Upload
others
View
5
Download
0
Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
90
CHAPTER – 2
Rereading Lacan: Towards an Alternative Semiotics
The five works of fiction selected for the study redefine Lacanian
concepts in a new realm of signification by posing a strong challenge to
Lacanian Symbolic, the order of the Paternal realm of language in
patriarchy. The select women’s fiction include Terry McMillan’s Mama,
Emma Donoghue’s Room, Kristin Hannah’s The Things We Do for Love,
Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin and Lee Maracle’s First
Wives Club: Coast Salish Style. These women writers, despite their
cultural differences, are equivocal in their feminist theoretical move to
challenge patriarchy by evolving the Maternal as the source of an
equally or even more powerful alternative politics or alternative
discursive space. This is made possible by an effective
rereading/rewriting of Lacanian concepts like the three stages in the
development of the human psyche (Imaginary, Mirror-stage and
Symbolic), Phallocentrism, Phallus and so on.
These women writers unite in their literary and theoretical move
to use “maternity,” woman’s “maternal power,” as a weapon or force to
crumble down the strong pillars of patriarchy by reviving the focus on
woman’s experience of “mothering,” on the endless “desire-to-mother”
in every woman irrespective of differences at various levels like that of
culture, context or age. This feminist political move also focuses on
91
every individual’s (man/woman) eternal desire to return to his/her
woman-mother, to reunite with her, to re-experience the womb-like
moment of togetherness; for the woman-mother, her son/daughter,
irrespective of his/her age, always remains her “little one” – the Child.
The uncovering of this feminist political act also involves a parallel
deconstruction of patriarchal constructs like “motherhood” as a mere
social institution, the primal existence of the “familial Triad” (Father,
mother and children) and so on. In the “familial Triad,” the patriarchal
model of an ideal family, the Woman-Mother slowly disappears from the
linguistic scene leaving the familial space for Father and children. Thus,
the Woman-Mother becomes a sheer “nonentity” or “absence” in the
familial realm of language in patriarchy.
The five fictional works, by deconstructing “patriarchal family”
and decentring “patriarchal parentage,” reconstruct and redefine
“family” as a reincarnation of the Maternal Womb (the exclusive
maternal space of the Woman/Mother-Child dyad). In this new concept
of “family,” man/father remains a mere peripheral presence. These
fictional narratives run against the laws of patriarchy as they portray the
Maternal/Woman-Mother as active and articulate even in the Symbolic,
the paternal order of language in patriarchy. In these fictional works,
man/father remains either absent or passive and inarticulate.
92
In the select women’s fiction, the Maternal re-emerges as an
active and powerfully vocal alternative discourse against the passive,
silent or absent paternal discourse, and challenges the Law-of-the-
Father/Name-of-the-Father that holds patriarchy intact. In other words,
the Name-of-the-M(Other) replaces the Name-of-the-Father/Law-of-
the-Father. This revival of the Woman-Mother in the Lacanian
Symbolic, in turn, can be psychologically seen as an extension of
Mother-oriented or female-oriented psychic stages namely Imaginary
and Mirror stages (the space where the Woman-Mother rules or She is
the World and Word for the child whether boy or girl) into the Symbolic.
This resurgence of the Woman-Mother against the social order of
patriarchy (Phallocentrism) consequentially disrupts the harmony,
coherence and autonomy of the Symbolic (paternal order).
These works of fiction challenge the Lacanian Symbolic or
Phallocentrism represented by patriarchy, suggesting a strong surge
towards an alternative semiotics or alternative discourse called
“maternity” or “maternal power” which forms the Woman-Mother’s real
identity and strength. They reveal the unimaginable and unchallengeable
power of the Maternal in woman by exploring the hidden depths of
woman/mother-child relationship and redefine the Lacanian concepts.
Lacanian thoughts now pervade the disciplines of literary studies
and women’s studies. From the perspective of literary studies,
93
the re-discovery of Lacan in the mid-1970s, initially by feminists,
revitalized the practice of psychoanalytic criticism and reinstated
psychoanalysis at the cutting edge of critical theory. Lacanian
psychoanalysis aims at analysing the ways in which unconscious desires
manifest themselves in the literary text through language.
Lacan’s important innovation in the field of psychoanalysis
constitutes his identification of three stages in the development of the
human psyche as an ever-developing human entity. Before the sense of
self emerges, the young child exists in a realm which Lacan calls the
Imaginary, in which there is no distinction between the Self and the
Other and there is a kind of idealized identification with the mother. This
stage lasts upto six months of age. Between six months and eighteen
months comes what he calls the Mirror-stage when the child sees its own
reflection in the “mirror” that does not mean a literal mirror but any
reflective surface including the mother’s face and begins to conceive of
itself as a unified being, separate from the rest of the world. At this
stage, the child begins to recognize its image in the mirror and this is
usually accompanied by pleasure. The child, in the Mirror-stage,
constructs a sense of the Self using its “mirror-image” (the Other, the
Woman-Mother). This stage, when the child becomes aware of its
resemblance with the mother, roughly lasts for a year. Following this
stage, the child enters the language system. This stage also marks the
94
beginning of socialization, with its prohibitions and restraints associated
with the figure of the father. The new order which the child now enters is
called the Symbolic by Lacan. For Lacan, the Symbolic is the register of
language and of linguistically mediated cognitions. Thus, the Imaginary
and Mirror-stage are the psychic stages where the woman-mother
remains as the Power, the Subject. The Symbolic is the psychic stage
where the man/father replaces the woman-mother as the Subject, the
Power, perpetuating the laws of patriarchy.
Lacanian Symbolic is the order of patriarchy, the psychic stage
where man/father is more vocal, eloquent and forceful in the exercise of
language causing the disappearance or ineffectiveness of the woman-
mother. The child realizes man/father’s articulating power as a source of
authority and takes language as an instrument of power. Therefore, the
child’s innate urge to acquire language in patriarchy is in turn the child’s
attempt to rival the man/father. Hence, as Lacan suggests, the primary
acquisition of language is Oedipal. That is, it is the Oedipal crisis which
marks the entry of the child into the realm of signification or Lacanian
Symbolic in patriarchy. This entry, this Oedipal conflict between the
child and the father, as feminists point out, simultaneously marks the
disappearance of the woman-mother from the child’s realm of
signification, from the frame of the core-narrative. Lacan calls this realm
95
of the Symbolic the “phallocentric” universe in which men/fathers are in
control of the word marking the disappearance of the woman-mother.
Lacan conceives of the Imaginary and the Mirror-stage as
pre-Oedipal stages in which the child has not yet completely separated or
differentiated itself from the woman-mother and, as a consequence, has
not learned language which is the Symbolic order to be taught by the
man/father. The feminists have redefined the Imaginary and the
Mirror-stage as stages that constitute the vital source of language
governed by the woman-mother which is later tamed by the Law-of-the-
Father, by the Symbolic order, as part of patriarchal politics. In their
view, the psychic processes of the Imaginary and the Mirror-stage form
the ego and they are repeated and reinforced by the Subject in his/her
relationship with the external world. The Imaginary and the
Mirror-stage are, therefore, not mere developmental phases, but they
remain at the core of human experience forever.
The fictional works selected for the study challenge the Lacanian
Symbolic that propagates the disappearance of the Woman-Mother from
the world of signification, and thereby cause her revival or rebirth. This
is done in the literary frame either by using the Oedipal conflict as the
factor that facilitates the feminist literary act of reducing the patriarchal
man/father into a passive, silent discursive existence/an absence, a rival
in love (which is forceful at the conscious level and not displaced) and
96
power (acquisition of language) for the child, or by completely rejecting
the scope for any such Oedipal space.
