Shelley Jackson's "Patchwork Girl" is not only a magnificent example of hypertext narration but an insightful commentary on the genre as well. Jackson turns her Patchwork Girl into a symbol of hypertext as well as the creative process.
When you open the program, you are presented with an image of a woman, presumably the titular character.(Fig 1) You are then brought to the title page, which presents the options of Graveyard, Journal, Quilt and Story(Fig 2). The story is the Patchwork Girl's story, from her creation to her travels in America to her eventual death. The story is mostly linear though there are many possibilities for diverging, especially as the story goes on and becomes more and mote complex. Often I got confused as to what words were clickable and which were not, as they all appeared the same. Luckily pressing the ctrl button played red boxes around the links (Fig 3). The journal was Mary Shelley's (the fictionalized Mary Shelley's) journal from the time she created the patchwork girl. I particularly enjoyed the joining of the two narratives by the use of links that went between the two. Quilt was interesting, it spliced and resewed different text excerpts, from sources as varied as Frank Baum, Mary Shelley, Derrida and studies on psychology. The lexias in this section illuminated the different sources of inspiration Jackson drew upon and the ways that writing this piece was like 'quilting' from previous texts. In Graveyard, you are encouraged to learn the stories of the men and women whom the Patchwork Girl was sewn from, and make connections as to how their personalities had a role in shaping the Patchwork Girl.
One of the major themes of this story is feminine expectations and non-standard female behavior. Though these themes continue to be very real issues for most women today, in Marry Shelley’s time the idea of being a woman was set in even more confining terms. The Patchwork Girl was not only made larger than most woman, so that she was easier to piece together and sew, but her liver and one of her feet are from men. She is also clumsy and lacks the grace, poise and skills required to be seen as a woman in this time. She claims right off the bat that many mistake her for a transsexual. In a moment of dramatic irony, she enlists Chancy, a cabin boy, to teach her to be more feminine. Chancy later reveals himself to be a woman, who dressed as a man after her father died; if she stayed a woman she would have to marry or become a nun or a whore, but as a man, she could travel the world as she had always dreamed.
We also see the novel’s feminist themes in the contrast between the fictionalized Mary Shelley and Victor Frankenstein. Victor Frankenstein creates with science, with electricity. He does it for revenge, but he is so horrified by his creation that he runs from it. Jackson’s Mary Shelley character is different though, she creates to nurture, it is not to prove that she can but she seems aware of how weighty a life is and the responsibility that accompanies creating life. She sews and writes her creation, and instead ofdisgust and fear, Shelly feels live, first a maternal love and eventually a romantic sort of love for her creation. The difference in their reactions seems to be based on their gender, Mary Shelley is mothering, biologically tuned to nurturing.
We also see the idea of quilting throughout the text, not only is a whole section of the piece labeled “A Quilt” but the Patchwork Girl herself is quilted together, both the character and the hypertext. The confusion between influences and the confusion between creation and creator is also expressed through the quilt, as well as the character of a fictionalized Shelley Jackson and the influence that the former lives of the Patchwork Girl had upon her personality. We also see the theme of regeneration of text through the quilting as well as the nature of hypertext. Patchwork Girl is brought to life by combining parts of different people, as the text is brought to life by combining parts and ideas from other texts, regenerating them in a way and making something new of them. But the text is also ‘brought to life’ by the hypertext format, with it’s intertextuality, nonlinearity and multiple levels make the text dynamic and in a way, living. This idea is expressed in a lexia titled “Interrupting Derrida” (Fig 4) in which it appears Jackson is well , interrupting philosopher and literary critic,Jacques Derrida, famous for his ideas on language, written and spoken. Though their monologues seem to run parallel to one another, lacking any sort of connection, it seems that Derrida is writing about how written words are dead and irrelevant, Jackson is retorting with the possibility of rejuvination, and bringing the written word back to life, which is exactly what she seems to do with Patchwork Girl.
Patchwork Girlis a brilliant example of hypertext, as it not only tells a compelling story, but plays with the possibility of hypertext and explores it’s implications both in the story and its extradiagetic elements.
