Reconstructing

Universal Identity and Interconnectedness

Another major theme that carries through Gilbert’s personal journey to find a new identity and a more authentic happiness is her discovery of an interconnectedness that she feels both with others and the universe. During her time at the ashram in India, Gilbert learns about the wisdom of the Yogis, who believe that the goal of a spiritual practice is to reintroduce us to our own greatness and to the innate goodness that exists within all of us (Chidvilasananda, 1994). After spending considerable time in complete silence and self-reflection, she comes to realize how this spiritual practice presents a new possibility for her own identity.

“The Yogis…say that human discontentment is a simple case of mistaken identity. We’re miserable because we think that we are mere individuals, alone with our fears and flaws and resentments and mortality. We wrongly believe that our limited little egos constitute our whole entire nature. We have failed to recognize our deeper divine character. We don’t realize that, somewhere within us all, there does exist a supreme Self who is eternally at peace. That supreme Self is our true identity, universal and divine” (Gilbert, 2006, p. 122).
In another example, she explores this concept further in her explanation of the meditation chant, Ham-sa which means “I am that” in Sanskrit:
“The Yogis say that Ham-sa is the most natural mantra, the one we are all given by God before birth…As long as we live, every time we breathe in or out, we are repeating this mantra. I am That. I am divine, I am with God, I am an expression of God, I am not separate, I am not alone, I am not this limited illusion of an individual” (Gilbert, 2006, p. 141-142).
As a product of Western culture and the Judeo-Christian tradition, which positions God or a “higher power” outside of the self, Gilbert is presented with a somewhat conflicting point of view in this concept of the “supreme Self” or universal identity, and its corresponding meditation practice. In other words, the story she is being told doesn’t exactly “ring true” with her own values and beliefs. But if we look to both Kirkwood’s (1992) and Stroud’s (2002) assertions that stories that present new ideas or that conflict with our own values and beliefs can be accepted and acted upon even in the absence of narrative fidelity (Fisher, 1987), we can begin to understand how Gilbert comes to accept and believe in the possibility of a universal identity that is rooted in a higher power and accessible by every living human on the planet.
After her own transcendent experience achieved in meditation, she shares how she comes to accept and believe that she can access, and is part of this universal identity:
“Not only did I feel unhesitating compassion and unity with everything and everybody, it was vaguely and amusingly strange for me to wonder how anybody could ever feel anything but that. I also felt mildly charmed by all my old ideas about who I am and what I’m like. I’m a woman, I come from America, I’m talkative, I’m a writer—all this felt so cute and obsolete. Imagine cramming yourself into such a puny box of identity when you could experience your infinitude instead” (Gilbert, 2006, p. 199-200).
Here, we also see how Gilbert both critiques her individual American identity as limiting, and finds a solution for her identity crisis by symbolically identifying with the universal, infinite identity that we all share, but seldom realize. What is especially powerful about her realization and acceptance of this universal identity is the possibility it presents also to the reader. Given the universal nature of this identity, all audiences – whether male or female, white or black, privileged or not – have the access to identify with it and claim it as their own if they choose; the only pre-requisite is being human. Three prominent feminist scholars have also alluded to the concept of a universal identity in their discussions of interconnectedness. Segrest (2002) asserted that connection with others enables us to be “restored to our lost sense of eternity” (p.
174). Walker (2006) explores this process “as if we are dissolving into everything and everyone around us and we recognize the illusion of separateness” (Walker, 2006). Elshtain (2003) also supports this idea in offering that “we need the possibilities presented to us by others – we are interdependent” (p. 99). While the concepts of universal identity and interconnectedness are central to a multitude of Eastern religions and cultures, feminism can bridge this concept for Western women, especially. Gilbert’s embracing of these concepts is surely an example of how stories – especially those from other cultures – can present us with new ways of thinking and being in the world.
More evidence of this spiritual bridging offered by feminism can be found in Chavez and Griffin’s (2009) conceptualization of female power as one “grounded in a profound cognizance of the interconnections and interdependencies of people, privilege and social/political/economic opportunities” (p. 7-8). Nissim-Sabat (2003) also argued that “feminism, philosophy and spirituality converge in a vision of the subject, the human person that is inclusive of all persons” (p. 279). The power Gilbert drew from throughout her interactions with others came from an