The select fictional works illustrate the different ways in which
the Maternal in woman emerges as a force that simultaneously turns out
to be an effective alternative remedy to cure what is described as
penis-envy. The notion of penis-envy need not be taken as simply
concerning the male sex organ, but as concerning the social power
and advantages represented by it. Hence, penis-envy no longer bears
sexual/physical attributes but psycho-social. The term penis-envy, thus,
signifies women’s lack of “penis” as women’s lack of “social power”
(a male attribute to be envied by women in patriarchy), and hence
feminists see concepts like penis-envy as constituting the power-house
of an age-old (and still active) oppressive system called patriarchy.
Feminists regard “Wholeness” or “Oneness” (the woman/mother-child
union, a reincarnation of the Maternal Womb) rather than “Otherness”
(woman-mother as the Other of man/father in patriarchy) as a means of
woman’s real identity and suggests the former as a cure for penis-envy.
They exhort women to propagate the impossibilities of such patriarchal
fabrications like penis-envy. This feminist dismissal of the possibilities
of patriarchal constructs like penis-envy is made possible with a
rereading of Lacanian concepts like “phallus.”
97
Lacan replaces the term “penis” with “phallus” in his stream of
psychoanalysis. The phallus in Lacanian psychoanalysis should not be
confused with the male genital organ, although it clearly carries these
sexual/physical connotations. In the phallocentric universe of creativity
man performs with phallus and controls the space of language or
signification. By the extension of this Lacanian notion of “phallus,” we
realize it as a central signifier, a “privileged signifier” that controls the
entire signifying system. The phallus, therefore, operates in all of
Lacan’s registers – Imaginary, Mirror-stage and Symbolic – and, thus, in
his system “phallus” becomes the one single indivisible signifier that
anchors the chain of signification. Indeed, phallus is a particularly
privileged signifier that inaugurates the process of signification itself.
Thus, phallus no longer signifies the sexual/physical but the
psychological, and this in turn suggests both man’s and woman’s
proximity to phallus as privileged signifiers. In a patriarchy, man is
physically and symbolically nearer the phallus than woman. Therefore, it
is easier for a man to attain subjecthood in a patriarchy. This interesting
rereading of the Lacanian concept of “phallus” as the “privileged
signifier” substantiates the feminist theoretical stand that the Maternal in
Woman re-emerges as the Cure, the alternative remedy for patriarchal
constructs like penis-envy. This theoretical stand also argues for the
98
Woman-Mother’s proximity to “phallus” as the new Subject, the Power,
the Privileged Signifier.
The Woman/Mother-Child Dyad is a familial space that
emerges as an alternative to the familial space propagated by the
patriarchal “familial Triad” that of Father, mother and children. In
such an alternative “familial Dyad” (a familial space occupied by the
Woman-Mother and her child exclusively), the patriarchal man/father is
either rendered passive, inarticulate or even remains absent or silent. In
this new familial space of Woman-Mother and her child, Imaginary and
Mirror phases extend into the Symbolic in the context of the absence
of an active, articulate paternal discourse. As a result, in this new
maternal-oriented “familial Dyad,” Oedipal space is either absent totally
or is re-appropriated to challenge and threaten the Symbolic order
causing the degeneration of the patriarchal man/father to a mere passive,
inarticulate, paradigmatic entity. In this new alternative familial space of
Woman-Mother and her child, the Woman-Mother enables the child to
construct the sense of the Self by transforming herself as the Other. In
such a familial space, in this “familial Dyad,” the Woman-Mother is,
thus, termed as the M(Other). In other words, the Woman-Mother is the
Other of the child in the new alternative “familial Dyad.” In this new
“familial Dyad,” in this alternative familial space, the Symbolic order of
“phallus” is challenged. Therefore, this new maternal-oriented “familial
99
Dyad” of Woman-Mother and her child challenges the entire
phallocentric semiotic system. In this context, the Woman-Mother (the
maternal entity) herself replaces the phallus as the symbolic order. This
leads to the emergence of the Woman-Mother as the new symbolic order
which in turn initiates the possibility of an alternative maternal/female-
oriented semiotic system. Here, the Maternal need not be biological, but
even emotional or psychological. This contributes to the new alternative
semiotic system governed by the Woman-Mother that poses a strong
challenge to the phallocentric realm of signification which perpetuates
the oppressive system called patriarchy. Therefore, the new alternative
semiotic system, in opposition to the Lacanian Symbolic, constitutes a
realm of signification in which the Woman-Mother re-emerges as the
Phallus, the Privileged Signifier.
The analysis of the women’s fiction selected for study involves
two main feminist theoretical acts: first, an act of redefining and
reinterpreting Lacanian concepts to evolve a new alternative discourse of
the Woman-Mother as an oppositional practice to patriarchal discourses;
second, an act of giving expression to the voice of the Maternal in
Woman that remains as an immeasurable source of creativity. By
redefining Lacanian concepts, the fictional works selected for the study
emerge as effective literary manifestations of the wonderful moment in
which the powerful Maternal in woman obliterates the Symbolic order of
100
patriarchy and ruptures its man/father-oriented canons by foregrounding
the unchallengeable Maternal force in woman, the unbreakable
woman/mother-child bond and its strength. In these fictional narratives,
the Woman-Mother emerges as the source of an all-powerful alternative
semiotics or discourse, particularly, in the absence of an active paternal
discourse. In each of these fictional works, the man/father either remains
passive, silent like an incapable coward or a mere shadowy presence, or
is absent. Thus, the selected works of fiction written by women writers,
using woman’s maternal power as an effective source of alternative
politics, pose a strong challenge to the Lacanian Symbolic that
constitutes the sexual politics of patriarchy.
It is appropriate to begin the analysis with McMillan’s novel
Mama, a fictional narrative that is all about the power of the Maternal in
woman to transform the world around, and also about the unimaginable
strength of the intense bonding between the woman-mother and
her child that eternally stands immune to patriarchy’s oppressive
tactics, indifference and cruelty. The wonderful maternal bond, that
never-ending connection, shared by Mildred (Mama) and her daughter
Freda, that extended “umbilical-cord” experience of the unbreakable
Mother-Child dyad, an experience that patriarchy can never cut off,
runs throughout the novel. McMillan’s Mama explores the life of an
African-American family that shifts from being a patriarchal “familial
101
Triad” (Crook, Mildred and their five children) to a newly reconstructed
family of woman-mother and her children (Mama and her five children).
The reunion of the mother and her daughter, in the end of the
novel, can be seen as a testimony to the eternal friendship that resides in
the womb-like maternal space exclusively occupied by woman-mother
and her child. The return of a thirty-years-old single woman (Freda) to
her Mama, in the end of the novel, manifests the extended “umbilical-
cord” experience of woman-mother (Mildred) and her child (Freda) as
“eternal friends,” which further serves as a reflection of the wonderful
psychological phenomenon in the child (Freda) – the overlapping of the
extended Imaginary and Mirror-stage in the Symbolic. This reunion of
Freda and her Mama, thus, challenges the Lacanian Symbolic and
completes the novel’s deconstruction of patriarchal constructs like the
Law-of-the-Father, the “familial Triad,” the patriarchal concept of
marriage and so on.
