Crucially, I Feel Myself is a sharp critique of the and the commodification of female interiority. The title’s pun becomes ironic when the narrator attempts to perform “feeling” for a partner. She is expected to experience pleasure, to perform authenticity, to feel herself in the way a woman is supposed to. But her body refuses to cooperate. The most chilling moments occur not during overt violence, but during consensual intimacy. She describes a lover’s hand on her thigh: “It is warm, and it is there, and I am somewhere above the ceiling fan, counting the blades.” Ivory suggests that the female body under patriarchy is always already alienated—trained to perform sensation for an audience, even in private. The narrator’s dissociation is not a pathology but a logical, desperate response to the demand that she constantly manufacture a legible, pleasurable self.
: How external labels (like the "ivory tower") impact internal identity. I Feel Myself Anthea Ivory
Use it as a prompt to identify where you have been "running away from yourself" or chasing outer fulfillment. Crucially, I Feel Myself is a sharp critique
I feel myself. Anthea Ivory.