Identity and Margaret Atwoods Lady Oracle :: essays papers

Identity and Margaret Atwoods gentlewoman Oracle The relationships we have with different people through bulge our lives are virile influences on us all. Our relationships with one another can define who we are, as well as the quality of the lives we lead. Strenuous relationships cause stress and unhappiness, period close, loving relationships are a source of support and comfort. Joan Foster, the main guinea pig in Margaret Atwood=s Lady Oracle, is a complex woman who has had more(prenominal) than her share of turbulent relationships during her life. From her childhood and teenage relationship with her get under ones skin, to her bond with her hubby later in life, Joan=s relationships are rarely free of upheaval and drama. These relationships definitely have an influence on Joan, impacting her as a person. The grapple of Joan and her relationships reveals a question How are Joan=s relationships important to her identity? The runner major relationship in Joan=s l ife is the one with her obtain. Joan feels unwished and unloved by her mother, who treats Joan coldly because of her weight problem. At first, Joan struggles to fit in with her mother=s perfect vision of her and tries to live up to her mother=s expectations. When she fails at this, Joan resents her mother=s unbearable attitude and becomes unfitting toward her. Joan=s identity then becomes based on the opposite of what her mother expects and wants from her. At this time my mother gave me a clothing allowance, as an bonus to reduce. She thought I should buy clothes that would make me less conspicuous, the dour dresses with tiny polka-dots and vertical stripes favored by designers for the fat. Instead I sought out clothes of a peculiar and offensive hideousness, violently colored, horizontally striped. Some of them I got in maternity shops, others at cut-rate discount stores I was especially pleased with a red mat up skirt, cut in a circle with a black predict applique d onto it. The brighter the colors, the more rotund the effect, the more certain I was to buy. I wasn=t going to let myself be diminished, neutralizes, by a navy-blue polka-dot sack (Atwood 84). Joan went out of her way to buy clothes that she knew her mother would hate, and that become part of who she was.