Caminar en fantasía: lo liso, el cuento de hadas y la nómada en Eggshells de Caitriona Lally

Abstract

Based on the notion of a “nomad”, a concept taken from the theory on the Smooth Space by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, in this article I analyse the representation of Vivian Lawlor, the protagonist of Catriona Lally’s novel Eggshells (2014), by means of her walks through Dublin. While this city works as the counterpoint to the Smooth Space (i. e., the Striated Space), I propose that Vivian, given her “manner of being in space, of being for space” (Deleuze y Guattari, 2005: 482), embodies the figure of the nomad as she reterritorializes it. In a diegetical level, this middle-age unemployed female, who lives on welfare and does not take care of her appearance, dotes the Irish capital with another layer of meaning. She does so by believing that she is a changeling⎯a fairy in the folkloric tradition of the country⎯and, therefore, by actively walking through the city looking for portals that will transport her to her alleged place of origin. Vivian has the certainty that she is a magical entity due to the corporeal and emotional violence that her parents exerted upon her as a child. Thus, as she strolls, she is also taking a stance regarding her identity as the Other⎯an action that has an impact in an extradiegetical level. In other words, Vivian’s walks through Dublin are not only literal, but also metaphorical: they become a confrontation of certain standards of femininity, which for the purpose of this article are representative of the Striated Space. For this analysis, I study Lally’s appropriation of the fundamental characteristics of the fairy tale because the fantastical element fosters the transformation of the protagonist and, therefore, grounds her condition as a nomad.