Crook (Mildred’s husband) represents the typical patriarchal
man/father in the novel Mama. As the novel begins, Crook seems to be
the overpowering Paternal in the family. Crook, a chronic drunkard,
doubts his wife’s loyalty and often whopped Mildred cruelly with his
belt, blaming her of flirting with other men when he himself had an
extra-marital relationship with a woman named Ernestine. Moreover, for
Crook, Mildred remained only an object to be beaten up and drawn to
102
bedroom every night to satisfy his sexual hunger. But very soon, we find
Mildred incredibly gathering amazing courage and strength that she
decides to challenge the man/father and throw him out of the house to
reconstruct a new “family” of woman-mother and her children. At an
instance, lost in reflection, Mildred finally declares, in her mind, her
regained power over the family, over her children, to her husband,
Crook, while he has gone out:
Her eyes claimed everything she saw. This is my house,
she thought. I’ve worked too damn hard for you to be
hurting me all these years. And me, like a damn fool,
taking it. Like I’m your property. Like you own me or
something. I pay all the bills around here, even this house
note. I’m the one who scrubbed white folks’ floors in St.
Clemens and Huronville and way up there on Strawberry
Lane to buy it . . . And who was the one got corns and
bunions from carrying plates of ribs and fried chicken
back and forth at the Shingle when I was five months
pregnant, while you hung off the back of a city garbage
truck half drunk, waving at people like you were the
president or the head of some parade . . . Never even
made up a decent excuse about what you did with your
money. I know about Ernestine. I ain’t no fool. Just
103
been waiting for the right time . . . And you got the
nerve to brag about how pretty, how healthy and
how smart your kids are. Don’t they have your color.
Your high cheekbones. Your smile. These ain’t your
damn kids. They mine. Maybe they got your blood, but
they mine. (McMillan 13-15)
Thus, the innate Maternal (Mama) emerges in Mildred that actually
marks her identity as a woman, equipping her with immense strength to
challenge her husband Crook (patriarchy) and deny him (man/father) the
right to her body and the right to her children.
This re-emergence of Mildred as a strong, independent
Mama (woman-mother) is followed by a reference to Mildred’s
realization and understanding of the real power of the Maternal in her as
a woman, something that man/father lacks:
Motherhood meant everything to Mildred. When she was
first carrying Freda, she didn’t believe her stomach would
actually grow, but when she felt it stretch like the skin of
a drum and it swelled up like a small brown moon, she’d
never been so happy. She felt there was more than just a
cord connecting her to this boy or girl that was moving
inside her belly. There was some special juice and only
she could supply it. (McMillan 15)
104
This is an instance that clearly demonstrates how the woman-mother, in
McMillan’s Mama, evolves her “maternity,” her unique and unequalled
power, as the source of a strong alternative discourse that challenges the
Law-of-the-Father in patriarchy. Such a new revived discursive identity
that Mildred gains as a woman-mother, her celebration of her unique
power – her “maternity,” is further explained in the novel:
It made her feel like she had actually done something
meaningful with her life, having these babies . . . And
when she pulled the brush back and up through their thick
clods of nappy hair, she smiled because it was her own
hair she was brushing. These kids were her future. They
made her feel important and gave her a feeling of place,
of movement, a sense of having come from somewhere.
Having babies was routine to a lot of women, but for
Mildred it was unique every time; she didn’t have a single
regret about having had five kids – except one, and that
was who had fathered them. (McMillan 16)
Thus, it is not her “maternity” which Mildred regrets but her
husband (man/father), and this goes against the laws of patriarchy that
strategically or politically portrays man/father as woman-mother’s
strength. Hence, it is her “maternity,” and not Crook, that helps Mildred
to reaffirm life over death.
105
As the initial chapters of the novel progress, Mildred throws
her husband, Crook, out of the house and divorces him. Crook is, then,
forced to live with Ernestine. From this instance onwards, Crook
(man/father) remains a passive shadowy presence in the novel. Apart
from being a chronic alcoholic, Crook also suffers from tuberculosis and
diabetes, and he dies in the course of the novel. And, it is interesting to
note that Crook’s death, the Daddy’s death, is juxtaposed and occurs
simultaneously with the family dog’s death. This is, in turn, an
illustration of the murder and degeneration of the patriarchal man/father,
by reducing Crook’s death to as trivial an incident as an animal’s death.
The central discursive force that pervades the novel Mama is that
of the Maternal in Woman, which springs from the deep and intense
maternal bonding between the woman-mother (Mildred) and her child
(Freda), particularly, in the absence of an active paternal discourse, an
articulate father figure. For Mildred, her child, Freda, is magic. This is
clearly stated in the reference to Mildred’s experience of giving birth to
Freda:
When she was first carrying Freda . . . She felt there
was more than just a cord connecting her to this boy
or girl that was moving inside her belly . . . And
sometimes when she turned over at night she could
106
feel the baby turn inside her too, and she knew this
was magic.
The morning Freda came . . . From that point on,
Mildred watched her first baby grow like a long
sunrise. She was so proud of Freda that she let her
body blow up and flatten for the next fifty-five
months. (McMillan 15-16)
Thus, for Mildred, Freda always remains her little baby, “ . . . a gift
she had always wanted and had finally gotten” (McMillan 307). In
other words, Freda (the Child) revitalizes Mildred, her Mama, as a
Woman-Mother.
Freda desires for a world or a family without her father, Crook.
And, this is explicitly referred to, in the novel, at an instance following
the night when Crook had brutally beaten up her Mama:
She didn’t like seeing her mama all patched up like this.
As a matter of fact, Freda hoped that by her thirteenth
birthday her daddy would be dead or divorced. She . . .
hate him . . . . (McMillan 12-13)
This, in turn, can be seen as an illustration of Freda’s desire to return to
the pre-Oedipal moment of unity with the woman-mother (that is
characteristic of the psychic stages – Imaginary and Mirror-stage –
before the intrusion of the patriarchal father).
107
In the course of the novel, Freda leaves Mama and moves to
California and then to New York to pursue her career as a writer. But, all
the time, as she gradually realizes later, Freda missed her Mama. Freda’s
constant desire to return to her Mama, throughout the novel, is a
manifestation of the traces of the extended pre-Oedipal psychic stages in
her. Moreover, Crook’s gradual disappearance from being a passive
shadowy presence (as his wife divorced him) into total absence (his
death) in the novel marks the unquestioned defeat of the patriarchal
man/father. Finally, as the novel ends, the thirty-years-old Freda realizes
that the source of her real strength is her Mama, and thus returns home to
Point Haven for the long-awaited reunion with her mama, Mildred. This,
in turn, allows and completes the reconstruction of a new “family”
comprising of the woman-mother (Mildred) and her daughter (Freda),
rejecting the scope of any Oedipal space.
The overlapping of the extended Imaginary and Mirror-stage in
the Symbolic in the thirty-years-old Freda’s psyche is illustrated at an
instance when she decides to return to her Mama:
. . . she had no idea how she was now standing in front
of the bathroom mirror, staring . . . Her hands trembled.
Her teeth chattered. She hugged herself and stared
at her reflection. It was Mildred’s face looking out
108
from the mirror . . . She looked into the mirror and
smiled. (McMillan 300-01)
This is an extraordinary moment of joy following one’s identification
and reunion with the woman-mother, something that happens in the
Imaginary and Mirror-stage.
For Freda, her Mama (Mildred) is the Word, the Phallus, the
Privileged Signifier. It is in the course of her lonely life in California and
New York, that Freda finally realizes that, for her, her Mama’s views
regarding everything in the world constitute the Ultimate Truth. We get
a glimpse of this realization made by Freda in a reference to her views
on church weddings and love:
The truth was, Freda felt the same as Mildred did about
big church weddings. They reminded her of funerals . . .
