Analysis Of My Body A Cabinet Of Words By Shelly Jackson

To truly appreciate something, you have to experience it. The sentence is self explanatory, but I didn’t conceptually re-realize it, until I read the “My body a cabinet of words” by Shelly Jackson. Although, I already had the theory behind electronic literature in my tool shed, I hadn’t understood the art. “My Body” is the first hypertext novel that I have read, and I found its format as well as content completely engaging. At first navigating through the book seemed somewhat unnatural, you had no concept of pages and thus it was harder to revisit older ideas. But as I progressed, and got engrossed in the book, the navigation system seemed more intuitive. Through hyperlink I could know about the pages I had already visited, and could chose

This section to some extent even explores the gender role issues. Being a girl, she wasn’t expected to be physically strong, and to some extent this invited separation as well. “I looked at the other girls' arms and knew I was a different animal.()” There is also a descriptive juxtaposition of her arm and arms of other girls’, and while she acknowledges the contrast there isn’t any shame. When talking about other girls’ arms. She writes,”I couldn't admire them, nor could I despise them with any passion. Does the moose despise the antelope? ”. Later on she also pokes fun at arbitrary standard of beauty. She talks about how her body type initially evoked questions related to vagueness of her gender itself, but later the question transformed into advice. “Women train to look like me, and now and then come up to ask for tips. What do you do to look this way, they

Jackson is revealing herself to her audience, and maybe she wants something in return as well: attention. The section seemed like a hybrid of introduction and conclusion. While certain segment of this section reads like introduction, absence of page number and direction when reading, makes the distinction somewhat blurry . This part also has a brief synopsis of the novel, and thus categorising it as conclusion is somewhat of an appropriate choice as well. She writes, “As a matter of fact, I am making a replica of this text: a huge wooden chest in the shape of my body, with innumerable drawers in which I will store my findings”. In this section she mainly draws analogy between the novel and cabinets in a way that justifies the title. She mentions how the sections in the novel are like drawers that can be opened, and closed at random. She also talks about how drawers are connected to other drawer. This seems somewhat strange as drawers are often stand alone system but for random drawers, about which we know nothing, everything is connected. She ends the section by challenging the reader to explore the novel themselves. “I will hide secret buttons, levers and locks in my carved folds and crevices. You will have to feel your way