Who Is Cordelia's Identity?

Evidently, identity of every person can be integrated by breaking through its imposed silence and finding a language of self-utterance. As we have already seen, Cordelia is an active character and Elaine disregards all signs of her, either by destroying her or by covering her so that she cannot be seen. More convincingly, her removal is not easy for Elaine because Cordelia exists in her consciousness and becomes a part of her identity. As said before, Elaine has a dual identity, which is composed of Elaine’s and Cordelia’s identities. Significantly, these two parts can lead to white and dark, positive and negative, Angel and evil sides of her character. A method that Margaret Atwood has used to focus on Elaine’s identity is mirror imagery. She presents Elaine in Cordelia’s sunglasses “in duplicate and monochrome, and a great deal smaller than life size” (Cat’s Eye, 147). According to Gupta, “In psychoanalysis, the mirror metaphor has a symbolic significance as it functions of perceiving and being perceived” (130). In Cat’s Eye, such mirror
I thought I could stare it down. But it still has power; like a mirror that shows you only the ruined half or your face” (201). This face is the exterior self. Now the outstanding question is who exists in Elaine’s interior mirror. As she feels, “the sound of my breath comes to me, a disembodied gasping, as if it’s someone else breathing. Cordelia has a tendency to exist” (202); this tendency is a syndrome which is taken from the power that Elaine has given to Cordelia who postulates Elaine’s inner world. This hypothesizes that Cordelia exists in Elaine’s most private and secret world. Comparatively, Cordelia learns both how to treat and how to limit Elaine’s freedom. Convincingly, she is her innermost thought which is