Tool Kit

One of the issues Smith and Watson brings up is the narrator I vs. the narrated I. In other words, they are dissecting how narrators of (auto)biographical writing present themselves in their writing as opposed to their actual persona. Some narrators talk themselves up to be a hero in a story, where others might degrade themselves to make them more relatable to the common reader. In Circling my Mother, Mary Gordon the narrator writes critically of her narrated self. This is apparent when she is describing the scene of taking her mother to the doctor and then having to take her shoes off for her. "I phoned an agency to hire a nurse to tend to her feet every day. I could do it once, but I couldn't endure the possibility of having to do it again and again. The possibility of that made the idea of life unbearable" (219). I am sure the common reader would have a similar gut reaction, but Mary Gordon makes herself out to seem like this horrible person who couldn't even tend to her mother. However the truth of the matter is when medical necessity required added help, anyone would agree to utilize it.