Hypertext may seem like a foreign concept upon first glance. However, once immersed in the material, it becomes obvious that it's not so different from what we're already familiar with. Previous experiences, such as reading a book, guide the reader to figure out how to read the hypertext. Erzinghaus compares it to being in an unfamiliar town. There is the impulse to explore the routes and paths that take you to interesting places or simply to get your bearings. No longer in a comfort zone, it's imperative to navigate from point A to point B. The ways to get from point A to point B in a new town are numerous including walking, biking, or some public transportation. In hypertext, it's clicking. Point A and point B are lexias which are comparable to a paragraph or page in a book. Clicking on a word or phrase will lead to a new lexia that has yet to be discovered and that new lexia will also include other words and phrases that continue the path or lead back to the beginning which is known as recurrence and it is "the main way that people perceive a hypertext, the way they learn what contours they may follow and how those contours may change as the document evolves" (Recurrence is not a Vice). It shows how each lexia is connected not just physically but thematically. Seemingly unrelated ideas are sewn together in a patchwork of different ideas that form a story.
Paying attention is essential or else there is the risk of getting lost. Similar to a town, there are standard markers that dictate where to go and what to do like a stop sign. Knowledge of other towns and previous experiences help to know that at a stop sign, stop. This applies to hypertext because the frames of references that lend to figuring it out are experiences of reading things like paragraphs. That's one way of thinking about hypertext; another way "focuses on […] its essential qualities: 'where should the story begin? How will it end? These are two of the primary questions an author must answer when creating any fiction. Hypertext foregrounds such questions of boundaries; in this non-linear environment, the author has the freedom to discard old structural conventions and traditional ideas of closure'" (Carazo & Jimenez, 116) This is another great thing about hypertext: there may be a place to start and a place to end but it can change depending on which lexia the reader is led to. This happens quite often in Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl. Within this story, Jackson "combines the literal and the metaphorical in her reenactment of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, both as an act of bringing back to life and an act of remembering" (Carazo & Jimenez, 116). This hypertext is a difficult concept because it is hard to tell where in space you are, whereas in a book it's all linear, it's constant, and you can reference a paragraph on a certain page and you know where on the page it appears (and Shelley even discusses this idea within Patchwork Girl [this writing, Patchwork Girl]). However difficult it is to grasp, it still has a great theme and some powerful messages.
Jackson's Patchwork Girl is an extremely well-written hypertext that is, in theory, a rewrite of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein with a new perspective and new ideas. There are so many great ideas put forth that it's hard to figure out where to begin talking about them (just like hypertexts!) Before I get deep into the themes and messages, I'll first begin by describing the plot of Patchwork Girl. The character Mary Shelley creates a creature similar to the way Victor Frankenstein creates his creature: she gathers body parts from the deceased and sews them all together into one woman, Patchwork Girl. She has the memories of all the people who have contributed to her so she's very awkward in her movements. She talks about how part of her arm was from a strong woman and the other part was from a delicate and graceful woman so they don't agree with each other (right arm, Patchwork Girl).
While Frankenstein fears his creature, runs from it, and denies it the only thing he ever asked for, Shelley feels compassion for Patchwork Girl and feels as though she owes her, as her creator, guidance and friendship (she stood & infant, Patchwork Girl).
Both Shelley and Patchwork Girl have certain longings. Shelley has a strange desire to be a part of Patchwork Girl in the way that all the others are a part of her. She craves to be with her at all times and thinks about cutting a piece of herself off to sew onto Patchwork Girl so that they may always be together and so that Shelley may live vicariously through Patchwork Girl because she knows that she gets to experience things that Shelley never has and never will. Eventually, Patchwork Girl begins to grow restless within the confines of Shelley's home and she longs to go off to America to experience new things. Contrary to the way Frankenstein destroyed his creature's dream of having a partner like him, Shelley lets Patchwork Girl have her wish of traveling to America even though she does not fully want her to go (treachery and mary, Patchwork Girl).
