The Woman Who Walked Into Doors - 5687 Words

Paulas voice, in which the entire novel is related, combines convincing staccato storytelling, slangy working-class diction, frank revelations, and agonized reconstruction of the past in sometimes profane and often touching tones. Here Paula remembers her teenaged self, both attracted and repelled by the man she will so disastrously marry: He was a ride. It was the best way to describe him, from the first time I heard of him to the last time I saw him. He wasnt,t gorgeous. There was never anything gorgeous about him. When we made love the first time in the field when we were drunk, especially me, and I didnt really know what was happening, only his weight and wanting to get sick@ I felt terrible after it, scared and soggy, guilty and†¦show more content†¦Paula is â€Å"the woman who walked into doors†[1] because she explains her cuts, bruises, and broken bones by her clumsiness—walking into doors, falling down stairs—rather than their real causes, her h usband’s violent physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. This euphemism shows the contradiction of subaltern speech: it can suggest and imply but it cannot truly speak in a language that society is willing or able to decode. In fact, the entire novel rests on the inherent contradiction of subaltern speech because Paula, a subaltern figure, narrates the entire book. The book shows Paula as she struggles to â€Å"know and speak [herself],† to borrow a phrase from Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s â€Å"Can the Subaltern Speak?†[2] In Spivak’s problematic, the â€Å"there is no unrepresentable subaltern subject that and know and speak itself;† however, this impossibility is a deconstructive (im)possibility,[3] neither final nor absolute. Spivak’s writings on fictional representations of subalterns, such as her preface to Mahasweta Devi’s Imaginary Maps[4] and â€Å"A Literary Representation of the Subaltern,† as well as â€Å"Ca n the Subaltern Speak?†, explore the contradictions that this impossible speech produces. Doyle’s novel suggests another way to theorize this contradiction by looking at itsShow MoreRelatedThe Woman Who Walked Into Doors Essay941 Words   |  4 PagesThe Woman Who Walked Into Doors The Woman Who Walked Into Doors is a novel written by Roddy Doyle, set in Ireland in the early 1990s. This story combines love and violence and shows how the two can go together in one marriage. The story is written like a diary of Paula Spencers good and bad memories in her life and gives the reader the impression that Paula is sharing her life story with us and she is also narrating her life as we read. The story begins with a prison guard arrivingRead More Analysis of The Woman Who Walked into Doors by Roddy Doyle Essay905 Words   |  4 PagesAnalysis of The Woman Who Walked into Doors by Roddy Doyle â€Å"The Woman Who Walked Into Doors† is a novel written by Roddy Doyle, set in Ireland in the early 1990s. This story combines love and violence and shows how the two can go together in one marriage. The story is written like a diary of Paula Spencer’s good and bad memories in her life and gives the reader the impression that Paula is sharing her life story with us and she is also narrating her life as we read. 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