It is apparent that, from the beginning, her identity has no connection to her body.

             Although it seems as though the narrator"s identity melds with her body, it is clear that her thoughts and true inner emotions are in actuality completely divided from her body. Her body would move and operate without the narrator actually controlling it. In fact, as her body moved, she does not even know where she is going but simply that it is "continuing on" (68). Her body moves through the motions of walking through the hall and curtsying, all the while the narrator"s identity "wondering how [she] knew this so well and with such certainty" (69). She has no knowledge of her body"s experiences "beyond that which had rushed into [her] at the entrance of the hall" (70). Simply, her identity has nothing to do with what her body is doing. It is very possible for her identity to control its body (because that occurs later in the story) and react to the body as well. For instance, in coming into contact with the gentleman, the narrator blushes. She "had nothing whatever to do with that blush, it came from the same source as the knowledge that had entered [her] at the threshold of the hall"(72). This blush, a natural reaction, had come from the same source as her body"s intuitions, being the body itself. It is apparent that she had no control over her reactions, and in comparing this to her knowledge, it is also apparent that her body had a life of its own. It moves in the ways it needs and it reacts intuitively without the soul/identity interfering.

             The narrator"s separation of her identity from its body follows the thoughts of Descartes. Descartes" philosophy of the body is that it is like a machine, and because a machine has no soul, the body needs no soul to operate. He states "our own bodies can move without the will conducting them" (Descartes 73) like "machines which the industry of man can devise" (73).