Paper Status Tracking

Journals by Title

Journals by Subject

Contact us

	[email protected]
	3275638434

	Paper Publishing WeChat

Useful Links

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Article

Open Access

Metaphors of Anorexia—Analysis of Peony’s Starved-for-love Self in Lisa See’s Peony in Love

Author(s)

ZHANG Na

Full-Text PDF Download XML 1018 Views

DOI:10.17265/2159-5836/2017.06.004

Affiliation(s)

Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, China

ABSTRACT

In Asian American writer Lisa See’s novel Peony in Love (2007), the love-sick maiden Peony commits anorexia which finally leads to her annihilation. Anorexia, as well as foot bonding, both of which are distortions of female body, convey various metaphors. The novel repeatedly presents the inability to eat or eating monotonous meals as symptoms of the nervous breakdown. Through a series of feminist psychological analysis, this paper is designed to figure out these metaphors of anorexia within the text in the following three dimensions: anorexia as imitation of art, anorexia as failure in mother-daughter relationship and the anorexic female body as a language. After explanations of the metaphorical meaning of anorexia, this paper aims to analyze Peony’s starved-for-love self, and draw a conclusion about lovesickness during the whole process of Peony’s maturation.

KEYWORDS

anorexia, foot bonding, female body, feminist psychology, lovesick

Cite this paper

References

Grice, H. (2002). Mending the skin in memory: Trauma, narrative, and the recovery of identity in Patricia Chao, Aimee Liu and Joy Kogawa. Asian American Literature in the International Context (pp. 81-96). Hamburg: LIT Verlag.
Guillemot, A., & Laxenaire, M. (1997). Anorexie mentale et boulimie: le poids de la culture. Paris : Masson.
Kelley, S. (07/03/2007). Haunting Peony unearths ghosts of culture and love. USA Today.
Lacan, J. (2001). The mirror stage as formative of the function of the I as revealed in psychoanalytic experience. Écrits: a selection (A. Sheridan, Trans). London: Routledge Classics.
MacSween, M. (1993). Anorexic bodies: A feminist and sociological perspective on anorexia nervosa. London: Routledge.
Moorey, J. (1991). Living with anorexia and bulimia. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
See, L. (2008). Author’s Note. Peony in Love, pp. 275-280. New York: Random House Trade Paperback Edition.
See, L. (2008). Peony in love. New York: Random House Trade Paperback Edition.
Sontag, S.(2001). Illness as metaphor. London: Picador Press.
TANG, X. Z. (2002). The peony pavilion. (Mudan tin) (2nd ed.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.