Voice and Identity in the Fairy Tale: Emma Donoghue's Kissing the Witch

Abstract

This paper aims at analysing the relationship between voice and identity in Donoghue's collection of revised fairy tales Kissing the Witch. Such analysis will focus on the connections between the construction of identity, in which the fairy tale plays a fundamental role, and the narratological process. This work will consider firstly the difficulties encountered by a non-fictional telling of the self, when dealing with narrative elements which come from the voice of the Other, and the internalisation of the Other's voice in the construction of self identity, countenancing the legal implications that the concepts of voice and identity, and voice as identity, entail. The analysis moves onto Donoghue's fairy tales as an example of such relationship, which is made clear by the intertextual connections between the thirteen tales of the collection itself. Donoghue uses the female voice for the construction, development, affirmation and even nihilation of her protagonists' identities. This paper will investigate the meaning of vocal emissions through thoughts and songs, as well as the meaning of the lack of such emissions, indicating an aware suppression of the woman's personal identity, dictated by a long tradition of phallocratic supremacy.