The Woman Who Pretended to Be Who She Was
Myths of Self-Imitation
-
- $39.99
-
- $39.99
Publisher Description
Many cultures have myths about self-imitation, stories about people who pretend to be someone else pretending to be them, in effect masquerading as themselves. This great theme, in literature and in life, tells us that people put on masks to discover who they really are under the masks they usually wear, so that the mask reveals rather than conceals the self beneath the self.
In this book, noted scholar of Hinduism and mythology Wendy Doniger offers a cross-cultural exploration of the theme of self-impersonation, whose widespread occurrence argues for both its literary power and its human value. The stories she considers range from ancient Indian literature through medieval European courtly literature and Shakespeare to Hollywood and Bollywood. They illuminate a basic human way of negotiating reality, illusion, identity, and authenticity, not to mention memory, amnesia, and the process of aging. Many of them involve marriage and adultery, for tales of sexual betrayal cut to the heart of the crisis of identity.
These stories are extreme examples of what we common folk do, unconsciously, every day. Few of us actually put on masks that replicate our faces, but it is not uncommon for us to become travesties of ourselves, particularly as we age and change. We often slip carelessly across the permeable boundary between the un-self-conscious self-indulgence of our most idiosyncratic mannerisms and the conscious attempt to give the people who know us, personally or publicly, the version of ourselves that they expect. Myths of self-imitation open up for us the possibility of multiple selves and the infinite regress of self-discovery.
Drawing on a dizzying array of tales-some fact, some fiction-The Woman Who Pretended to Be Who She Was is a fascinating and learned trip through centuries of culture, guided by a scholar of incomparable wit and erudition.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Doniger, a scholar of religion and mythology at the Univ. of Chicago, completes her trilogy about the varieties of identity confusion (Splitting the Difference; The Bedtrick) with a book about the ways in which people imitate themselves. A concept that at first sounds bizarre and unlikely, self-imitation, Doniger shows, is a multi-faceted phenomenon that has been exploited by folktales around the world, and especially by movies. She identifies several classic types and provides an impressive range of examples, drawing from early and modern Hollywood, Bollywood, opera, literature and mythologies. Many instances of self-imitation arise in the context of romantic difficulties: the comedic masquerades of The Marriage of Figaro and the contortions of the film My Favorite Wife are just two examples. Other typical plot elements are reincarnation, face-lifts and "mind lifts," such as those in the movies Vertigo and Total Recall. Doniger demonstrates an amazing facility for keeping such plot twists, which are by their nature confusing, straight in her mind, so that she can make comparisons throughout. The reader may have more difficulty following along, especially when the identities get so complicated that Doniger has to talk about "George-as-Larry-as-George-as-Larry-as-George-as-Larry" when referring to movies like I Love You Again, a 1940s film that depicts a "doubled and squared amnesia and a pretended recurrence of that amnesia (to the third degree)." However, Doniger generally provides extensive, clearly written plot summaries, and her discussion of them, though sometimes drawing on relatively obscure philosophy or psychology, is accessible and jargon-free. Anyone who enjoys brain-teasing plots in mythology or cinema will be fascinated by the sheer number of examples Doniger furnishes and the ease with which she untangles their meanings.
