Character Criticism In Porcelain

Psychoanalytic theory suggests that everyone has at least one “core issue” or underlying cause for a continued self destructive behavior. In the short story “Porcelain” by Henrietta Rose-Innes, Marion, the main character, has the Core Issue of an Unstable Sense of Self. Marion watched as a young girl, her mother go mad with her mental illness and eventually, kill herself. Now at an older age, Marion realizes that she is like her mother; she has her illness. This abruptly turned her previous happiness into an unrelenting fear that controls her life. In a desperate attempt to regain control and stability in her life, she visits her mother's sisters; going back her roots to try and grasp onto the person she once was. With a sudden loss of self …show more content…
A place she always felt was safe. Her roots are something she knows for sure about her shaken identity. On of her Aunts, Aunt Amelia, or Aunt A, has the hobby of putting back together broken pottery that is found on the shore of the ocean near their house. Marion collects the shards of porcelain for her, and watches as Aunt A piece by piece tries to reassemble to the best of her ability, the broken pottery. When Marion leaves to return to her home, Aunt A gives her a gift. When safely home, but still unsure of herself, and her illness, she opens the gift and sees one of Aunt A’s half put together pottery. Each chipped piece of porcelain put back together to the best of Aunt A’s ability. Marion inspects the pottery, “Running her finger over the smoothed-off edges, she poked her fingertips into the gaps, feeling the parts that would always be missing, and the parts that were whole again” (Rose-Innes, 46). As Marion reflects on her illness, and the pot, she is relieved by the comparison. When Marion realized she was destined to the same fate as her mother, her world was broken into a million tiny pieces, losing her identity. However visiting her Aunts, and reminding herself that she is loved, and cared for, slowly put her pieces back together, one by one. Just like the broken porcelain had been reassembled back into the pot. This is not only the resolution in the story, but the resolution Marion gets in that moment for her illness. Her core issue of an unstable sense of self, is resolved for the moment when she remembers where she came from and who she