ability to respond to the possibilities presented to her, and were based on her newfound awareness that her identity was connected somehow to these people in the most fundamental human way. It also serves as an example of Chavez and Griffin’s reconceptualization of Carrillo Rowe’s (2009) “coalitional subjectivity” as "coalitional agency" which “implies that our ability to…empower others and ourselves necessitates seeing people, history and culture as inextricably bound to one another” (p. 9).
Gilbert’s friendship with Wayan is another example of this coalitional agency at work as the two women empower each other in various ways throughout Gilbert’s stay in Bali. Even though they come from drastically different backgrounds – Gilbert, a professional writer from white, Western privilege; Wayan, a medicine woman from Bali and divorced, single mother with three children (one biological and two adopted) from a poor, third world country – they are able to form a friendship based on the common bond of female sisterhood as well as their shared postmodern renunciation of their respective society’s expectations on them as women. Gilbert, at 34, was expected to be married with a “nice house” and “nice children” (Gilbert, 2006, p. 47) by now, but instead she has embarked on a solo journey to find what will truly make her happy. Wayan left an abusive marriage in a highly patriarchal culture, which caused her to become a social outcast: “to exit a marriage in Bali leaves a person alone and unprotected in ways that are almost impossible for a Westerner to imagine” (Gilbert, 2006, p. 256). But, just as Gilbert confronted her identity and reframed her life’s circumstances into opportunities for greater happiness, Wayan also engaged in her own identity confrontation by leaving her marriage and moving away from her home.
After Gilbert finds her perspective on love and relationships transformed through her friendship with Wayan, she feels a great sense of gratitude and becomes determined to give back
to Wayan in some way. When Gilbert learns that Wayan and her daughter, Tutti (which means “everybody” in Italian), both dream of having their own home, Gilbert immediately recognizes the opportunity to help and ends up raising more than $18,000 from her family and friends back home for Wayan. When one of these friends pointed out to Gilbert that: “when you set out in the world to help yourself, you inevitably end up helping….Tutti” it is a fitting double entendre that recalls what Glora Anzaldúa said about individual change. She passionately argued that self- change not only involves “going deep into the self and expanding out into the world” it is also “a simultaneous recreation of the self and a reconstruction of society” (p. 208). St. Augustine also spoke of how feeling a sense of, and participating in, community with others brings about the ability to discover new truths which we can’t find on our own (Elshtain, 2003).
In a fitting response to such a gift, Wayan declared that the house would be “the house of everyone who helped Wayan. If any of these people comes to Bali, they must never stay in a hotel, OK?...Promise to tell them that? We call it Group House…the House for Everybody…” (Gilbert, 2006, p. 280). Here, we can see that Wayan also recognized her interconnectedness to the people who helped her, just as Gilbert did to the people who helped her along her journey.
Carrillo Rowe’s (2009) explication of the Fosses feminist subject in contrast to Gloria Anzaldúa’s is helpful in extracting a deeper meaning about how Gilbert and Wayan felt connected to, and empowered each other in their friendship. Carrillo Rowe (2009) offers that “while for the Fosses the subject emerges from within herself and rises up from her own will, for Anzaldúa the subject exists in ‘symbiotic relationship to all that exists.’ Thus, in the case of the former the vision for change is to change one's self, to ‘act in resourceful and capable ways [that] aren't dependent on others to accomplish our goals’ whereas agency for Anzaldúa assumes a collective subject—that subjects are ‘co-creators of ideologies’” (p. 16). While Gilbert goes
through the process of confronting and reconstructing her identity, we also see how she enacts a personal spirituality that considers a universal identity and demonstrates a sense of interconnectedness with Wayan, as well as others that she encounters on her journey. Foss and Foss’ (2011) paradigm of constructed potentiality describes this process of enactment as “acting in alignment with a selected interpretation” (p. 221). By embodying the identity she interpreted and constructed as a result of her journey, Gilbert arrives at the final stages of her transformation, and her achievement of a new identity.
At the end of the novel, we learn that Gilbert, transformed by her experiences with Wayan, comes back frequently over the years to Bali to visit her in her new home while living a very non-traditional – but far happier – life that rejects U.S. domesticity in favor of traversing between four continents with her new love, Felipe.
CONCLUSION