What she learned was that white men made love the same
way black men did. (McMillan 248-49)
Freda’s view on love is, in turn, a reflection of Mildred’s words: “Color
don’t make no difference. That’s what’s wrong with this world
now” (McMillan 192). The colour-conscious world that Mildred refers
to here is the bipolar patriarchal world which is very often questioned
and challenged by her world of Oneness or Wholeness, the unique world
of the Woman-Mother, in the novel. Such an instance of Mildred’s,
109
Mama’s, questioning of patriarchy is revealed in the midst of her
conversation with her sis-in-law, Curly:
You know, y’all . . . kill me. As soon as something
terrible happen, the first thang you do is go running to
church like God is gon’ hop down out the sky and save
y’all ass. Well, I don’t buy it. Ain’t never bought it. It
ain’t that I don’t believe in God, I just don’t trust his
judgment. (McMillan 290)
Mildred’s words, here, constitute the woman-mother’s effective
questioning of the autonomy of God (the Man/the Father) in patriarchy.
For Freda, her Mama’s world represents life over death. For
instance, once when Mildred took Freda to the white folks’ house where
she served as a domestic worker, Freda recognizes that the house lacked
the real life which characterized her own house, the world comprising of
herself and her Mama:
Freda didn’t feel comfortable about touching anything.
Something was missing: it lacked a wholesome smell.
She’d noticed it was missing in the rest of the house, too.
That smell that meant somebody really lived here, tracked
up the floors, burnt something on the stove every now
and then . . . Her own house smelled rich from . . . the
110
little coned incense Mildred burned after she’d finished
giving the house a good cleaning. (McMillan 30)
Thus, the novel portrays the woman-mother (Mildred) as one who
reaffirms life over death; in contrast, it associates coldness, stillness and
death with the patriarchal man/father (Crook). In this way, McMillan’s
Mama effectively revives the extended Imaginary and Mirror-stage
(the pre-Oedipal psychic stages where the woman-mother remains an
active, living entity) in the Symbolic, consequentially challenging and
disrupting the coherence of the Lacanian Symbolic. This literary attempt
to redefine Lacanian psychic stages becomes complete with the thirty-
years-old daughter’s return to her Mama, the reunion of Mildred and
Freda, in the end of the novel:
. . . Mildred reached for her daughter as if she were a
gift she had always wanted and had finally gotten.
Freda pressed her head into Mildred’s bare shoulder . . .
Mildred’s breasts felt full against her own, and Freda
couldn’t tell whose were whose. They held each other up.
They patted each other’s back as if each had fallen and
scraped a knee and had no one else to turn to for comfort.
It seemed as if they hugged each other for the past and for
the future. (McMillan 307)
111
This reunion of Mildred and her daughter Freda marks the re-emergence
of the woman-mother as the new Subject, one who is alive and active as
the Phallus, the Privileged Signifier; this initiates the possibility of a new
semiotic system alternative to the Lacanian Symbolic. In other words, it
marks the wonderful moment in which the thirty-years-old Freda
experiences a sense of Oneness or Wholeness with the woman-mother
Mildred. Thus, this moment of Freda’s identification with her mother
Mildred, in turn, illustrates the extension of the Imaginary and Mirror
phases into the Symbolic in Freda’s psychic development, challenging
the Law-of-the-Father. Thus, by rereading Lacan, McMillan’s Mama
establishes the Maternal in Woman as an active, volcanic source of
alternative politics against patriarchy.
Another novel that sets the pace for the evolution of an effective
maternity discourse, challenging the Lacanian Symbolic and
simultaneously giving expression to the voice of the Woman-Mother, is
Donoghue’s Room. By narrating the entire piece of work from the point-
of-view of the five-year-old child, Donoghue, with amazing critical
intelligence, demonstrates, more clearly how the mother, Ma, has been
of greater importance, influencing the development of the child’s
psyche. Hence, it is the child’s psyche, Jack’s psyche, that defines and
reveals the mother, Ma. In other words, the five-year-old Jack’s mind is
a passage-way to the novel’s core, the “woman-mother,” Ma. The novel
112
Room thus celebrates the status of a child being an everlasting extension
of its woman-mother. As life moves on, in the novel, we find that despite
all their suffering, struggle, trauma of solitary confinement and the
trauma following their rescue which Ma calls as their heroic “Great
Escape,” Ma (the Woman-Mother) re-emerges as the heroic Survivor
and Jack as an epitome of happiness (Donoghue 133). As the novel nears
its end, both the mother and her son have regained their physical liberty
and they are also on the verge of gaining back their mental liberty too.
With its scenario of a terrified mother and her five-year-old son
imprisoned in a tiny secret space, with its celebration of woman/mother-
child love, Donoghue’s novel Room aims at to initiate an alternative
maternity discourse that rereads Lacanian concepts.
Donoghue’s novel Room redefines the Lacanian concepts by
proposing a utopian place, a primeval female space free of Symbolic
order, sex roles, Otherness and the Law-of-the-Father, through the
extended stages of psychic development in the five-year-old Jack. As far
as the character of Jack is concerned, we interestingly come across an
overlapping of the different stages of psychic structures where we
witness a moment in which the Imaginary obliterates the Symbolic.
Here, we find that in Jack, the Self, even at the age of five, is still linked
to the voice of the mother, the source of all feminine expression; to gain
access to this place is to find an immeasurable source of creativity.
113
Jack seems happily ensconced in a routine that is deeply secure,
in a setting (Room) where he can see his mother all day, at any moment.
Ma has created a structured, lively regimen for her son, including
exercise, singing, reading, watching TV and so on. The objects in the
room are given capital letters – Rug, Bed, Wall, Plant – a wonderful
choice, because to Jack, they are named beings, they are his friends.
In a world where the only other companion is his Ma, Bed, for instance,
is his friend as much as anything else. Jack, in this way, is a heightened
version of a regular kid, bringing boundless wonder and meaning to his
every pursuit completely blind to the pretensions and falsity of the
adult world (outside). This, in turn, illustrates the power of the
Creator (the Woman-Mother), and this power is intended further in the
fact that Ma has managed to keep Jack almost oblivious to the sexual
side of things. For instance, the creaking bed in the night after the arrival
of Old Nick in the Room makes him edgy, but lots of other things, green
beans, for instance, make him edgier still.
The novel opens on Jack’s birthday when he has turned five.
Even at five, the Imaginary and the Mirror-stage still function explicitly
in Jack as he thinks of himself at once as different and as an apex of his
mother, an inseparable part of Ma. Jack sees himself as an extension of
Ma’s personality, Ma’s Self, Ma’s body and this is illustrated when Jack,
114
at an instance, expresses his feelings of hiding from his Ma the presence
of a cob-web in Room:
I still don’t tell her about the web. It’s weird to have
something that’s mine-not-Ma’s. Everything else is both
of ours. I guess my body is mine and the ideas that
happen in my head. But my cells are made out of her cells
so I’m kind of hers. Also when I tell her what I’m
thinking and she tells me what she’s thinking, our each
ideas jump into our other’s head, like coloring blue
crayon on top of yellow that makes green. (Donoghue 12)
Thus, for Jack, it is impossible to hide or have anything of his own
which does not belong to his Ma. The sense of his self is so deeply
merged with that of the woman-mother that Jack, at an instance, even
dreams of becoming bigger and bigger till he turns into “a woman, with
a w” (Donoghue 16). For him, being “human” means growing up into a
“woman” like his Ma. Jack, at an instance, says: “May be I’m a human
but I’m a me-and-Ma as well” (342). Thus, the Imaginary and the
Mirror-stage, which constitute the realm of the ego, a pre-Oedipal
signifying realm characterized by the child’s deep and intense bond with
the woman-mother, still remain active in the five-year-old Jack.
