A Multidisciplinary Research Journal - Devanga Arts College

Like Jake, Daniel Luoma, the male gynecologist who treats Rennie for breast cancer also
exploits her, thereby violating the professional ethics. Rennie sees Daniel Luoma as both healer
and killer; he has the capacity to save her life, as also to leave her to death. She feels exposed
before him, as he knows something about her, which she herself does not know. She expects
Daniel to console her, but is shocked to see that he seems to be more in need of her. To her, the
surgeon’s knife becomes a symbolic representation of sexual violence and castration, so she
states: “Doctored, they say of drinks that have been tampered with, of cats that have been
castrated” (BH 101). As Sharon Wilson points out, Rennie has been treated as a raw material,
violated and doctored” (“Turning Life”140) by Daniel. She identifies her plight with that of
many other women who are victimized in various male institutions. Though doctors are supposed
to be objective and humane, they indulge in power structures that preside over “violence,
manipulation of opinion and life itself”. (Rubenstein 264)
Rennie suffers a further threat to her security when an intruder attempts a crime in her
apartment. The stranger leaves a rope, “coiled neatly on the quilt” (BH 13) which makes Rennie
fear a possible male assault. Rennie gets hallucinations that someone is pursuing her and is
sharing her bed. These fears continue to inhabit her mind even after a long time, gradually, the
stranger with the rope loses his physical significance and becomes a personification of her own
fear towards the different men she has encountered: “The face keeps changing, eluding her, he
might as well be invisible, she can’t see him, this is what is so terrifying, he isn’t really there, he
is only shadow, anonymous, familiar, with silver eyes that twin and reflect her own” (BH 287).
Rennie longs for a change in atmosphere, so persuades the editor of ‘Visor’ to permit her
do a travel piece in Caribbean island. She wants to flee from herself, from social entanglements,
she believes that being a tourist and she is exempt from everything. She tries to remain neutral to
people and events around, she believes that having contacts is better than having friends. She
feels that luck consists in avoiding obligations: “Rennie is lucky. She is not tied down, which is
an advantage.” (BH 16) As a tourist, she is free: “She’s a tourist; she can keep her opinions open.
She can always go somewhere else.” (BH 227) Rennie becomes an “Expert on surfaces” (BH
26), she feels that she is safe and invisible.
In the Caribbean island, Rennie’s loneliness and her vulnerability draw her closer to Paul,
a tourist guide, but he too turns out to be an unreliable companion. Paul treats her with
compassion, with him; she experiences her sensuality once again and forgets the illness and