Before she left, Shelley got her wish and cut off a piece of her leg and sewed it onto Patchwork Girl (crave and female trouble, Patchwork Girl). In her travels to America, Patchwork Girl meets people who she eventually learns are very similar to her. She befriends Chancy who appears to be a man but it is later revealed that he is a woman. She also meets a man who came from a circus claiming to have a tail. He didn't really but when she asks him about it he tells her how he would love to be different and if he really could have a tail that he would do it. She realizes that she's not the only one who is different because she is "manmade" and not born (Manmade, Patchwork Girl).
After she's been living in America for awhile, she begins to fall apart. She tries to keep herself together but she is not able to succeed. The story sort of ends around there but it doesn't really have a finale or any real closure. Then it just goes right back to the beginning, similar to a patchwork quilt where there's no true beginning or end.
The way this story is presented as a hypertext is the best way for it to be told and the only way that it would truly work thematically and for creating a message. Shelley's most obvious theme is the creation of a patchwork in all manners of speaking. First, there is the suggestion that there are many different creators of Patchwork Girl. There is Shelley Jackson who is the actually creator of the piece of fiction. There is Mary Shelley who creates Patchwork Girl in the story and she also created the novel Frankenstein, off of which this hypertext is based. Victor Frankenstein created the creature that Patchwork Girl resembles and there are allusions to his creation and how he felt towards his creation with the hypertext. Patchwork Girl herself is a creator because her identity is completely made up of other people and she is forced to figure out who she is. She even goes as far as trying to buy someone's past to call it her own and she tries to find herself in America, separate from Mary Shelley. Also, the reader is a creator of the story because of the choices about what to click on and when which lead to different lexias and further the story. The reader also must interpret the separate parts of the story into a whole and make connections. All of these creators are like the pieces that make a quilt: they don't have any real relation as separate pieces but once they're assembled as a whole then the connections are apparent.
Another message that Jackson creates pertains to a feminist perspective. There are several lexias that have a subtle indication that women are subservient to men and not considered equals. There are small, subtle indications of this in the lexia "crave" and "female trouble" when Shelley says how she "jumps up restless from Percy's side" (Crave, Patchwork Girl). This would not appear to be weird if in "female trouble" she doesn't talk about how "Percy wonders what is wrong with her; [she] allude[s] to 'feminine complaints' and he delicately withdraws" and how she wishes to throw a tantrum but she can't show her anger and she must be confined to self-preservation or else they will think she is crazy. She also wishes that she could be like Patchwork Girl because she can live any life she wants while Shelley cannot. She is envious of her and she can only live through Patchwork Girl's experiences. Also, when she talks about wanting to cut off a piece of herself to sew onto Patchwork Girl, she has to consider a part of her that her husband won't notice and miss as if she does not have a say over anything even her own body (crave female trouble, Patchwork Girl).
Patchwork Girl comes right out and says how women are not meant to have their own lives and that the only belonging associated with them is belonging to someone, as in a father or a husband (I am, Patchwork Girl).
One last part where Jackson comments on a part in Frankenstein that seems to make men seem extremely powerful. She says in basket, "Has it not struck you as odd that the whole of a female of stature commensurate with that of her monstrous intended (not to mention a 'great quantity of stones') could be hoisted by one man and borne out to sea—in a basket?" (basket, Patchwork Girl). It is not something that I ever considered when reading Frankenstein but it is an extremely valid point to make that the women in Frankenstein are made out to be frail and weak while Victor has the ability to lift and make something airborne that weighs more than he does.
I never would have given
Patchwork Girl a second glance had I not been introduced to it in this class. I've always been a firm believer in the idea that books are the best way to become more literate and I've never considered that anything else could offer the quality of a story that a book can but after reading Patchwork Girl, I'm much more open to the idea that it doesn't have to be a book to be great literature. In fact, I don't think that Patchwork Girl presented in the form of a book would have had the same effect on me or would have portrayed the same themes that it did in hypertext. Hypertext allows a web of possibilities to open up for interpretation and for reading the story that can only be achieved in this format, and to be honest I'm surprised it wasn't thought of sooner.
Jackson, Shelley. Patchwork Girl. Watertown, MA: Eastgate Systems, 1995. CD-ROM.
Carazo, C. & Jimenez M. "Gathering the Limbs of the Text in Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl." Atlantis, 28.1, 115-129. June 2006.
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