{"id":10,"date":"2026-01-24T11:44:21","date_gmt":"2026-01-24T18:44:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sophiazhurmst202\/?p=10"},"modified":"2026-01-24T11:44:44","modified_gmt":"2026-01-24T18:44:44","slug":"i-she","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sophiazhurmst202\/2026\/01\/24\/i-she\/","title":{"rendered":"I\/SHE ?"},"content":{"rendered":"

What struck me the most in this book is how often Bombal shifts the narrative perspective. At first, I thought it was just a stylistic experiment, but the more I read, the more it felt like something much deeper. The constant switching between first person and third person narration doesn\u2019t feel random at all. Instead, it feels like Bombal is showing how a woman keeps losing and only briefly regaining her sense of self. It\u2019s almost exhausting in the same way the protagonist\u2019s experience is exhausting.<\/span><\/p>\n

Whenever the first person \u201cI\u201d shows up, it usually feels very intimate. These moments are tied to the protagonist\u2019s inner world, her memories, emotions, fears, anger, and desires. In these sections, she finally feels like a real person instead of just a role. She\u2019s not someone\u2019s wife, daughter,or a woman being watched and judged. She\u2019s just herself, thinking and feeling. But the frustrating part is that this \u201cI\u201d never lasts long. Just when it feels like she\u2019s starting to exist fully as a subject, the narration slips back into the third person. She becomes \u201cshe\u201d again, someone being looked at, described, and defined by others.<\/span><\/p>\n

This back and forth felt really familiar to me, because it mirrors how women often experience the world in real life. When a woman is alone with her thoughts, she can exist as a full subject. But the moment she steps into social space, the moment she becomes visible, that visibility turns her into an object. Other people\u2019s expectations, judgments, and gazes take over. The novel\u2019s constantly interrupted rhythm creates a strong sense of fragmentation. It\u2019s not that the protagonist has no sense of self, but that her self is never allowed to stay intact. It keeps getting interrupted, overwritten, and pushed aside.<\/span><\/p>\n

What unsettled me even more is that this doesn\u2019t stop after her death. She loses the ability to act, but her consciousness actually becomes clearer. The first person \u201cI\u201d appears more often, and she finally reflects on her life, her marriage, her family, and love on her own terms. At the same time, though, the third person perspective doesn\u2019t disappear. Her body is still watched, talked about, and claimed by others. Even in death, she can\u2019t fully escape being narrated.<\/span><\/p>\n

By the end, what really stayed with me is the idea that women don\u2019t automatically get to occupy the position of \u201cI.\u201d Subjectivity isn\u2019t something that\u2019s simply given, it\u2019s something that has to be fought for again and again. And even then, it\u2019s fragile, constantly at risk of being taken away.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What struck me the most in this book is how often Bombal shifts the narrative perspective. At first, I thought it was just a stylistic experiment, but the more I read, the more it felt like something much deeper. The constant switching between first person and third person narration doesn\u2019t feel random at all. Instead, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":108031,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[6,7,3],"class_list":["post-10","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-relationships","tag-death","tag-marriage","tag-rmst202"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sophiazhurmst202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sophiazhurmst202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sophiazhurmst202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sophiazhurmst202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/108031"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sophiazhurmst202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sophiazhurmst202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sophiazhurmst202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions\/12"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sophiazhurmst202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sophiazhurmst202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sophiazhurmst202\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}