
(Jackson, interrupting D)

~Grace

After some difficulty getting into the actual program (!) I was really intreagued about the whole idea of a hypertext novel.
1. The idea of "belonging nowhere" at the very beginning initially made me feel pity. But then, we are told that this belonging is a belonging TO, not a place to belong.

2. I am intreagued that we have to "sew" this girl together. Also, the traditionalist in me wants to go back and read every link from the page I just came from. (This reminded me of those Goosebumps novels when I was in grade school where I could choose the chapter I wanted to read next from a list of options).

3. The theme of resurrection keeps coming up, and with this, the idea of what we are made of. We hear a lot about disconnection and "I am not here." Also, the description "the once lost returns" gives meaning to a being "not belonging" and yet being resurrected.

Did anyone else hit a loop of links?

"Assembling these patch words in a electronic space, I feel half blind, as if the entire text is within reach, but because of some myopic condition, I am only familiar with from dreams, I can only see the part immediately before me, and have no sense of how that relates to the rest." --- seems to be indicative of the central theme in the "Of Dolls and Monsters" interview and her reasoning for hypertext novels.

Once again the author discusses the two bodies - using the analogy of her "dream eyes" not the eyes of her body.

The journal seems much more descriptive than the other parts and one would think this her conversation within, but is she talking to the reader in the other parts of the book? At sometimes, it seems like there is more a call to action or persuasive argument being made to the reader.

bt

1. There was an interesting quote from the lexia "i am" - "I belong nowhere. This is not bizarre for my sex, however, nor is it uncomfortable for us, to whom belonging has generally meant, belonging TO." Is patchwork girl used as a conduit for social commentary on the state of the female in American society?

2. From 'America'- "There [in America] everything was probably monstrous and everything monstrous had a backer who preferred to remain anonymous, a lawyer, and a publicist." - this passage illustrates the multi-faceted nature of the word 'monstrous' and how it is used throughout the text. Does the narrator equate Americans' monstrosity with her own? Does she simply mean individuality or completeness? Or does she mean it in the traditionally negative connotation?

3. The concept of a whole being, the quest for completeness pervades the text. At one point, the narrator quotes, (from 'a funeral') "I could think of nothing but how to restore my wholeness". To me, Jackson seems to be using the patchwork girl as an obvious metaphor for our own lives- then is our constant search for completion the result of us losing a part of ourselves like it is for patchwork girl?