Rather than forming an identity based off of Helene’s, she begins forming identities in relation to other people?first Sula, and then later, Jude. For example, Nel does not purposely try to imitate Helene. However, identification is not always intentional. As a result, her personality begins to diverge from Sula’s because identities are influenced by environment and they identity with different characters. She progresses her narrative through misrecognitions because she continues to identify with various people, or imagos, throughout the story. This misrecognition becomes the basis for her identity, otherwise known as her personal narrative. This occurs in the novel when Nel sees herself in the mirror and has a cathartic moment, saying, “I’m me. However, the cardinal mistake that is made during the mirror stage is that the child misrecognizes the image in the mirror, or the imago, as being his- or herself rather than a spectral image. The “transformation” that Lacan is referring to is the formation of one’s ego, or sense of self. Lacan refers to the mirror stage “as an identification” or as “the transformation that takes place in the subject when he assumes an image” (Lacan 2). According to Jacques Lacan’s essay “The Mirror Stage,” a person begins forming an identity when he or she first looks in a mirror and recognizes the image as a representation of the self.
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