Women's self-portrait as self-discovery: Negotiating the gap between seeing and being seen in Drusila Modejeska's "The Orchard" (1994)

Abstract

The Australian author Drusilla Modjeska combines historical and fictional characters to weave the text of her 3rd book, The Orchard (1994), which plays with two genres, the novel and the essay. The lives of women painters and their fight to pursue their careers are used to illustrate the conflicts in which the fictional characters are immersed. These painters' self-portraits become a way to explore their identities and a vehicle to achieve self-express ion by negotiating the gap between seeing and being seen. The difficult relation of women with the visual and with identity is laid down for analysis, while the author proposes a solution, attainable only after a period of solitude.