The woman-mother in the novel, Ma, threatens the Lacanian
Symbolic by playing a crucial role in causing the extension of Lacanian
115
psychic stages – Imaginary and Mirror-stage – in Jack’s psychic
development. This is evident at an instance when Jack plays with his
mirror-reflection along with Ma:
I stick out my tongue in Mirror. Ma’s behind me, I can
see my face stuck over hers like a mask we made when
Halloween happened . . .
“What am I like?”
She taps Mirror where’s my forehead, her finger leaves a
circle. “The dead spit of me.”
“Why I’m your dead spit?” The circle’s disappearing.
“It just means you look like me. I guess because you’re
made of me, like my spit is. Same brown eyes, same big
mouth, same pointy chin . . .”
I’m staring at us at the same time and the us in Mirror are
staring back. “Not same nose.”
“Well, you’ve got a kid nose right now.”
I hold it. “Will it fall off and an adult nose grow?”
“No, no, it’ll just get bigger. Same brown hair---”
“But mine goes all the way down to my middle and yours
just goes on your shoulders.”
“That’s true,” says Ma, reaching for Toothpaste. “All
116
your cells are twice as alive as mine.”
. . . I look again in Mirror. (Donoghue 8)
In this moment, Jack is fascinated by his image as well as his Ma’s
reflection in the mirror, and he tries to control and play with it.
Moreover, Jack develops a sense of the self with the help of his Ma,
which finally ends up in the child’s identification and unity with the
woman-mother. While Jack still feels his body to be in parts, as
fragmented and not yet unified, it is the image (his mirror image as well
as his image reflected in his Ma) that provides him with a sense of
unification and wholeness. This mirror image is called the Other and for
Jack this Other is his Ma which is, in fact, used to conceive his sense of
the Self. This image, this Other (his Ma), therefore, anticipates the
mastery of his own body; the woman-mother in the novel is, therefore,
the source of Oneness or Wholeness that terminates the feelings of
fragmentation the child is supposed to experience in the Lacanian
Symbolic.
The most important point to be noted here is that, in this novel,
the overlapping stages – Imaginary and Mirror-stage – have extended
themselves to the realm of the Symbolic in Jack’s psyche. Even though
he is a five-year-old child, Imaginary and Mirror-stage have been
retained in his psychic development thereby shaking the fixity of the
Lacanian Symbolic. However, in this novel, we find that the Symbolic in
117
the five-year-old Jack is not strong enough to effect a change in the
world of the mother and her child, the extended Maternal Womb. This is
because of the overlapping Imaginary and Mirror phases being extended
further into the Symbolic in Jack.
Jack, of course, has two biological parents – but he barely
glimpses the patriarchal man/father (whom he calls “Old Nick”) who
fathered him. Nameless and storyless, in the novel, Old Nick has a
fairytale, bogeyman quality. Jack, at an instance, says:
Nothing makes Ma scared. Except Old Nick may be.
Mostly she calls him just him, I didn’t even know the
name for him till I saw a cartoon about a guy that comes
in the night called Old Nick. I call the real one that
because he comes in the night, but he doesn’t look like
the TV guy with a beard and horns and stuff. I asked Ma
once is he old, and she said he’s nearly double her which
is pretty old. (Donoghue 14)
Thus, for Jack, Old Nick is a shadowy presence of whom he is unsure of
whether he is even real or not. Once, in Room, while watching images of
people in TV, Jack comments:
Men aren’t real except Old Nick, and I’m not actually
sure if he’s real for real. Maybe half? He brings groceries
and Sundaytreat and disappears the trash, but he’s not
118
human like us. He only happens in the night, like bats.
Maybe Door makes him up with a beep beep and the air
changes. I think Ma doesn’t like to talk about him in case
he gets realer. (Donoghue 22)
Old Nick, for Jack, is thus an illusory figure. Old Nick’s access to his
son Jack is deliberately denied and restricted by Ma, the woman-mother.
Ma strongly restricts Old Nick’s access to Jack by not allowing him to
touch, talk or get a sight of his son. She stands as a strong, unbreakable
barrier between the patriarchal man/father and his son which at times
tempts Old Nick, who may be taken as a representative of patriarchy,
into momentary outbursts and criticism. Once, during one of his visits to
the locked room in the night, Old Nick makes an attempt to talk to his
son, Jack, which is ultimately warded off by the strong intervention of
Ma as follows:
Old Nick’s looking right at me, he takes a step and
another . . . I see his hand shadow. “Hey in there.” He’s
talking to me. My chest’s going clang clang. I hug my
knees and press my teeth together. I want to get under
Blanket but I can’t, I can’t do anything.
“He’s asleep.” That’s Ma.
“She keep you in the closet all day as well as all
night? . . . Doesn’t seem natural . . . I figure there must be
119
something wrong,” he’s saying to Ma, “you’ve never let
me get a good look since the day he was born. Poor little
freak’s got two heads or something?” . . . “Bought him
that fancy jeep, didn’t I? I know boys, I was one once.
C’mon, Jack---”
He said my name.
“C’mon out and get your lollipop.” (Donoghue 90-91)
It is during the very same night that Jack gets a complete sight of
Old Nick for the first time:
I’m looking at Bed, there he is, Old Nick, his face is made
of rock I think. I put my finger out, not to touch it, just
nearly. His eyes flash all white. I jump back . . . I think he
might shout but he’s grinning with big shiny teeth, he
says, “Hey, sonny.”
I don’t know what that---
Then Ma is louder than I ever heard her even doing
Scream. “Get away, get away from him!” . . . she keeps
screeching, “Get away from him.”
“Shut up,” Old Nick is saying, “shut up” . . .
“I can be quiet,” she says, she’s nearly whispering, I
hear her breath all scratchy. “You know how quiet I can
120
be, so long as you leave him alone. It’s all I’ve ever
asked.” (Donoghue 92)
Therefore, the woman-mother (Ma), in this novel, initiates the
transgression of the Law-of-the-Father (the Symbolic) in Jack by
denying Old Nick (the patriarchal man/father) his right to “her” child. In
this way, Ma (the woman-mother) rejects or dismisses the scope of any
Oedipal space in Jack’s psychic development.
Thus, in Room (the tiny cell where Old Nick has locked-up Ma
and Jack), Old Nick remains a mere passive or silent inarticulate father,
as far as the character of Jack is concerned. In other words, there is a
total absence of an articulate father-figure (an active paternal discourse)
in the case of the five-year-old Jack as Ma deliberately keeps her son
unaware of Old Nick being his father. Once Old Nick is arrested and
jailed-up towards the last sections of the novel, after the Great Escape of
Jack and his Ma from the tiny room, Old Nick disappears from the plot,
and this poses a strong challenge to the phallocentric universe, the Law-
of-the-Father.
For Ma, Jack is “magic” like “Baby Jesus,” and he solely belongs
to her (Donoghue 22-23). It is the status of being “Jack’s Ma,” it is her
role as the Woman-Mother, that truly defines Ma’s identity and gives
meaning to her life as a woman. There is an instance in the novel
when Ma eloquently claims and declares her sole right to her child
121
Jack, sweeping away all patriarchal airs of intrusion. She
says: “He’s the world to me . . . I’m back, with Jack. That’s two
miracles” (Donoghue 282). Though the trauma behind her experience of
mothering a child under hostile circumstances is unimaginable, for Ma
“giving birth to Jack” was “the best thing” that she had ever done during
the seven long years of her incarceration in Room (Donoghue 291). For
her, Jack is everything and it is Jack who made her alive again and it is
he who made her realize that she really “mattered,” at last.
