ore certain I was to buy. I wasn=t going to let myself be diminished, neutralizes, by a navy-blue polka-dot sack (Atwood 84).Joan went out of her way to buy clothes that she knew her mother would hate, and that become part of who she was. She did not care about what other people thought of her, for she only wanted to annoy her mother. Joan even went as far as to gorge herself on food, gaining weight in the process, because she knew that her mother despised it. Her goal was to be her mother=s antithesis, and she devoted a large part, if not all, of who she was to doing just that. It is not until Joan is motivated by money that she decides to lose wight, and it is not until she has moved away from her mother that she starts doing things based on what she wants to do instead of what her mother does not want her to do. Joan=s relationship with her father was quite different from the one with her mother. They rarely spoke; in fact, they barely had a relationship at all. Joan felt as though her mother drove a wedge between her and her father, but that turns out not to be the case. Once Joan returns home because of her mother=s death, she learns that is was not her mother who drove them apart: AWe had been silent conspirators all our lives, and now that the need for silence was removed, we couldn=t think of anything to say to each other@ (Atwood 180). Joan=s Asilent@ identity when it comes to her father stems from their lack of a relationship. With her mother, Joan knew what to expect and she acted out in the opposite of what her mother wanted. However, Joan=s father had no expectations for her (at least not ones that he voiced). Joan had nothing to react to, therefore, she had no identity while with him. Joan=s relationship with her father is the only one where she did not act in response to or anticipation of another person=s opinions and wants. After meeting Paul, or the Polish Count, in London, Joan acts in a way that he will ...
