The Issue of Female Identity in the Novel The Trick Essay Example for Free

The step up of Fe anthropoid Identity in the Novel The Trick EssayThis paper examines the issues of gender within Janice Galloways novel, The Trick is to Keep Breathing. The paper considers the identicalness crisis that the character of Joy Stone in the novel faces and discloses how this crisis is triggered as a result of affectionate oppression. The Trick is to Keep Breathing is primarily a story round the mental health of an individual and tells of how she has suffered to such an extent that she has been plummeted into depression, self-loathing and anorexia. One of the key themes in the book is that of alienation.The principal(prenominal) character, Joy, is suffering from a loss, a loss that is not recognized in the eyes of society she is the schoolmistress of a dead man. Whilst the family of the man are able to openly grieve and be acknowledged for their slur in her loers life, she is forced to hide her feelings away, together with her knowledge of her lovers feelings for her, in her take in secret prison. Her position as a mistress leaves her with no place to grieve and the social constraints of society entail she is restrained from mourning.Social institutions mean that she has no justifiable relationship with Michael and therefore is without purpose, she has no existence. She is thus socially oppressed and such oppression acts as means by which Joys identity and place in the world is stripped from her. Joy has no real control over her life. . She is thus trying to grief alone and quietly but her inability to publicly release her feelings and educe recognition for how significant she was in her lover life mean that loses all self respect and she after endures a lifestyle that is devoid of any significance.She completes her daily chores with very little feeling and her future stretches earlier her in a daunting and formidable fashion. Even time is meaningless to her. Joys get d stimulate and emptiness plays out on both a psychological and a physical level. She is obsessed with her own image and allows her self perception to be negatively impacted by the magazines she reads and the inferior way in which they make her feel. The only way in which she regulatems capable of having some control over her feelings is through denying herself food.She attempts to justify herself of her sense of loss and her frustration with the way in which society treats her by starving herself and thus intertwines her identity crisis with her physical body. But the physical manifestations of her oppression only serve to enhance her feelings of loss, Empty space. I had nought inside me (147). She is increasingly becoming separated from the world in which she lives, the people who surround her and even her own body. Gender is of extremely relevance within the novel and her relationships with various male figures such as the doctors, an ex boyfriend and her boss form an important element of the story.All of the men she encounters are dominant, overpowering characters who, in their own ways, wish Joy to submit to their wishes. Her memories of her ex-lover control her, the doctors think they know what is best for her and wish for her to do as she is told and other characters simply want to seduce her. However, Joy has lost all ability to dumbfound to the mens wishes and she suffers a form of breakdown one which rebels against what is socially expected of her and strives for freedom from the entrapment of the male gaze and their endless orders.She learns to create meaning for herself, not by adhering to what society deems meaningful but by defining this for herself. By stripping things of the meaning attributed to them by society she is able to rid herself of her oppression and see life in a new light. She learns that she is happier if she doesnt live by societys rules and, whilst this whitethorn her appear chaotic to an outside audience, it frees her from her personal prison.