ABSTRACT
Lucy Snowe, however, begins her task of rewriting this dynamic of feminine representation by tampering with masculine discourse. She does this by splintering the image of woman and offering in its place not a coherent identity, which would reflect back a masculine 'I,' but one that is marked by disjunction and disequilibrium. After Miss Marchmont's death, Lucy describes the image of herself in the mirror: 'I saw myself in the glass, in my mourning-dress, a faded, holloweyed vision' (96). As Lucy moves from the image of Polly in the mirror seen above, she views a faded image that does not correspond with the centered image of the viewer and viewed, where the masculine viewer's subjectivity is ensured. If the eyes are the guarantor of subjectivity, in that the eye in the mirror confirms the coherent image, then the description of Lucy's eyes as hollow helps to problematize the notion of a corresponding coherent 'I.' The hollow T sets the stage for a rewriting of the T by uncovering the eye's place in the specular economy of gendered subjectivity. The text exposes the image in front of the mirror: it is hollow because it refuses to reflect back the image of wholeness, which the mirror image traditionally guarantees. Positioned between two mirror images of woman - one that is created for her and one that reflects the hollowness of that vision - Lucy opts for the latter but not without repercussions for her narrative formulation of the 'I.' Hollowness leads us to consider the falsity of an already-existing image of woman. By disturbing the representational dynamic of wholeness, Lucy's narrative hinges on the uncanny, which reveals the contradictory location of a feminine autobiographer as she grapples with creating a new image of woman in the existing discourse.
