“Perceptions and Their Mutability” in Siri Hustvedt’s Works

Abstract

This essay investigates how literature can provide insights into the ways human beings perceive the world and themselves. I discuss how Siri Hustvedt uses her fiction and nonfiction to explore questions of visual perception, focusing on its connection to perspective, embodied self, and context. I demonstrate that, being an intersubjective concept, perception in Hustvedt’s writings is always in flux and shaped by the “embodied minds.” The tracing of the mechanisms involved in perception provides insights into Hustvedt’s novels’ narrative unraveling and a key to understanding her characters.