Celebration of Feminine Self in Elizabeth Gilbert’sEat, Pray, Love

Abstract

The memoir,Eat, Pray, Love : One Woman’s Search for Everything across Italy, India and Indonesia shows the ups and downs faced by the author, Elizabeth Gilbert. The autobiographical memoir is a travelogue in which the author herself travels to different countries and finds the sense of self. This memoir is based on the experiences that the writer feels during her travel. She uses different cultures and people to drawreaders’ attention on how she transforms herself from depressed, unhappy and unhealthy woman full of sadness to a happy woman with cherished face, healthy mind and self identity. The people, culture, people’s lifestyle, food, the system, the language havebeen the main subjects that help the writer change herself from what she was. This memoir helps the writer to celebrate to be proud of being a woman with sense of feminine self by discovering the actual meanings of life. It shows how a writer leaves herluxurious life style and decides to go on a journey where she finds the real pleasure of nourishment of eating in Italy, the pleasure of inner spirituality of praying in India and the pleasure of being loved in Indonesia. Her visit to these various countries helps her to celebrate her feminine self. This autobiographical memoir shows how a woman transforms herself through writing. Like other feminists, such as Helene Cixous, Elizabeth Gilbert finds her identity in her writing. As she goes on writing about the things she observes, situations she faces, about the people she meets, she also discovers herself. Keywords: Feminine self; memoir; autobiography; feminism; individualistic self; communitarian self.