Abstract
Helen, a widow, has to struggle with her possible selves. Planting herself solidly in a chair, she looks at me with a stony face, and then begins to tell her story. Appearing sad and tearful—but somehow also managing to look angry—she tells me how her husband died six months ago, from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Lou Gehrig’s disease, a degenerative nerve disease.
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Notes
Helen may have had the experience of smelling like “blood” during menstruation, so there may be resonances having to do with whatever meaning this has for her.
Yeats, “The Circus Animals’ Desertion,” 1939. Obeyesekere quotes this passage in Medusa’s Hair (1981, 192) using it to make the point that human “thought is the product of reverie, and the masterful images we create springing originally from the shreds and patches of our unconscious” (192).
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© 2008 Steven M. Parish
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Parish, S.M. (2008). What a Tangled Web She Weaves: An American Widow. In: Subjectivity and Suffering in American Culture. Culture, Mind, and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230613188_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230613188_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-37286-7
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