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Carrie Griffin
Dr. Vandivere
Topics in Criticism
2 December 2014
Identity as Constructed by Mina Loy's Gaze
The act of spying on someone else is a feature that Mina Loy seems to draw upon in
many of her works of literature. She uses objects to help show the person as they are in their
environment and to help represent them as objects in themselves. Each person who is spying on
someone else seems to get information about this person that would not be drawn to without the
act of this spying. The use of this in the piece shows the complexity of the human being and how
these views can really affect a persons idea of what makes a person. They believe they have the
whole personality of someone but they only have little parts of the person as a whole. Mina
Loys short stories Transfiguration, In Maine: Greens Colony, and her drama piece Crystal
Pantomime all look at how a persons judgment of other people around then leads to a false
perception of their identity.
A study done by many scholars has been exploring how Mina Loy represents females
throughout her works in a multi-sensual way. She does not only look at people as the object of
someone else but also looks at how the person can be viewed by the people around them in very
unusual ways. Working on the female as an object, the article Altered Observation of Modern
Eyes shows this view This current study explores Loy's development of a multi-sensual
aesthetic through her literary and visual collages, culminating in her assemblages of the late
1950s (Zelazo 48). This quote gives the overall idea of the whole article. The author Zelazo,

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discuses the many ways that Loy uses these observations of people and these many ways of
learning about a persons personality in all of her writings.
In the short story Transfiguration the narrator talking throughout the pieces is making
observations about of world around her through the objects and how they lead to the persons
lack of identity. These objects are strange and obscure thing to look at in regards to people but
she does it to categorize these people. In the piece one of the people talking (Dan Leno) mentions
that eggs do not have a face (141). She seems to show the egg as the people without identity or in
this case faces. A persons face is one of the biggest forms of identity because of the fact that
each person has a different one. Using eggs to represent this idea of the people that she is
observing gives the idea that these people are all very similar just like eggs are to each other.
Each egg is white and usually does not have any distinction that will set it apart from the other
eggs around it. This is one way that she shows the people that she is observing who have very
little personalities to observe at all.
The fact that these eggs do not have any salt adds to the whole idea of their lack of
personality. She mentions on pages 140 and 141 In my lap, saltless, in white impotence to the
appetite, lay six hard boiled eggs. The image of the eggs and the saltiness or lack of salt leads to
the idea of lack of an identity. Having salt would make the eggs have more flavor and with the
eggs being a metaphor for the people, having complexities makes a person more interesting. The
person who does not have these complexities and just goes along with the crowd is an example
of the people that Loy seems to be trying to categorize throughout this story. The pureness of the
outer shell of the hard boiled eggs gives a new perspective of what the average human is in the
group, an object that cannot be distinguished from the rest. This simple object of the eggs can

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help demonstrate the idea of people without complexities and how they just blend in with
everyone around them.
When talking about the people around her, the narrator uses the objects that surround
them and changes them also into an object themselves. In the beginning of the story Loy
mentions a very odd object Outside the window a dead man hung from a tree beside the track,
and the wind moved in his trousers (140). This man does not have a character other than the fact
that he is dead. He has become an object in this story just like the tree and the track that he is by
are. His identity as a person is taken away in these lines because of the fact that he is dead. The
wind seems to have more character than he does because of the fact that it is actually acting and
moving when he is not. The dead man starts out the series of observations that the narrator makes
throughout the whole piece, each really not having much more character than the dead man
hanging from a tree.
Loy represents another observation of the narrator in this same fashion I loitered against
it, and watched the shadowy pantomime of a small girl swinging a baby to sleep in a grocery box
hung from the roof-beam (143). In this quote she is again representing a person in an objective
way. The pantomime is a dramatic way of entertainment (Abate) that in this case is used as how
the young girl is being seen by the observer. The reader does not learn anything about this girls
character other than the fact that she is swinging a baby to sleep in a grocery box. The objects
around this little girl add more to her character and the situation at hand than the description of
her action. She seems to be defined by the objects around her and not by who she actually is to
the story as a whole. Watching the people around the observer becomes almost like a show for
her and the people she is observing become images for her that she cannot separate from the

