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With a Woman's Voice by Lucy Daniels is a many-layered collage of stories collectively unraveling the mystery manifested in her anorexia. Lucy Daniels includes childhood vignettes tangled with US history; insights into mental hospital culture; love stories; dream analyses; and chronicles of an evolving writer. You will feel you know Lucy well by the closing chapter. It may take a while longer to discern where your sympathies lie regarding her significant relationships.
Discussion Questions:
- Lucy struggled with femininity. How did this both help and inhibit her as a writer?
- Does the contrast in formality of Lucy's name for her parents influence her relationship with "Mommy" vs. "Father"?
- How did Mommy influence Lucy's self image? How did Father influence Lucy's self image?
- Which of the doctor episodes gave you a sense of hope?
- How did Lucy's problem with her eyes influence her life?
- Besides Mommy and Father, who in Lucy's family hurt her significantly?
- Father asserted that Lucy was unfeeling, his "boy", and selfish. Was he observing or assigning these qualities?
- Did use of dream interpretations enhance the unveiling of Lucy's psychoanalysis?
- Did Mommy's dimple remind you of a physical characteristic in one of your parents?
- How did Mommy's rules compare to authority in your childhood?
- By the time you finish the book, do you feel Daniels really wrote a trilogy inside one set of covers? (change in tone from childhood chapters to hospital chapters to the last several chapters)
Last updated: 02/10/03
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