Narrative Analysis

By Genevieve M. Nangit
February 27, 2024

Narrative Analysis of “City of Sand”: Gladys’ nature of self through her

concrete social facts

Gladys’ nature of self through her concrete social facts was reflected in her mannerisms and held
values during the moments when she was being true to her self, when she was being a career
woman, and when she was being a heterosexual woman.

Sentences
When Gladys was herself, her truest self, she spoke in a flat, toneless voice, a voice from which
all pleasure and all emotion had been squeezed, like the last drop of moisture wrung with force
from a washcloth. (Page 38)

Her mother Gladys Mortensen, who was so proud and independent and loyal to The Studio and
determined to be “career woman” accepting charity from no one, had been, just now, so stared at,
so pitied and crazy. It was so! Norma Jeane wiped at her eyes, which stung from the smoke,
wouldn’t stop watering, but she wasn’t crying; she was mortified with a shame beyond her years,
but she wasn’t crying, she was trying to think. Could it be true that her father had invited them to
his house? All these years, he’d lived only a few miles away. (Page 41)

Norma Jeane was uneasily that other adults, especially men, were fascinated by her mother, the
way you’d be fascinated by someone leaning too far out of a high window or bringing her hair
too close to a candle flame. Even with the streak of gray-white hair lifting from her forehead
(which, out of “contempt”, Gladys refused to dye), and the bruised, creepy shadows beneath her
eyes, and the fevered restlessness of her body. In the bungalow foyer, on the front walk, and in
the street, wherever Gladys found someone to listen, Gladys did scenes. If you knew movies, you
knew that Gladys did wad doing scenes. For even to do a scene that made no clear sense was to
capture attention, and this helped to calm the mind. It was exciting, too, that much of the
attention Gladys drew was erotic.
Erotic: meaning you’re ‘desired’
For madness is seductive, sexy. Female madness.
So long as the female is reasonably young and attractive. (Page 51)

Analysis
Gladys nature is influenced by three intersecting relationships in her life. She as a mother to
Norma Jeane, a career woman to the studio, and a woman to her self.

Reference
“Blonde” by Joyce Carol Oates. 2000. 4th Estate: London, UK