A Study Of Spatial Relationships In Janice Galloway’s The Trick Is To Keep Breathing

Janice Galloway,a significant Scottish avant-garde writer,always focuses on women’s topics and truly shows the current situation of Scottish women in her novels.Though adopting a feminist perspective,Galloway’s novels are not limited to the conventional feminist mode.Her novels principally fix on modern topics such as women’s body,female working class and Scottish national identity as well as rely on experimental literary techniques and humorous language,which highlights the marginalized status of Scottish women and criticizes contemporary society that confines women’s movements and ignores their identity.The Trick is to Keep Breathing is Galloway’s first novel which explores deeply the life of Scottish women.Through the exquisite description of the protagonist Joy Stone’s gradual descent into depression,the novel reflects the plight of Scottish women in the spaces shrouded by patriarchy and capitalist system.This thesis,based on the spatial theories of Merleau Ponty,Michel Foucault and Gabriel Zoran,analyzes the protagonist’s contradictory,oppressed and exploratory relationships with body-space,power-space and text-space.When facing life difficulties,Joy Stone is fragile but brave,helpless but tough.She loses her self-worth and female consciousness in a series of blows but redefines her identity and embarks on the road of self-healing in the end,which conveys Galloway’s support for women’s strength and implies her active exploration of breaking the constraints of society on Scottish women.Through the analysis of the protagonist’s relationships with regard to three spaces,this thesis aims to reveal the obstacles in Scottish women’s struggles to define self-knowledge and achieve self-worth,as well as to express Janice Galloway’s vision of redefining women’s position and building a fair social structure.