Windows and Womanly Secrecies in Flaubert’s Madam Bovary, Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, and Joyce’s “Eveline”

Year 2013, Volume: 1 Issue: 1, 1 - 16, 11.07.2016

Merve Günday

Abstract

The subversive image of “windows” signifies an opaque boundary between the inside and the outside as well as a distorted yet impressive view of the things. Flaubert, Faulkner, and Joyce have unveiled multifarious implication of window imagery in their works, exploring the fact that windows may not provide the reader with easy connection between the two disconnected worlds. They create due to their real opaqueness and unbreakable quality underlying their surface values. Based on this, focusing on the window imagery in Flaubert’s Madam Bovary, Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, and Joyce’s “Eveline”, the study argues that despite their seemingly insignificant state resulting from their misleading appearances, windows in these three works cannot be overlooked as they take on a significant role by giving important insights into the Otherness, masked realities, and the paradoxical crisis surrounding the protagonists of the each work, Emma, Addie, and Eveline, all of whom voice a single woman in close touch with the windows subjecting them to silence, serving them as masks, and shattering their view of life as inside and outside.

Keywords

Windows, Women, Opaqueness, Otherness, Masked Realities, Fragmentation

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