''Patchwork Girl'' is a work of
electronic literature by American author
Shelley Jackson
Shelley Jackson (born 1963) is an American writer and artist known for her cross-genre experimental works. These include her hyperfiction ''Patchwork Girl'' (1995) and her first novel, ''Half Life'' (2006).
Biography
In her own words: "Shelley ...
. It was written in
Storyspace
Storyspace is a software program for creating, editing, and reading hypertext fiction. It can also be used for writing and organizing fiction and non-fiction intended for print. Maintained and distributed by Eastgate Systems, the software is availa ...
and published by
Eastgate Systems
Eastgate Systems is a publisher and software company headquartered in Watertown, Massachusetts, which publishes hypertext.
Eastgate is a pioneer in hypertext publishing and electronic literature and one of the best known publishers of hypertext ...
in 1995. It is often discussed along with
Michael Joyce's ''
afternoon, a story'' as an important work of
hypertext fiction
Hypertext fiction is a genre of electronic literature, characterized by the use of hypertext links that provide a new context for non-linearity in literature and reader interaction. The reader typically chooses links to move from one node of text ...
.
"Shelley Jackson's brilliantly realized hypertext ''Patchwork Girl'' is an electronic fiction that manages to be at once highly original and intensely parasitic on its print predecessors."
Plot and structure
Jackson's ''Patchwork Girl'' tells the story through illustrations of parts of a female body that are stitched together through text and image. The narrative of the story is divided into five segments, titled: "a Graveyard", "a Journal", "a Quilt", "a Story", and "& broken accents." The goal of the piece is to not only make the reader realize the structure of the Patchwork Girl as a whole but also realize all the pieces that must be "patched" together in order to create one unified structure. Each segment leads down a trail that takes the story in multiple directions through various linking words and images. Jackson uses recurring graveyard imagery in order to continually invite the reader to resurrect Mary Shelley's monster.
In Mary Shelley's original, Victor Frankenstein begins the creation of a female companion for his monster, but destroys the second effort prior to completion. In Jackson's version, the female monster is completed by Mary Shelley herself. The woman and her creation become lovers; the creature then travels to America, where she pursues a variety of adventures before disintegrating after a 175-year lifetime. Individual sections also explore the lives of some of the women whose corpses contributed body parts to the creature. The work is an oft-cited example of
cyberfeminism
Cyberfeminism is a feminist approach which foregrounds the relationship between cyberspace, the Internet, and technology. It can be used to refer to a philosophy, methodology or community. The term was coined in the early 1990s to describe the w ...
—"If you want to see the whole," one passage reads, "you will have to piece me together yourself." Furthermore, Jackson's use of hypertext "enables us to recognize the degree to which the qualities of collage—particularly those of appropriation, assemblage, concatenation, and the blurring of limits, edges, and borders—characterize a good deal of the way we conceive of gender and identity."
In reflecting on the structural impact of hypertext on ''Patchwork Girl'', Jackson wrote:
Influences
The narrative is based on two books:
Mary Shelley
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (; ; 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English novelist who wrote the Gothic novel '' Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus'' (1818), which is considered an early example of science fiction. She also ...
's ''
Frankenstein
''Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus'' is an 1818 novel written by English author Mary Shelley. ''Frankenstein'' tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a sapient creature in an unorthodox scientific ...
'' and ''
The Patchwork Girl of Oz
''The Patchwork Girl of Oz'' by L. Frank Baum is a children's novel, the seventh in the Oz series. Characters include the Woozy, Ojo "the Unlucky", Unc Nunkie, Dr. Pipt, Scraps (the patchwork girl), and others. The book was first published o ...
'' by
L. Frank Baum
Lyman Frank Baum (; May 15, 1856 – May 6, 1919) was an American author best known for his children's books, particularly ''The Wonderful Wizard of Oz'' and its sequels. He wrote 14 novels in the ''Oz'' series, plus 41 other novels (not includ ...
.
Jackson's work includes quotations from the novels of both Shelley and Baum, plus material from
Jacques Derrida,
Donna Haraway
Donna J. Haraway is an American Professor Emerita in the History of Consciousness Department and Feminist Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a prominent scholar in the field of science and technology studies. Sh ...
, and other writers.
''Patchwork Girl'' is categorized as a
Borgesian structure of information, due to its
non-linearity
In mathematics and science, a nonlinear system is a system in which the change of the output is not proportional to the change of the input. Nonlinear problems are of interest to engineers, biologists, physicists, mathematicians, and many othe ...
. The work reflects the hypertext labyrinth originally expressed in Borges' "
Garden of Forking Paths", since the choices in the narrative allow multiple paths of experience.
The Gothic
''Patchwork Girl'' is a continuation of Mary Shelley's ''Frankenstein'', and therefore definitively a Gothic tale. There is much emphasis placed on the gruesome sewing-together of Patchwork Girl and the functioning of her borrowed body. The structure and the content of the text closely reflect one another because the piecing-together of Patchwork Girl's physical self features in the narrative as well as the interactive element of the hypertext.
Award nominations
''Patchwork Girl'' was shortlisted for the
Electronic Literature Organization
The Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) is a nonprofit organization "established in 1999 to promote and facilitate the writing, publishing, and reading of electronic literature". It hosts annual conferences, awards annual prizes for works of a ...
fiction award in 2001.
References
{{reflist
External links
*
Patchwork Girl'
Review*
Flickering Connectivities in Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl: The Importance of Media-Specific Analysis', by
N. Katherine HaylesScreen capture video of reading Patchwork Girl
Hypertext
Electronic literature works
Gothic fiction
Frankenstein novels
1995 American novels
1995 novels
1995 science fiction novels