Orly Castel-Bloom's Perception of Coupledom and Women's Oppression in Light of Impressionist Features and Intertextual Connections in the Novel Where Am I

This study suggests a radical feminist reading of Orly Castel-Bloom's first novel, Where Am I. The research shows Castel-Bloom's adaptation of impressionist motifs and the intertextual connections to classics works—Anna Karenina, The Visit of the Old Lady, and Prometheus Bound—in order to express and characterize her version of women's oppression. In this novel, Castel-Bloom chooses to undermine the most central institute of patriarchy—coupledom, and by describing the heroine's two flawed marriages, she leads her readers to an apocalyptic conclusion that the collapse of the couple model leads the individual to remain alone in the world, not as a solution or as salvation, but as an inevitable course in view of the inability to establish ties that realize even slightly the romantic perceptions.

Castel-Bloom's impressionist poetics in this work (unlike her other postmodern stories) tries to reflect the tension generated in the course of the active processes of constant change of reality, which make women weak, fragile, and in danger of victimization.