The Siamese Self in Barbara Gowdy’s “Sylvie”

Barbara Gowdy, one of the lesser-studied Canadian writers of short stories, is the author of We So Seldom Look on Love (1997). This collection highlights figures of the grotesque, where transgression, indetermination, and excess are modalities that allow her to explore the complexities of being human. In “Sylvie,” the eponymous main character is doubled through the Siamese twin attached to her abdomen in the form of two small, hanging legs: her sister ‘Sue.’ This image of the self, doubled specifically at the level of the pelvis, allows for the exploration of excess as it figures in the Lacanian perspective on female sexuality. Following Copjec, a Lacanian critic who asserts that a woman “lives herself—enjoys her body—as if it were not her own but another’s, as if she were the double of another,” this contribution means to demonstrates that Sue functions as a libidinal part-object that is constitutive of Sylvie’s sense of self and her ability to desire. This proposition leads—through questions of doubling, memory, seeing and being seen—in an exploration of how ‘Sue’ and ‘Sylvie’ are situated in the discourses of various others, from parental figures to indifferent others, and finally tragically, to a significant romantic love interest.