My Dark Vanessa

In her novel My Dark Vanessa, Kate Elizabeth Russell confirmed the renewing of feminine identity through the cognitive experience of the main character Vanessa and her viewpoint of her body, her poetic language and her existential choices. In particular, Vanessa calmly resisted the effects of her old rape at the secondary school by Strane. Therefore, Kate Elizabeth's novel produced some feminine themes, such as the virginal feelings of Vanessa, her old joyful childhood and her gradual development of feminine identity beyond the negative emotions which were associated with bad sexual experience at that age.

The narrator directly entered us in Vanessa's internal world, her point of view of the events or the others and her cognitive development towards the harmonious and natural feminine presence beyond the impact of the past. Additionally, we can recognize the poetic, feminine world of Vanessa through the signs of her daydreams, the psychological impact of some colors, like red, blue or black, the inner impact of Nabokov's Lolita, the surreal effect of masks in the Halloween and her original joy with the dog Mya.

Furthermore, the work confirmed the concept of meta textuality according to Genette, that the novel returned to Nabokov's Lolita and Pale Fire in a counter feminine viewpoint which discovered her consciousness and unconsciousness. Therefore, the novel added several interpretations of this complex state behind text, imagination and reality.

In a postmodern context, we can recognize some internal discordances which associated with the tones of other texts, that we notice the state of Lolita in the context of individual female choices, also, we reveal the tone irony of Pale Fire in some absurd moments behind the events. Further, Vanessa returned to the world of Emily Dickinson and her poem I'm Nobody, that she focused on the absence, but she, also, wanted to renew her individual and creative identity at the same time. Also, we can read Shakespeare's Falstaff in the context of the renewed forbidden seduction or the glare of the literary text in the modern life.

According to the actantial model of Greimas, we can notice that the subject wanted to go beyond the past. Further, she found some supporters, such as Dr. Henry and Janine. On the other hand the opponent was the old teacher Strane and his spectres in her memory. Additionally, Vanessa wanted to see the harmonious feminine presence in her friend, at the end, as a receptor.