Beverley Farmer's Embrace of the Mirror

Abstract

In 'A Body of Water', Beverley Farmer states that "Mostly the men in my stories have nothing to give the women: they are cold, selfish, vindictive" (153). Farmer presents this as a limitation produced through the personal investment of the writer, so that "They have turned to ice at my touch, like the lover's warm sleeping flesh in the embrace of the mirror" (153). The "embrace of the mirror" is a motif that characterizes Farmer's writing in terms of the relationships she presents. The gender issues revealed through these relationships are characterized by feelings of coldness, otherness, and love, being a reflection of the self which only serves to emphasize its "selfish' nature. The woman's role is typically maternal, and she fulfills a nurturing function that is never reciprocated. Instead, in the male she confronts an icy reflection of her own needs: the "embrace of the mirror." For the woman, a mirror or the related form of a window or glass that reflects a self-image serves a Lacanian function of providing definition through the search for an impossible romantic ideal. And equally, the form of the stories as both embedded narratives and interlinked tales that mirror each other means that the narrative structure also contributes, not only to the layering effect, but to the idea of self-reflection and self-reflexivity.