Eat, Pray, Love : Confronting and Reconstructing Female Identity

EAT, PRAY, LOVE: CONFRONTING AND RECONSTRUCTING FEMALE IDENTITY
6 
In third wave feminism, a greater emphasis is placed on individual action and 
empowerment over the collective action that marked the second wave movement (Hammers, 
2005; Orr, 1997; Shugart, 2001; Walker, 1995). According to the third wave philosophy, women 
are “responsible to and for themselves, not representative of and thus beholden to generations of
women past, present, and future” (Shugart, 2001, p. 133). As Hammers (2005) further explains, 
in the third wave of feminism, “change is directed at the level of the individual experience” (p. 
170) and women are now empowered to create their own subjective meanings about the world.
Knudson (2011) adds that
: “Key social structures that have in the past provided individuals with 
guidance on their relationships and general life direction (such as the church) have lost cultural 
potency….[and that] families, in
timate relationships, jobs, and career trajectories have also 
become increasingly insecure or unclear”(p. 66). She concludes that “since women have 
experienced the most significant changes most directly, they may also be the most likely to 
wrestle with is
sues of identity and life purpose” (Knudson, 2011, p. 66). Walker (1995) echoes 
this sentiment by offering that women in the third wave are always “seeking to create identities 
that accommodate ambiguity and our multiple personalities: including more than excluding, 
exploring more than defining, searching more than arriving” (p. xxxiii).
And as bell hooks 
(1991) asserted, challenging “notions of universality and static over
-determined identity within 
mass culture and mass consciousness can open up new pos
sibilities for the construction of self” 
(p. 28). In other words, as a result of postmodernism and the deconstruction of the conditions 
and structures that women previously used to co-create their identity (i.e. the absence of a 
prescribed, fixed view of social identity), the number of contradictions within and possibilities 
for new identities increases, which explains part of Gilbert’s exigence in the text.

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EAT, PRAY, LOVE: CONFRONTING AND RECONSTRUCTING FEMALE IDENTITY
7 
Some of the most recent research on third wave feminism comes from Sonja and Karen 
Foss (2009) who 
based a new “repowered” definition of feminism largely on self
-empowerment. 
They explain that the new feminism is defined as: "the effort to make conscious, deliberate 
choices to create the kind of world in which we want to live using all of the creativity, resilience, 
and resources available to us" (Foss & Foss, 2009, p. 45). They go on to explain that this 
definition, “is rooted in a deliberate and conscious decolonization of the mind whereby 
individuals disconnect from hegemonic ways of thinking, believing, and acting and choose new 
ways that do not depend on dominant ideologies” (p. 45). It not only allows for the "pursuit of 
what has not yet been thought" but, as Meyer (2007) asserted, it also pushes us not to "rest 
content with any identity
—
even one we have helped produce" (p. 45). As Carrillo Rowe (2009) 
points out, this definition is also notable for its "metaphysical account of power and agency that 
emphasize[s] deliberate creation and focus on our agency and our responsibility for creating our 
own lives" (p. 20). 
Since women are now empowered to form their identities largely on individual values 
and beliefs, as opposed to a prescribed view on the roles they should adopt in society, how do 
they make sense of their place in the world and construct new identities
? In Gilbert’s case, her 
existential crisis prompted her to deconstruct her previous identity as an unhappily-married wife 
and writer, and set out on a solo journey to reconstruct an identity that was more authentically 
her. Next, we will turn to some research that illuminates the approach and resources that Gilbert 
draws from in the process of creating this new identity.