Comments on: Hinge Narration: Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl http://mith.umd.edu/eng738T/hinge-narration-shelley-jacksons-patchwork-girl/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=hinge-narration-shelley-jacksons-patchwork-girl English 738T, Spring 2015 Sat, 12 Nov 2016 04:10:10 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Kayla Harr http://mith.umd.edu/eng738T/hinge-narration-shelley-jacksons-patchwork-girl/#comment-1284 Kayla Harr Mon, 16 Mar 2015 02:16:34 +0000 http://mith.umd.edu/eng738T/?p=1256#comment-1284 I think the consideration of Jackson's narration that you've entered into here is complex as well as compelling. Though I'm perhaps looking down a different track than the one you explore your post, I found that your discussion of hinges reminded me of Jackson's lexia on the dotted line. Jackson writes that the dotted line "indicates a difference without cleaving apart for good what it distinguishes. It is a permeable membrane: some substance necessary to both can pass from one side to the other. ... A dotted line demonstrates: even what is discontinuous and in pieces can blaze a trail." Really, the entire lexia seemed connected to what you're talking about, but I won't quote the whole thing. The image of hinges, as you describe it here, seems in line with Jackson's dotted line; a distinction that is and is not, that can connect or suggest action, but only as one possibility of many. That which is separated by a dotted line is also linked by it, as with a hinge. It's also interesting, perhaps, that both the hinge and the dotted line imply folding, a more complex connection than a linear, one-dimension path from one thing to another. I'm curious about the closure you discuss, however, as Jackson's dotted line, and the experience of <i>Patchwork Girl</i>, seem to be in some ways about a lack of closure, or perhaps it's simply a circular form of closure that reopens as it concludes, as you seem to suggest here. I think the consideration of Jackson’s narration that you’ve entered into here is complex as well as compelling. Though I’m perhaps looking down a different track than the one you explore your post, I found that your discussion of hinges reminded me of Jackson’s lexia on the dotted line. Jackson writes that the dotted line “indicates a difference without cleaving apart for good what it distinguishes. It is a permeable membrane: some substance necessary to both can pass from one side to the other. … A dotted line demonstrates: even what is discontinuous and in pieces can blaze a trail.” Really, the entire lexia seemed connected to what you’re talking about, but I won’t quote the whole thing. The image of hinges, as you describe it here, seems in line with Jackson’s dotted line; a distinction that is and is not, that can connect or suggest action, but only as one possibility of many. That which is separated by a dotted line is also linked by it, as with a hinge. It’s also interesting, perhaps, that both the hinge and the dotted line imply folding, a more complex connection than a linear, one-dimension path from one thing to another. I’m curious about the closure you discuss, however, as Jackson’s dotted line, and the experience of Patchwork Girl, seem to be in some ways about a lack of closure, or perhaps it’s simply a circular form of closure that reopens as it concludes, as you seem to suggest here.

]]>