摘 要

萨拉•帕坎南以塑造都市女性形象著称，她能够真实地刻画都市女性在当代社会的迷茫与挣扎。在《世上另一个我》这本小说中，帕坎南以其轻松有力的文笔和明快的节奏描写了主人公林赛在家庭、职场以及爱情中的自我矛盾与自我成长。本文探讨了林赛的自我身份丧失与追寻，包括家庭归属感、事业中自我满足感以及爱情中安全感的缺失和林赛在认识自我和接受自我之后自我身份重构的过程和结果。对林赛自我身份追寻之路的研究不仅有助于更好地了解萨拉•帕坎南系列作品中的主题及女性形象，而且有助于帮助当代女性在家庭、婚姻和事业中合理定位，解决其相对于男性作为弱势一方的迷茫与困惑。

关键词：《世上另个我》；自我身份；丧失；重建

Abstract

Famous for shaping the images of urban women, Sarah Pekkanen is able to truly describe the confusion and struggles of the urban females in the contemporary society. In the novel “The Opposite of Me”, Pekkanen describes Lindsey’s self-conflict and self-growth in family, workplace and love with easy and exquisite words and bright and simple rhythm. This paper explores the loss and pursuit of Lindsey’s self-identity, consisting of the loss of family attachment, self-satisfaction in career and security in love affairs as well as the process and results of Lindsey’s self-identity reconstruction after recognizing the self and accepting the self. The study of Lindsey’s self-identity will not only contribute to the better understanding of the theme and female images in Pekkanen’s series, but also help contemporary women locate themselves properly in family, marriage and career, effectively solving their uneasiness and confusion as the weak side relative to men.

Key Words： The Opposite of Me; self-identity; loss; reconstruction

Contents

1 Introduction 1

1.1 The author and her works 1

1.2 Literature review 2

2 Lindsey’s Loss of Self-identity 4

2.1 Lindsey’s loss of attachment to family 4

2.2 Lindsey’s loss of self-satisfaction in career 6

2.3 Lindsey’s loss of security in love affairs 7

3 Lindsey’s Reconstruction of Self-identity 9

3.1 Lindsey’s recovery of family attachment 9

3.2 Lindsey’s realization of self-value in career 11

3.3 Lindsey’s reconsideration of true love 12

4 Conclusion 14

References 15

The Road of Self-identity

Pursuit of Lindsey

1 Introduction

1.1 The author and her works

Sarah Pekkanen is considered as one of the most popular female writers with her easy and powerful writing as well as a clear-cut rhythm. Known as urban female mind-healing tutor, she can, on most occasions, describe the true disposition in the warmest way. Sarah created her first book, Miscellaneous Tales and Poems, when she was 10 years old. During her elementary school, Sarah’s organizational skills had been improved slightly. After college, she worked as a journalist and a correspondent afterwards, both of which are related to writing. Having left her journalism job, Sarah started writing a column for Bethesda Magazine and then began to be occupied in novels.

In most of her famous novels, Sarah Pekkanen has been discussing how women pursue happiness in the cites where they work hard. And the contents are closely linked with such popular vocabularies as “girlfriend”, “inferiority”, “depression”, “derailment”, “happiness” and other words in contemporary society. Exposed to unprecedented life stress, modern urban women in her novels experience psychological anxiety, eager for a warm embrace but failing in vain. Ultimately, these women realize that to be truly happy, they could only learn to love themselves, abandon the self-centered concept, and know how to cherish what they have already possessed. Furthermore, they accept the fact that all the uneasiness is nothing, and all people should live under the same rule that “They are the ordinary struggling for their dream”, which is stated in These Girls (Pekkanen, 2013: 5). As for her writing style, Sarah Pekkanen is expert in utilizing language flexibly, in particular, expressing ideas with easy and exquisite words.

So far, Sarah Pekkanen has already produced about 19 books altogether and now is the internationally-bestselling author of the novels The Opposite of Me (2010), Skipping A Beat (2011) and These Girls (2012). The Opposite of Me is her most prominent masterpiece in shaping urban female figures. This novel tells a story of Lindsey’s breaking into a butterfly. In this delicate and realistic story, readers can see the young urban woman’s torment and entanglement, expectation and loss in the United States.

29-year-old Lindsey Rose has, for as long as she could remember, lives in the shadow of her ravishingly pretty fraternal twin sister, Alex. She is trapped in the question “Who am I and who am I supposed to be?” Determined to get noticed, Lindsey tries to keep her figure as the smart one. She studies hard at school and works like a machine after years of eighty-plus-hour weeks, migraines, and profound loneliness, because she thinks that smartness is her life label. Being successful, she can surpass Alex and get the parents’ favor. Nevertheless, during just one devastating night, Lindsey’s carefully constructed life implodes. She fails in getting the position of creative vice president. Humiliated, she escapes the glitter of Manhattan and retreats to the time warp of her parents’ Maryland home. What’s worse, her admirer, Bradley is gradually caught in Alex’s charm after just one encounter. But things begin to change when Lindsey envisages herself and relocate her identity. Alex’s sudden disease and a long-held family secret force Lindsey to reconsider who she is and who she is meant to be. The appearance of May helps her regain career satisfaction. Meanwhile, Matt’s perseverance and sincerity demonstrate what is true love to her.

For Lindsey, life is a hard journey to find herself after overcoming the emotional entanglements interwoven with love and hatred. And finally, Lindsey realizes her full harvest in sisterhood, career and love.

1.2 Literature review

This novel was published in 2010. The study on it has only lasted for six years. The limited time determines that there exist limited studies. After searching on CNKI, Yahoo and EBSCO, only about 50 essays could be found. These articles mainly highlight the contradictory feeling of love and jealousy which the twins hold towards each other. And other essays probe into this book from the perspective of feminism.

At abroad, studies mainly focus on the theme and the contradictory feeling of love and jealousy which the twins hold towards each other. For example, Courtney Webb analyzes the relationship of siblings, as well as the sibling rivalry and identity in her book review on New York Journal of Books, an online book review site(2010). “It is a novel about twins who are 29 years old and trying to find their true self”, just as Denise states in Goodreads website (2013).