In Donoghue’s novel, we find that Ma is the sole source of
language for Jack; she is the Privileged Signifier, the Phallus, the Word,
who anchors the chain of signification in Jack, especially in the absence
of an active paternal force (the effective Symbolic function). Thus, the
novel initiates and celebrates a new semiotic system governed by the
Woman-Mother, alternative to the Lacanian Symbolic. For Jack, “Ma
knows about everything” (Donoghue 364). For him, her Word is the
final. It is the overlapping of extended Lacanian stages in Jack’s psychic
development that facilitates Ma’s proximity to phallus as a new subject.
Hence, in this novel, Jack constantly wishes to become the object of his
Ma’s desire and also to return to the initial state of their blissful union.
After the escape of Jack and his Ma from Room, from Old Nick, from
captivity, Jack often expresses his desire to return to Room. The novel,
122
for instance, ends with Jack’s and Ma’s final visit to Room along with
the police:
I tell Ma . . . “It’s not Room now.”
“You don’t think so? She sniffs. “It used to smell even
staler. The door’s open now, of course.”
Maybe that’s it. “Maybe it’s not Room if Door’s open.”
Ma does a tiny smile . . . She clears her throat. “Would
you like the door closed for a minute?”
“No” . . . “Can we say good night when it’s not night?”
“I think it would be good-bye” . . .
“Good-bye, Room.” I wave up at Skylight. “Say good-
bye,” I tell Ma. “Good-bye, Room.”
Ma says it but on mute.
I look back one more time. It’s like a crater, a hole
where something happened. Then we go out the
door. (Donoghue 400-01)
At this instance, when Ma asks Jack to bid “good-bye” to his Room, to
all his friends out there – Floor, Bed, Wardrobe, Eggsnake, Roof – Jack
wholeheartedly does it because we find that he has ultimately realized
that his “Room” is not confined within that tiny hole-like dwelling
(he says: “It’s not Room now”). Rather his real “Room” is
“everywhere” where there occurs the union of himself with his Ma.
123
Room is, thus, the new family of woman-mother and her child, a
reincarnation of the Maternal Womb. In other words, Room, for Jack, is
a replica of his mother’s womb; hence, his constant wish for “Room”
can be interpreted as the child’s unconscious desire to return to his
mother’s womb. Moreover, for Jack, Room is rather a feeling of
“Oneness” or “togetherness.” Thus, the reconstructed “family” of Ma
and Jack, in the end of the novel, is one where there is no Symbolic, no
voice of the patriarchal man/father to establish the Law. Ma’s and Jack’s
reunion in the end, therefore, crumbles down patriarchal constructs like
the “familial Triad.”
In Donoghue’s novel, we also find that before the true
evolution of Jack’s Ma as a new subjectivity, a new consciousness,
before her re-emergence as an emotionally strong, independent single
woman-mother sufficiently determined to earn a living for herself
and her son, before claiming her social, political and economic
independence, there occurs a mental-breakdown in Ma as she is struck
down by neurosis, leading her to attempt suicide, though she later
succeeds in recovering from her neurotic trauma. Ma, at the age of
nineteen, was kidnapped and locked-up by Old Nick in a tiny room. In
the following days, Ma was sexually abused repeatedly and all her
efforts to break apart the tiny room, and her attempts to attack and hurt
Old Nick finally failed. And finally she gave birth to a baby girl, but she
124
was born dead as the umbilical cord was all knotted around her neck.
Old Nick took her dead body away and buried her under a bush in the
backyard. Soon, after all the trauma of being subjected to terrible
imprisonment, multiple counts of rape and the experience of abortion at
an early age, on a cold March day, Ma finally gave birth, all alone under
medieval conditions, to a healthy baby-boy, Jack, all on herself. Hence,
after Jack’s birth, Ma pretended to be polite towards Old Nick in order to
keep her son safe in Room. She deliberately wore the disguise of playing
wife to Old Nick. Ma continued with her disguise until she thought time
really became favourable for her Great Escape from Room with her son.
After all her struggles and trauma, when she finally enters the outside
world, she is initially struck by the sense of being denied the real
freedom and independence that she craved for. Under the guidance of
the police who assisted the escape of Ma and Jack from the locked room,
both of them are admitted to the Cumberland Clinic where the
psychiatrist, Dr. Clay takes in charge of them. It is during this interim
before the final re-emergence of Ma and Jack as a single “whole” totally
immune to the forces of patriarchy that Ma is struck by neurosis which
leads her to attempt suicide. Following this, Jack is separated from Ma
for a short while. But, finally, Ma (the woman-mother) incredibly
reaffirms life over death using her maternal power and returns to her son.
She, thus, takes hold of her life, her lost youth, her dreams, as she returns
125
to her son from the Clinic with the hope of reconstructing a world of
their own, an Independent Living of their own. It is the reunion of Ma
and Jack, which occurs after Ma’s return from the hospital that
actually cures Ma of neurosis. With Ma’s reaffirmation of life over
death (Old Nick/Patriarchy), in the end, the novel marks the celebrated
return of the Ultimate Artist, the Creator.
The final restoration of Jack and his Ma, in Room, into an
independent life of order, glory and bliss is ultimately the result of
Ma’s strength as a woman, as a mother. In the novel, the ultimate
reaffirmation of life over death (this is evident in the very fact that
Donoghue has named the last three sections of her novel as “Dying,”
“After,” and “Living”) should be all owed to Ma, the woman-mother.
After they begin to get control of their life, as the novel ends, Ma and
Jack feel that they have once again returned to the maternal space where
they are reunited into a single “One.” In brief, Donoghue’s Room works
as a literary attempt, which is rather a study of a child’s psychic
development, showing the power of language or signification in the
hands of the woman-mother and her politically-active intrusion into the
Symbolic (the order of patriarchy) in the absence of an articulate
man/father as a discursive figure. This novel, thus, emerges as an
effective rereading of Lacan, giving expression to the uniquely powerful
voice of the Woman-Mother.
126
The next novel that epitomizes and illustrates the evolution of
woman’s maternity as an alternative discursive force, by rereading
Lacan and challenging the superiority and authority of the paternal law
which oppresses women-mothers, is Hannah’s The Things We Do
for Love. The novel The Things We Do for Love centres on the
deep emotional and revelatory bond of maternal love between
Angie (the woman-mother) and her daughter Lauren. For the major part
of the novel, Lauren lacks a father-figure in her life. Her biological
father had left her mom long time back, even before her birth; it is much
later, as the novel nears its end, that finally Conlan enters as a father-
figure for her, but he remains as a mere passive and inarticulate paternal
presence submissive to Angie (the Woman-Mother).
Lauren, initially, lives with her mom, and later with Angie (her
desirable woman-mother) when her mom leaves her. So, in short,
“family” for the seventeen-years-old girl Lauren is a reincarnation of the
Maternal Womb – a familial space exclusively occupied by the mother
and her daughter. In this new familial space, where a father-figure is
either absent or remains passive and inarticulate, the Woman-Mother
re-emerges as the Word, the Phallus, the Privileged Signifier, for the girl
– thus initiating the possibility of an alternative semiotic system
challenging the Lacanian Symbolic. Lauren’s mom, though she leaves
her pregnant daughter all alone, should never be taken for a bad woman-
127
mother; instead she is one who, being a single woman-mother, is
emotionally broken down and scarred by the patriarchal heartlessness,
left with irrecoverable losses. This is clearly evident in her response to
her daughter’s decision not to have an abortion: “Mom stared . . .
through eyes that were glazed with tears. ‘You break my heart’ . . . Mom
almost started to cry again. ‘I’m sorry’ ” (Hannah 252-53). Lauren’s
mom, thus, represents those poor women-mothers who are unaware of
the real strength of their maternal power and, therefore, lack the strength
to restore themselves from the state of being mere victims to patriarchy.
