| Chapter : | Introduction |
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The episode inaugurates the way in which the so-called monster becomes suddenly aware of his unique existence and, although he is appalled by his hideousness, it also opens the possibility that alternative ways of seeing himself may be found. Rosemary Jackson describes the relationship between the mirror and subjectivity in Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion :
There are two concepts worth noting in the above quote. The first is the way in which Jackson describes the mirror, as “another space (both familiar and unfamiliar)”. I will return to this issue later on in this chapter. The second is related to the first: within this alternative space, the subject is offered versions of itself, “becoming something or someone else”, mutating to explore multiplicity. The split subject who gazes in the mirror is Lacanian in its full signification: “divided against itself; ‘other…than it is,’ dissatisfied—and desiring” (Belsey, Poststructuralism 57). By laying bare the multiplicity of the subject within a fantastic scenario through the metaphor of corporeal transformation, the motif of metamorphosis undertakes the description of this poststructuralist subject at a literary level.
Ambiguous Metamorphoses and Leaking Identities
To be generative of another like itself, this is the function of every animal and plant perfect in nature…
—Aristotle, De Animalium Generatione 18–23
All things are always changing,
But nothing dies.
—Ovid, Metamorphoses 370