Philippine E-Journals

The Body's Life in Fiction: An Analysis of Alison in Mary Gaitskill's Novel Veronica Through the Lens of Continuum Movement

Gleah Powers

Discipline: Philosophy

 

Abstract:

I reentered the world of academia in my mid-fifties to pursue an MFA degree in Creative Writing. Previously, I had a twenty-five year career as a practitioner and teacher in the alternative healing arts. I was trained and certified in many body and energy work modalities and movement therapies. Ultimately, I developed my own method called Powers Movement, an offshoot of Continuum Movement, the technique I described in the paper.

I wanted my MFA senior lecture and thesis to reflect my extensive background and experience in the somatic arts. When I read Mary Gaitskill's novel, Veronica, I saw a way to juxtapose an academic, typically dry and disembodied, literary analysis of the protagonist, Alison, with a fluid body paradigm as the source of her history, behavior and motivation. It is through Alison's body's story that we see how she is able to find true sensuality, resonance and empathy as the novel progresses.

In the future, I plan to write more literary critiques and reviews from the same somatic perspective that I used with Veronica.