ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the construction of identity and selfhood in a contemporary film that both reflects and overcomes the reductive, belittling representation of women circumscribed by and confined to a male discourse. In her assessment of the 1940s genre frequently described as "woman's" film, Mary Ann Doane expands Foucault's analysis of the relationship between knowledge and pain. The dominant archetypes that define the experience of women within Western traditions are the symbols of Eve, the temptress, and Mary, the unsexual handmaiden. With regard to the representation of women in film, feminist critics have challenged culturally inscribed assumptions that anchor the archetypal images and define attitudes and experiences that are "natural" or "normal" for women. Although women are culturally conditioned to submit to being an object of male desire and to remain silent, in Adrian Lyne's representation women are strong enough to recover their own voice and to constitute their own identity.
