Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Andre Dubus's 1977 short story 'The Fat Girl' engages with powerful fluctuating feelings of pain, struggle, and distress through the depiction of a young woman's embodied experience in a society that is shaped by prescriptive concepts of embodiment. By portraying the protagonist Louise's journey towards self-discovery, the story probes into the act of reclaiming the body from restrictive societal norms as an empowering experience which, as this essay argues, serves as a healing strategy. Thus, the second line of argument of the essay rests upon the idea of resistance to abiding gender roles against the backdrop of a stifling marriage, which is further enhanced by subtle allusions within the narrative to Kate Chopin's renowned 1894 short story 'The Story of an Hour', particularly concerning the representation of each protagonist's, namely each Louise's, empowering responses to her repressive marital circumstances. Accordingly, this essay seeks to identify and explore the textual echoes of Chopin's critique of the institution of marriage in 'The Fat Girl' within a critical framework that juxtaposes feminist perspectives on the body with health humanities. In doing so, the work aims to retrace the assertion of individuality as a liberatory gateway to self-realisation and self-satisfaction in a modern setting.
