- in the lexia [madman], patchwork girl suggests that she and the man with the artificial tail are alike. They were "created", not "born." I believe that again, Jackson is trying to get us as readers to relate to this. Everyone at one time or another has felt that they didn't belong to a certain group because they weren't good enough, leaving us with the desire to have been "born" into said group. Attempting to be part of this sought after group, but failing, leads us to believe that we all have our artificial tails that true tail wearers would be able to detect, and cast us out again.

- As far as I've read into PWG, almost all "loving" and sexual relationships have been between women. I wonder if this is some kind of social commentary by Jackson based on personal preference, or perhaps some sort of grudge against men in her life, bleeding into her work. The sensual acts between Mary Shelley and PWG, and also between PWG and Elsie, are written with great detail. I wonder why Jackson did not incorporate any male/female sexual relationships into her text.

- I wonder if Jackson intended the Armadillo to be a metaphor perhaps for a person who thinks they know who they really are. With all the questioning of identity, in that identity may be crafted by memories, it seems as if the Armadillo, a simple creature, "knows who it is" whereas the humans (or monsters) in the story are constantly seeking to find themselves. The armadillo's hard shell is perhaps symbolic of people who THINK they know who they are, and think that this assumed image of who they are can protect them from the ambiguity of not really knowing who "you" are, but while the armadillo sleeps, it stretches out, exposing it's soft underbelly, just as the way humans are ultimately vulnerable in their sleep and dreams.

1. What exactly is Jackson trying to accomplish with the multilinearity of the work? I know that we are supposed to be disoriented and always grasping for structure when there is none, but what are we are supposed to take away from this experience in relation to our understanding of rhetoric, fiction, and subjectivity? I don't think that it is the (pseudo-)postmodern attempt to undermine the problem-solution/cause-effect mindset which searches for some meaning to take away when there only meaning is that there isn't one. In other words, we're supposed to learn something - what is it?

2. In am I mary, she writes: "Mary writes, I write, we write, but who is really writing? Ghost writers are the only kind there are." It is obvious that she doesn't literally mean that everything is written by a separate individual (like some famous people do with their "own" autobiographies). What then does she mean by a ghost writer? Is it one's socially-constructed character that is beyond one's essential nature or being? If it is a ghost, what is it a ghost of?

3. Also, what is the significance of grammar in the title of this lexia? There is no question mark at the end or opening capitalization at the beginning of the sentence. "mary" is also not capitalized, but "I" is. This may not have been intentional, but I'm a fan or reading text as a whole without referring too much to the author to explain things.

What I think that these questions have in common are the nature of subjectivity. I think that it is obvious that Jackson believes that we're all stitched from multiple pieces of pre-existing subjectivity already present in society (in part) through language. However, is there an essential thing/subject/being beyond/in/with/for that construct? Our stitches are the only part of us that is truly us, but are we split by our stitches and only able to express ourselves through them or nothing but them?

Stuart Geiger

Some things that come to mind:

Jackson pounds us with the idea that we are all almagamated creatures; we are made of many different attitudes and experiences. One of the primary ways she goes about this is by hammering us with words like multiplicity and variegated over and over again.

Keeping with that theme, at one point Shelley, looking at her "daughter", realizes that they do not resemble each other in any way. She then says “But then I begin to wonder if I still resemble myself." Do we become so lost in our everyday lives and small problems that we cannot see ourselves as a whole?

Is it just me, or the Glass Cat a big jerk?

Trevor Wallace,
t_rev2323@yahoo.com

I agree with the above comments. I am having trouble following the story. I understand you are not really supposed to know where you are in the story, but I think I need some more direction. I did find some interesting lexias talking about the text and how you are supposed to read it. Also the series of quotes from the quilt were really hard to follow. Do ya'll have any suggestions on how to read those?

Again, this is a completely new reading experience for me as well. I had a little trouble remembering my own map because nothing is set up in a concrete order. However, it seems that the more I am able to experience the seeming disconnection as I read, the more I can understand the true state of PWG. I can see how she is made up of so many parts, so many experiences-- each might not know the other, but together they complete a whole. The text itself, in a way, personifies PWG.

1) It's a bit creepy having future generations described as being monsters moving among and within us. I suppose it's an interesting way of thinking about genetics and passing on one's genes. I guess this section also goes into how the PWG isn't really one entity so much that she's something in everyone.
(Jackson, universal)

2) In the "A Quilt" section of this piece, I found it strange that the PWG was being described as a rag doll with cotton inside. Is this a different being than the one that wanders about in "A Journal" and "A Story"?
(Jackson, A Quilt)

3) From this passage, it makes it sound like too much beauty is a bad thing. All of the best elements of a beautiful woman were taken from the best of their type, but when they were all put together, she turned out ugly. I have to wonder if it's just because of the "unpopular colors" or something else.
(Jackson, beauty patches)

~Grace

I am still trying to understand PWG and what the story is. A few quotes stood out to me:

From Earwigs: "what is dreadful about the plural? the swarm, the infestation." Here PWG is concerned with how she is multiple but one, her sewed parts make her many things put into one. Similarly, later PWG says she is "large" and "everything," and later, "I want to be whole."

I also found interesting the parts where PWG is talking about all the parts of her body and where they came from "My trunk belonged to a dancer" I guess I wandered into the graveyard without realizing. I didn't find it too confusing, actually, it helps to read it to know all the parts of PWG.

So far, PWG is really, really tough for me to get used to. I'm trying to take some notes while I'm reading and I want to write down page numbers, but apparently there aren't page numbers in hypertexts. All that aside...

There's been one quote so far that has really seemed to sum up everything, I think, PWG is trying to encapusulate. On page...oh wait, ahem, in the "scene" with Madame Q and she's summoning the spirits for the seance, she says "Our sense of who we are is mostly made up of what we remember to bring."