Dr. Liu
Patchwork Girl
May 5, 2010
Patchwork Work
Shelley Jackson’s hypertext narrative Patchwork Girl, is a more modern re-hashing of Mary Shelley’s popular novel “Frankenstein”. The electronic piece is rife with allusions to the original horror tale written over one hundred years ago. In fact, the creature in Patchwork Girl is created by a woman named Mary Shelley. After reading Patchwork Girl, it is clear that this modern re-telling is intended to serve as homage to the original “Frankenstein”. While there is a clear linkage between these two pieces of literature, it can be said with certainty that Shelley Jackson’s work is a unique narrative worth some analysis. This forces us to ask the question is Patchwork Girl really just a simple re-telling of “Frankenstein”, or is it something more?
The answer to that question, simply put, is that Shelley Jackson’s hypertext narrative is its own tale of horror, adventure, and self-discovery. It is clear that Jackson’s piece is not a massive departure from the Mary Shelley’s work in terms of the overall plot. Both narratives describe a series of events in which an intellectual creates a creature from the body parts of dead human beings. In both tales, the creature embarks on a quest to become more human but finds this to be a difficult task. Apart from that, the two creature’s journeys could not be more divergent. In Jackson’s Patchwork Girl, the creature is created with love and initially cared for like a child, whereas the Frankenstein Monster was brought into existence to satisfy Victor’s scientific zeal. The two creations ultimately meet different fates, with the Victor’s monster trapped on an ice float in Antarctica, and Mary’s creation, (Mary Shelley is the name of the creature’s creator in Jackson’s tale), seeking peace and solitude in the American Southwest. It is important to note the ultimate fate of both creatures as this contributes significantly to the theme of Jackson’s piece.
As mentioned previously, Patchwork Girl chronicles the “life” of a creature assembled from human body parts. The bulk of the story follows the Patchwork Girl as she tries to adapt to life in post-civil war America. In order to understand some of the primary themes in Jackson’s narrative, one must consider the significance of the creature’s name. Consider for a moment that Mary’s creation is stitched together with different parts and pieces similar to a quilt. Each piece is different and significant in its own way, but they will never match. In this regard, one could argue that Shelley Jackson chose the perfect media for her story, as hypertext narrative is like a patched quilt, in that it takes different bits and pieces and organizes them in a semi-coherent fashion. One could even make the argument that Jackson uses Patchwork Girl to comment on the very nature of hypertext narrative by creating a character assembled in the same way as one would put together a piece of hypertext narrative. To her credit, Shelley Jackson uses the capabilities of hypertext to establish and reinforce her themes. For example, throughout the story, the Patchwork Girl repeatedly finds herself having to replace pieces that fall off of her. Despite her best efforts none of her body parts match and she has difficulty getting her body to perform simple tasks such as walking. In many ways the text helps convey this mismatched feeling to the reader, as the story is assembled from a number of independent texts, which do not flow together well, but ultimately create a narrative.
The picture above is the table of contents for Patchwork Girl. The user can click on the graveyard, a journal, a quilt, ect to access different pieces of text which reveal different aspects of the story. By clicking on “A Quilt” for example the user is shown a bit of text that describes the components Mary collected to make the Patchwork Girl.
The second picture above is an example of the text provided once the user clicks on “A Graveyard”. This set of lexia under the graveyard heading describes the collection of the necessary body parts from the perspective of the Patchwork Girl. The main story of the narrative can be found under the “A Story” heading, which tells the tale from Mary’s point of view, and also the “A Journal” heading which describes the story from Patchwork Girl’s perspective.
The picture above is a sample of lexia from the “A Journal” heading. It is clearly illustrated in the blurbs that the story is not one cohesive narrative that follow a specific order. Rather the work is a large collection of lexia that fit together like a puzzle, to create the whole image. In this way, the narrative is an expression of Patchwork Girl. The Patchwork Girl’s body as a whole does not function properly because her parts are not strung together properly, much in the same way that the non-linear strings of lexia do not fit together perfectly but still reveals the story. In my opinion, Shelley Jackson should be hailed for using the tools of hypertext narrative to strengthen the overall impact on the reader. With that being said, there are some fundamental problems that underpin the successful conveyance of the theme in Patchwork Girl.
I have always been open about the fact that most forms of electronic literature are completely new to me, and it is typically my inexperience with the software that creates problems. In this case, I must say that my criticisms cannot be attributed to my inexperience as a user. The key problem that I faced when I began interacting with Patchwork Girl, was the lack of cohesiveness of the various strings of lexia. I read the, “A Story” heading lexia first believing this is where the bulk of the story would be revealed. After completing the other headings I proceeded to read the “A Journal” lexia. I took at least seven lexia for me to realize that the narrator had changed from Mary to Patchwork Girl. I would not have considered this a major problem had I not already gone back reading and read the story lexia several times over to try to understand what exactly was happening. For that reason, the non-linear style of revealing the story which is so critical to the theme, ultimately had a deleterious effect on my opinion. The “A Graveyard” heading is another prime example of this. The rapid shift between narrators makes an already confusing piece even more so. All in all, my criticisms are few and small. I found Patchwork Girl to be different from any other piece of literature I have ever read, electronic or otherwise. For that reason alone I feel that this work can be celebrated as a successful blending of clever plot devices, and the tools of electronic literature. I would definitely recommend this piece to anyone interested in electronic literature.
Jackson, Shelley. Patchwork Girl. Watertown, MA: Eastgate Systems, 1995. CD-Rom.
