When I read Patchwork Girl, I was struck by how the silences (both formal and thematic) could be so full of meaning, and began to imagine silence as having its own voice(s) if listened to in the right way. In Patchwork Girl, listening to silence changes the game when it comes to identity, and reading Shelley Jackson’s thoughts on her own writing the made me wonder about what silence does to both body and text. Thus my essay focuses on how Jackson constructs both textual and corporeal subjectivity around what has been silenced (feminine-ness, monsters, gaps).

    As I began to organize my thoughts about Patchwork Girl, I discovered that my thoughts refused much like their subject to be any sort of coherent traditional essay. I therefore created three different stages/pages that are more or less (always more, I think) centered around a mouth shut, open, and out (tongue sticking). I wrote each page separately in MS Word and then transformed them into hypertext. The images incorporated into the text came from my margin notes on the Word texts. While any sequence of reading is possible and encouraged, I envisioned these pieces as conceptually grounded in the act of breathing. As you progress through them, you will notice (hopefully) that my writing strays further and further away from traditional academic writing and approaches closer and closer a symbiosis with its subject, Patchwork Girl (actually getting there would ruin the fun). Here’s hoping that it works or rather doesn't work in interesting ways!

Lisa Hager

March 9, 2001

mouth shut  open out

Copyright Lisa Hager 2001 all rights reserved