همایش رویکردهای میان رشته ای به آموزش زبان، ادبیات و مطالعات ترجمه

صفحه اصلی / پنجمین همایش رویکردهای میان رشته ای به آموزش زبان، ادبیات و مطالعات ترجمه

Unbounded Nature of Loss in Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time

نویسندگان :

Faranak Kakanaeini¹

1- دانشگاه پیام نور

کلمات کلیدی :

Freud،Mourning،Past،Unbounded loss،Future

چکیده :

In her novel Woman on the Edge of Time, American feminist author Marge Piercy captured the distinct experience of Connie, a "precarious woman" who shuttles between the past and the future. She is placed in an institution for mental health patients throughout the bulk of the book. There is a connection between the precarity she faces at the mental facility and the precarity she faces in her daily life. Connie's life has been one of constant loss survival, starting with the death of her pimp partner Geraldo, losing her niece Dolly to foster care, and losing her beloved Claud while he was incarcerated. The emotive structure of failure and loss do not abandon her in Piercy's narrative; rather, they bind her—more than others—to the future. Thus, loss could be an enabling factor for Connie's transition into the future; maybe the boundless nature of loss is what makes her especially ready to transcend temporal boundaries. In Mattapoisett, where loss stretches into the future and is integral to Connie's experiences, her losses are multiplied. Not only may there always be more to lose, but Connie's losses move in to constructing the future as a result of her time travel, translating mourning as a process that "takes time" into a claim on the future. Examining Claud's ongoing influence on Connie's experience of the future, the novel highlights how she is unable to fully let go of him, making this loss a constitutive force in her experiences and further defining the future as a space of loss. Through an emphasis on a relationship between loss and loss extension to the future, the novel is examined through Freud and Butler’s theories of “unbounded” nature of loss.