The Theme of the Double Self and the Rewriting of the Myth of the Androgyne in Orlanda, by Jacqueline Harpman

Abstract

Jacqueline Harpman’s Orlanda is a new look on the female representation; it re-veals the story of an unsuccessful attempt to rise to the origins of androgynous unity of the human being, through the devel-opment of a fiction based on the Greek myth placed in a modern context. Orlan-da, a tragic split character who has chosen to follow the Dionysian path and superfi-cial way of life, becomes the figure of an effeminate male angel-demon who em-bodies the undecidable complexity of hu-man personality, passions and social herit-age. The failure waits for him at the end of that trip started in Parisian «gare du Nord», as it cannot be any real transgres-sion in a world organized, often despite appearances, on genre bipolarity.