Alienation From Self Analysis

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In this instance too there is a sense of alienation from self: the person in the mirror is very different from the person with the blades. And the most insightful moment of the sense of this alienation and separation occurs in the hospital after her suicide attempt with sleeping pills. Her face is distorted to such an extent that she is literally unrecognizable to herself. When she asks for a mirror to the nurse inside the ward, the nurse refuses to hand it to her, but when she insists, a mirror is given to her and as soon as she looks into it she thinks that the nurse had handed her a picture instead of a mirror: “You couldn’t tell whether the person in the picture was a man or a woman, because their hair was shaved off and sprouted in bristly…show more content…
The person’s mouth was pale brown, with a rose-coloured sore at either corner.”(146) This statement is a very powerful one. It is important to note that Esther uses the word “their” instead of “my”, which reflects her extreme sense of alienation from herself. A very fundamental binary has been called into question here- Esther doesn’t even recognize whether her reflection is that of a man or a woman. Where else do we get a better sense of alienation than in a mirror. Helene Cixous might have suggested to write through one’s body but the dichotomous relation here is that it not enough to write through your body as nothing can be worse than loosing ones sense of self. The various examples of looking at self in the mirror give us a sense of alienation, detachment and also a sense of otherness. And the final mirror example completes the process where she gets transformed to something who she doesn’t really know or recognize. She doesn’t have any positive self image. The world around her is cadaverous. In New York, her life feels like a “numb trolley bus” i.e, she could feel numbness and was like a…show more content…
The latter, whether primary or secondary in nature prevails in women; older adults and patients with psychiatric disorders. Insomnia mostly occurs in women due to anxiety or depression. In almost every psychiatric illness sleep disorders are potential symptoms. But insomnia is not always a symptom of psychiatric disorders. Poor sleep may also be the reason for the prolongation of mental illness. It is thus both a symptom and a cause. It may make depression or schizophrenia worse as in the case of Esther

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