Thus, rather than emerging as the victorious Survivor, Lauren’s mom
constantly runs away from her life. The voice of the victimized woman-
mother echoes in the note that Lauren’s mom has left for her daughter
before leaving the girl. The note read “Sorry” and as Lauren reads it
the song “Baby, we were born to run . . . ” plays in the
background (Hannah 254). However, though Lauren’s mom is portrayed
as a weak character, there are certain instances in the initial part of the
novel where she re-emerges as the Word, the Phallus, the Privileged
Signifier for the seventeen-years-old girl. One such instance comes when
Lauren and her mom converse:
“ . . . Mom, I know how I ruined your life.”
“Ruined is harsh,” Mom said with a tired sigh. “I never
said ruined.”
128
“I wonder if he had other children,” Lauren said.
“How would I know? He ran from me like I had the
plague.”
“I just . . . wish I had relatives, that’s all.”
Mom exhaled smoke. “Believe me, family is overrated.
Oh, they’re fine till you screw up, but then . . . they break
your heart. Don’t you count on people, Lauren.”
Lauren had heard all this before. “I just wish---”
“Don’t. It’ll only hurt you.”
Lauren looked at her mother. “Yeah,” she said . . .
“I know.” (Hannah 41-42)
At this instance, when Lauren asks whether her father had other children
and expresses her wish to have relatives, Lauren’s mom describes the
girl’s father as a patriarchal coward who ran away from her. Thus, here,
Lauren’s mom indirectly deconstructs the patriarchal model of
family (the “familial Triad”) that propagates the paternal lineage, and
dismisses this “patriarchal family” as “overrated.” In doing so, she
implicitly suggests the reconstruction of a new family – one of
woman-mother and her daughter – challenging the “familial
Triad” (Father, mother and child). This is further substantiated when
Lauren’s mom reassures Lauren that the girl never “ruined” her mother’s
life.
129
But, in the novel, it is Angie who undoubtedly re-emerges as
the strong, independent Woman-Mother who, using the unlimited
strength of her maternal power, reaffirms life over death, not only for
herself but also for Lauren. As they begin their new life together, Angie
and Lauren emotionally connect as woman-mother and daughter. They
wholeheartedly accept each other as mother and daughter. From here,
begins the reconstruction of a new family, the womb-like family of
woman-mother and her child, challenging and replacing the patriarchal
“familial Triad.” Thus, after Lauren shifts to Angie’s house, as the girl’s
mom leaves her, and when they begin their new life together, Angie
(the Woman-Mother) finally emerges as the Word, the Phallus, the
Privileged Signifier for the seventeen-years-old girl Lauren. This is
evident as Lauren expresses her feelings regarding Angie’s successful
efforts to fight for her justice at the school. Angie pretends as Lauren’s
mother at her Catholic school and successfully convinces and forces the
school authority to dismiss their plans of expelling their student Lauren
for being pregnant. Here, at this instance, the seventeen-years-old
Lauren is suddenly struck by that extraordinary moment of joy that
characterizes the Lacanian psychic stages – Imaginary and Mirror-stage
– in which the woman-mother is the Word, the Phallus, the Ultimate
Truth for the child:
130
Lauren smiled. She felt great. Better than great. No
one had ever fought for her like that, and the effort
strengthened her, made her feel invincible. With Angie
on her side, she could do anything. Even attend
classes when she knew people would be staring and
talking. (Hannah 293)
Here, Lauren’s intense joy at experiencing a sense of Oneness or
Wholeness with Angie (the woman-mother), in a way, manifests the
overlapping of the extended Imaginary and Mirror phases in the psyche
of the seventeen-years-old girl Lauren. This disrupts the coherence of the
Lacanian Symbolic in Lauren, particularly because there is a total
absence of a father-figure in the girl’s life until Conlan’s entry, towards
the end of the novel, as a passive and inarticulate paternal presence – one
which is submissive to the Woman-Mother (Angie).
It is the limitless strength of the Maternal in Angie, which is
reawakened by the entry of the girl Lauren into her life, that helps
her to emotionally overpower her ex-husband Conlan (the patriarchal
man/father), to transform him and finally restore her life with him once
again as the novel ends. The revived Maternal in Angie is evidence to
the fact that the “maternal desire” resides in every woman and that this
desire is not only determined by the biological attributes but also
involves an emotional experience. In other words, the Maternal in
131
Angie is not biological, but rather emotional or psychological.
Angie (the Woman-Mother), thus, transforms Conlan from being a
stubborn patriarchal man/father to one who becomes open to the
ever-evolving flow of pure, unrestricted love; she remarries him towards
the end of the novel. But, though Conlan enters the new familial space of
the woman-mother (Angie) and her daughter (Lauren), towards the end,
he cannot effect any patriarchal paternal intrusion into the womb-like
world of the mother and her child. Thus, by centring its focus on the
intense feelings of “togetherness” shared by the woman-mother (Angie)
and her daughter (Lauren), the novel totally rejects the scope of any
Oedipal space.
Moreover, the reunion of Angie and Lauren in the end of
the novel, that occurs following Lauren’s return to Angie (the woman-
mother), can be regarded as a reaffirmation of life over death:
Angie pulled her into a fierce hug. For a heartbeat, she
couldn’t let go. Finally, she took a deep breath and
stepped back . . .
Lauren swallowed hard. A quivering smile curved her lips
even as she started again to cry. “I love you, Angie.”
“I know that, honey . . .”
Together, hand in hand, they walked across the wet grass
and went into the house.
132
. . . “She’s back,” Angie said . . . “Our girl’s come
home.” (Hannah 432-33)
This reunion of Angie and Lauren, simultaneously, marks the
joyful fulfillment of the never-ending desire-to-mother in every
woman (Angie) and also the irresistible desire in every
individual (Lauren) to return to or reunite with the woman-mother. In
addition, this reunion of woman-mother and her daughter also
re-establishes Angie (the Woman-Mother) as the Word, the Phallus, the
Privileged Signifier for the girl Lauren. It is Angie (the woman-mother)
who makes Lauren realize that she could pursue her education and have
her baby at once; it is Angie who reveals to Lauren that the girl never
had to make a choice between her education and her baby. Finally, as the
novel ends, Angie wholeheartedly accepts the girl Lauren as her
daughter; for Angie, Lauren is always “a kid,” her “little one,” her
“baby” (Hannah 427). For Angie, “motherhood,” the experience of
“mothering,” the child, is a “gift” which women are granted with – a
unique power of the Woman-Mother (Hannah 277-78). It is also
important to note that it is the revived Woman-Mother in Angie who, at
once, makes her daughter Lauren realize that for every woman-mother,
her child is “magic.” That is, it is Angie who makes Lauren understand
that the girl’s baby is actually magic, a “miracle.” For instance, Angie
133
makes her daughter Lauren undergo this wonderful realization at the
hospital:
. . . Angie . . . finally said what she’d come to say. “You
need to see him.”
Lauren had looked up into Angie’s eyes and thought:
There it is. The love Lauren had looked for all of her
life . . . .
Angie had touched her then, so gently. “ . . . honey . . .
you need to do it.”
Long after Angie had left, Lauren thought about it. In her
heart, she knew Angie was right. She needed to hold her
son, to kiss his tiny cheek and tell him she loved him . . .
Lauren saw her tiny, pink-faced son for the first time . . .
And her own red hair. Here was her whole life in one
small face . . . She stared down at this baby of hers, this
miracle in her arms, and even though he was so tiny, he
seemed like the whole world . . . He was her family.