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objects around them. The little girl becomes yet another object for this person to judge in the
world all around them.
In Maine: Greens Colony represents the idea of this woman named Lucy who becomes
an object used to help describe Maine. Loy starts the story describing Maine as this clean state.
Maine starts to be personified in the following lines
For Maine is clean. There are no corners where it may hide, space patrols every side of
every house, and has not so far separated them that the eye of your neighbours window
cannot pierce the eye of your own. There they are always sweeping something away,
they are always shaking something out, they trade, they bank, they ever prosper in a
modest way (46).
Maine almost seems to be a human in the characterization that she is making about it throughout
the whole story. Having this very detailed description of the observations of this place really
helps the reader place themselves in the story and gives a new dimension to the story as a whole.
The reader learns more about the state of Maine then they do about the other characters. The
narrator of this story seems to really want to talk about all the aspects about Maine but then they
get to the subject of Lucy.
The adjectives used to describe Lucy are those that are also used to describe a horse,
thereby aligning her with something that is not human. She is even described as being less than
the horse in instances I do like Lucy, I do like Lucy, gosh how I do like Lucy. Shes a nice girl is
LucyI never saw a nicer girl than Lucy. Shes a clean girl is Lucy (48). The horse is described
before this, which has this thought in his head, in a more descriptive way than Lucy. This girl is
nice and that is basically all that Loy offers in the story about Lucy at all. Lucy is also compared
to object later on in the piece each adding to the objective way that she is looked at throughout

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the whole piece they had told me how her body was a vase of fairest alabaster, and how they
had longed to break it and sprinkle the ruby wine of her warm young life upon the altar of
eternity (49). This quote adds nothing about her personality other than the fact that she is greatly
admired for her objective beauty that these men seem only notice about her. There is not more
substance to her character other than the fact that she is an object to the narrators affection who
is being used to describe these ideas.
The image of the glass in her work Crystal Pantomime is used as the way the young
maiden is able to see her past is another object that is used to describe someone. When looking
through the crystal the woman is able to see her past and her supposed future. This again is a
skewed way of looking at the people around them. She sees the images in magical object that
could have been manipulated to force her to see things in a certain way. Having this as the means
of her seeing her past causes flaws in what she is actually seeing because there is not major proof
that any of it could even possibly be real. The story even says that she will only be seen with this
certain man Her only appearances will be her meetings with him and her waiting and at last
her union with him (151). This is an interesting statement to think about because she is only in
the piece in times with this certain man in her life that she will eventually marry. Her whole life
is defined in these images that she is looking at through the crystal.
In an even more radical move, in Crystal Pantomime, Loy uses the same term for people
and dancing, thus making people seem like the movement. Loy uses the image of dancing to
represent the idea of the Pantomime throughout the piece. Dancing is mentioned throughout the
whole piece as a verb and adjective to describe the characters every movement and action. This
not only helps the piece flow from one point to another throughout the whole story but it also
shows the importance of the dance in this womans life. Dancing becomes the carrying force

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throughout the whole piece that gets the maiden from one vision to the next. It almost becomes
an object in its self that forces the observer and also the reader to imagine the characters being
talked about through the act of dancing. The pieces flows from scene to scene with each use of
the word dance and becomes the ballet that the piece is describing The maiden is now to see her
life in the crystal and it is the story of the maidens future which is to be portrayed by the ballet
(152). This explains what the story is going to be about but also shows how important the act of
dancing truly is to her story. The dancing of the characters and also of the words in the story
brings meaning to the story and the maiden as a whole.
In her short stories, Mina Loy represents the idea of people as observable objects that are
defined by the things and ideas all around them. The distinctions between people are very
difficult to find when looking at them through the lens that Loy seems to be looking at them
through. She gives examples of how the relate to objects for instance the idea of people as
representing eggs in the story Transformation. This piece seems to transform the people that
the observer is looking at into objects that cannot be distinguished from the group. In her work
Crystal Pantomime, she uses the object of the mirror to represent a backwards perception of
people and a magically manipulated idea of what is being seen. These works of Loys are all
examples of the use of observation and how this act contributes to a false perception of identity.

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Works Cited
Abate, Frank R., and Elizabeth Jewell. The New Oxford American Dictionary. New York:
Oxford UP, 2001. Print.
Loy, Sara Crangle Mina (2011-08-30). Stories and Essays of Mina Loy (British Literature
Series) Dalkey Archive Press. Kindle Edition
Zelazo, Suzanne. "Altered Observation of Modern Eyes: Mina Loy's Collages, and
Multisensual Aesthetics." The Senses and Society 4.1 (2009): 47-73. Web.