Atwood's central theme in [Lady Oracle and Dancing Girls] is the "self,"… a complex and fascinating mixture of reality and fantasy. Playing a part, or, as Atwood would put it, dancing a role, involves difficult decisions. Mainly it means choosing between a private and a public life…. Both in Lady Oracle and Dancing Girls the "self" competes with one or more "roles" for center stage.
With characteristic wit, Atwood explores the tensions involved in the fractured identity of the artist in Lady Oracle. The first overlay of Joan's real self occurs as a result of her mother's determined imposition of two mutually inconsistent roles on her daughter…. Responding early in life to what others need her to be, she becomes devious in her efforts to preserve the real self within from annihilation. Recognition of this real self comes only from her Aunt Lou…. Through Aunt Lou's support, moral and financial, Joan is able to fly by the nets her mother casts, reducing to normal size, moving to London and changing her name to that of her Aunt Lou—Louisa K. Delacourt. Through this new name, Joan adopts another identity, not one inflicted upon her, but one, as her surname suggests, "fostered" by identification with the Aunt she has idealized. And, like Aunt Lou, she writes; not editorial letters to girls in distress, but tales of girls in distress in Costume Gothic novels…. (pp. 36-7)
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