Eat, Pray, Love : Confronting and Reconstructing Female Identity

Reconstructing and Transcending Identity 
While formally published within the past year, Foss and Foss’s (2011) paradigm of 
constructed potentiality is based on several intersecting theories from various disciplines that 

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EAT, PRAY, LOVE: CONFRONTING AND RECONSTRUCTING FEMALE IDENTITY
8 
have emerged over the past six decades. Drawing from the wide ranging fields of 
communication, psychology, philosophy, religion, cultural studies, and quantum physics, Foss 
and Foss (2011) offered the paradigm of constructed potentiality as an alternative means for 
generating change and relieving various forms of exigence where “in
dividuals focus on symbolic 
resources and use interpretation to change their own internal states
” (p. 205) instead of focusing 
solely on material, or outside resources. Through choices of interpretation sought from internal 
sources, the Fosses argue, an endless supply of possibilities is available to the individual for 
ways of creating change and transcending their circumstances. In addition, they say looking to 
“others’ perspectives can [also] be seen as beneficial rather than detrimental to individuals’ 
t
hinking because they provide diverse ideas about how to interpret conditions” (p. 230). 
In other 
words, instead of individuals looking to outside material conditions for their identity and well-
being, they can seek the symbolic resources of new perspectives (both internal and external) - but 
in the end, “they assume responsibility for generating well
-
being themselves” (Foss & Foss, 
2011, p. 216). 
In looking at Gilbert’s personal narrative, we can immediately see how this paradigm is 
especially useful in understanding how she transforms herself throughout her journey. As I 
discuss later in this paper, she uses the symbolic resources of Yogi wisdom, the stories of 
strangers and a reframing of her own emotions to re-interpret both her identity and what 
happiness looks like for her. While various people and cultures she encounters along the way 
present her with these new possibilities for changing her life, she takes the responsibility for 
interpreting, choosing and actualizing these possibilities.

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EAT, PRAY, LOVE: CONFRONTING AND RECONSTRUCTING FEMALE IDENTITY
9 
METHODOLOGY 
This study involves a narrative analysis of Eat, Pray, Love 
using Walter Fisher’s 
narrative rationality as well as the extensions of his assessment framework offered by William 
Kirkwood (1992) and Scott Stroud (2002). Through this analysis I will show how Gilbert focuses 
on both symbolic, internal resources as well as outside possibilities to reconstruct a new identity 
for herself following an early-onset midlife crisis. A narrative analysis is a compelling method 
for studying these messages in 
Gilbert’s personal narrative
since stories can reveal the 
complexities and rich accounts of identity as well as the process of identity creation (Webster & 
Matrova, 2007; Kirkwood, 1983). As Kirkwood (1992) offers,
“Through storytelling, rhetors can con
front the states of awareness and intellectual beliefs 
of audiences; through it they can show them previously unsuspected ways of being and 
acting in the world. Furthermore, stories
…can expand an audience’s moral responsibility 
by showing them they are fr
eer and more capable that previously imagined” (
Kirkwood, 
1992, p. 32).
In addition, since individual female subjects are left to forge their own identities based on 
individual values in light of postmodern, third wave influences, personal stories become a 
powerful vehicle for identity exploration in the absence of one fixed, prescribed view of 
“woman.” 
Through sharing their personal narratives, women 
may “discover new self
-perceptions 
and strengths that fall outside previous ‘problem saturated’ or negative constructions, held either 
by themselves or others” (Williams, Labonte & O’Brien, 2003, p. 36). 
Storytelling has an 
especially important impact on marginalized groups of women who may not have had these 
possibilities presented to them otherwise (Williams, 2001; James, 1996, Sarup, 1996). Given 

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