This study has examined how Eat, Pray, Love reveals how women confront their identities under the influence of postmodernism and third wave feminism, and how choosing to reframe and reinterpret their circumstances can help them reconstruct more authentic identities moving forward. In addition to these insights, we have explored how stories act as vehicles for presenting women with new identity possibilities as well as new ways of thinking and being in the world.

Even though the trip that Gilbert sets out on to re-create a new identity for herself may not be one that “rings true” with most women, the exigence that prompts it (i.e. a failed relationship and resulting identity crisis) is perhaps more relatable. Despite the fractured identities, contradictions and multiplicities that have been ushered in by postmodernism and third wave feminism, due to the ubiquity of relationships in every woman’s life, as well as the inherent
social, biological and cultural need to understand and define one’s self, Gilbert’s story passes Fisher’s test of narrative probability (Fisher, 1987) as one that can ring true for many. However, since not every woman shares or relates to Gilbert’s value system or interpretations of herself or the world, the extensions of Fisher’s paradigm help us understand how readers might relate to some of her discoveries about a universal identity and an interconnectedness with others that brought her a sense of peace and purpose in her life. As Stroud (2002) asserted, “stories that include co-existing and conflicting value structures can expose audiences to new values and ideas….and still offer good reasons for belief and/or action” (p. 371). This idea is certainly supported by the fact that Eat, Pray, Love went on to become an international best-seller and resonated with millions of women across the globe, pointing to an important cultural moment in the postmodern, third wave era.
While critical scholars may view Gilbert’s “cherry-picking” of the Yogi teachings during her visit to India as an appropriation of an ancient Eastern spirituality by a white Western woman, we must be reminded of the words of Jean Elshtain (2003) who said that “knowledge of the world is not a form of violent appropriation, but an appreciation of the integrity of things” (p. 100). And as Alice Walker (2006) said, “this is a time when teachings of all traditions are available to us” (p. 42) so why not open ourselves up to the possibilities that other perspectives can offer us? As Foss and Foss (2011) explain, this symbolic collaboration need not come at the expense of one person or culture: “routes to change that emerge from a posture of openness may include encountering others who serve as resources, who offer ideas for accomplishing an objective….these collaborators, however, are not cooperating because an individual has laid out a plan and persuaded them to participate in it. Instead, the collaborators’ own actions, taken on behalf of their own objectives, happen to align with the objectives of the individual who
recognizes them as resources” (p. 218). If we are to follow the Fosses’ (2011) view that in turning to symbolic instead of material sources to relieve our exigence we are drawing from unlimited resources that don’t compromise others in the process, we can see how Gilbert’s use of symbolic means – confronting her identity, re-framing her circumstances, owning up to her mistakes, taking responsibility for her well-being, etc. – to find a new identity and a more authentic happiness did not come at the expense of others, but in fact showed her readers a world of infinite possibilities.
But in the end, perhaps the most powerful impact offered by the possibilities presented to us through narratives is to encourage a moment of pause and self-reflection. As Alice Walker (2006) said, “during the pause is the ideal time to listen to stories [as] stories are capable of teaching us things we all used to know” (p. 59). As we listen to these stories and the possibilities they present to us, in our moment of pause and self-reflection, we can begin to find the answers that ring true for each of us.
References

Anzaldúa, G. (1983). La prieta. In This bridge called my back: Writings by radical women of color. (Moraga, C. & Anzaldúa, C.). (Eds.). 2nd ed. New York: Kitchen Table. p. 208.

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