Family. (Hannah 415-16)
This instance, once again, illustrates Angie’s (the Woman-Mother’s)
re-emergence as the Word, the Phallus, the Privileged Signifier for
Lauren as the woman-mother makes the girl reach at the amazing
conception of a new family – one of woman-mother and her child – that
134
in turn challenges the patriarchal “familial Triad.” This further manifests
the extension of the Imaginary and Mirror phases – the Lacanian psychic
stages in which the Woman-Mother is the Word, the Phallus, the
Privileged Signifier – in Lauren’s psyche.
In addition, there is also a crucial instance in Hannah’s novel
The Things We Do for Love which rereads the Lacanian association
of language and unconscious. This instance is the one in which
Angie’s and Lauren’s dreams intersect. Dreams are the unfulfilled
desires in the unconscious. For example, in the novel, there is reference
to Angie’s (the Woman-Mother’s) recurring “baby dream”:
Angie’s dreams that night came in black and white; faded
images from some forgotten family album of the has-been
and never-were moments. She was in Searle Park, at the
merry-go-round, waving at a small dark-haired girl who
had . . . blue eyes . . . Slowly, the girl faded to gray and
disappeared; it was as if a mist had swept in and veiled
the world . . . She woke with a gasp. For the next few
hours she lay in her bed, curled on her side, trying to put
it all back in storage . . . it hurt too much. Some things
were simply lost. (Hannah 233)
135
Angie’s dream, here, expresses the woman-mother’s undying desire-to-
mother that remains unfulfilled till the girl Lauren enters her life.
Similarly, Lauren, on the other hand, has a recurring “mom dream”:
Her day-dream was always the same: She saw a little girl
with red hair, wearing a bright green dress, hurrying
along behind a beautiful blond woman. Up ahead, a
family waited for them. Come along, Lauren, her
imaginary mother always said, smiling gently as she
reached out to hold her hand. (Hannah 153)
Here, in Lauren’s dream, the “girl with red hair” is Lauren herself, and
her dream in turn voices the girl’s endless desire to return to or
reunite with the woman-mother. In her dream, Lauren felt so safe with
the strong hand of her “dream mother” wrapped around her tiny
fingers: “All she knew was that she would have followed that
mommy anywhere . . .” (Hannah 390). And Lauren’s dream remains
unfulfilled until she meets Angie.
Angie’s and Lauren’s recurring dreams reverberate throughout
the novel. It is when Angie and Lauren reunite and begin their life
together that their dreams intersect, and hereafter Lauren becomes “the
girl” in Angie’s dream and Angie “the woman-mother” holding the girl’s
hand in Lauren’s dream. Moreover, there are also instances in the novel
when Angie’s and Lauren’s desires in their unconscious get revealed in
136
the words or letters they utter. The following conversation between
Angie and Lauren is such an instance:
. . . Angie said . . . “I care about you, Lauren. You.” She
sighed. “ . . . Sometimes I lie in my bed upstairs and close
my eyes and pretend you’re my daughter . . . .” Angie
looked up. She realized that she wasn’t even talking to
Lauren anymore. She was talking to herself.
Lauren was staring at her. “Sometimes I pretend you’re
my mom . . . I wish you were.”
Angie wanted to cry at that. They were both missing
the same piece of themselves, she and Lauren; no
wonder they’d come together so easily. “We’re a team,”
she said softly. “You and me. Somehow God knew we
needed each other.” She forced a smile and wiped her
eyes. (Hannah 309)
This instance reveals Angie’s and Lauren’s unconscious desire to
achieve the experience of “togetherness,” the sense of Oneness or
Wholeness in the woman/mother-child dyad, in each other’s company,
which in turn gets expressed in the words or letters uttered by Angie and
Lauren. This Oneness or Wholeness, an eternal experience shared by the
woman-mother and her child, is finally achieved in its completion by
137
Angie (the woman-mother) and Lauren (the child) as they openly share
their minds explicitly expressing their desire for each other in the end:
“It was you, Lauren. Don’t you know that? You’re part of
. . . family . . . love you.”
. . . Lauren stared up at her. “ . . . I used to have a dream.
The same one, every night. I was in a green dress and a
woman was there, reaching down to hold my hand. She
always said, ‘Come on, Lauren’ . . . When I woke up, I
was always crying.”
“Why were you crying?”
“Because she was the mom I couldn’t have.”
Angie drew in a sharp breath, then released it on a ragged
sigh. Something inside her gave way; she hadn’t realized
how tightly she’d been wrapped until the pressure eased.
This was what they’d come together for, she and Lauren.
This one perfect moment. She reached out for Lauren’s
hand, said gently, “You have me, Lauren.”
Tears streaked down Lauren’s face. “Oh, Angie,” she said
. . . “Thank you, Angie,” she said . . . .
Angie’s face softened into a smile. “No. Thank you . . .
for showing me how it feels to be a mother. And now, a
grandmother. All of those empty years I dreamed of my
138
little girl on a merry-go-round. I didn’t know . . . that my
daughter was already too old for playgrounds.”
Lauren looked up at her then. It was all in her eyes,
the years spent in quiet desperation . . . dreaming of a
mother who loved her . . . “I was waiting for you,
too.” (Hannah 430-31)
Thus, this Oneness or Wholeness, which Angie (the woman-mother) and
the girl Lauren share, is suggested effectively in the reciprocal
equation and connection between Angie’s and Lauren’s dreams in the
novel. This Oneness or Wholeness achieved by Angie and Lauren as
“woman-mother” and “her child,” in the novel, is in fact the unique,
defining characteristic of the Lacanian psychic stages – Imaginary and
Mirror-stage. In brief, Hannah’s novel The Things We Do for Love can
be considered a literary attempt that eloquently celebrates the extension
of the Imaginary and Mirror phases, and initiates the re-emergence of the
Woman-Mother as the active, articulate discursive entity from which
springs an alternative politics that challenges the phallocentric universe.
Another novel which, by rereading Lacanian concepts,
attempts to establish the Woman-Mother as an alternative discursive
entity filled with incredible energy and strength, and thus competent
enough to oppose, challenge and dismantle the Lacanian Symbolic is
Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin. The novel We Need to Talk
139
About Kevin deconstructs the patriarchal institutions like the “familial
Triad,” “motherhood,” and the golden rules of phallocentrism attached to
them. This fictional narrative voices the inexpressible physical and
emotional experiences of the female body, the maternal body. Initially,
the patriarchal interruption made by Franklin, in the novel, distances
Eva (the woman-mother) from her son Kevin. However, the rebirth of
the Woman-Mother in Eva soon tempts her to question and challenge the
patriarchal man/father in Franklin very often. For example, at an
instance, in a letter, she addresses Franklin and states, “ . . . isn’t there
something flat and plain and doughy about this whole Father Knows
Best routine . . . ” (Shriver 17). Moreover, the fact that the entire novel is
narrated from the perspective of the Woman-Mother (Eva) makes her an
all-powerful or overpowering force that intrudes and disrupts the
coherence of the Lacanian Symbolic, the Law-of-the-Father.
Throughout the novel, Franklin seems to boast of himself as the
healthy, optimistic American Dad who actually ends up generating futile
hopes of running a healthy and happy family of Father, mother and
children – the “familial Triad,” the patriarchal model of family. In the
novel We Need to Talk About Kevin, there are several instances where
Eva voices herself as the strong, independent Woman-Mother
challenging the Lacanian Symbolic or the Law-of-the-Father. For
example, there is an instance, before Kevin’s birth, when Eva and
140
Franklin debate over their kid’s last name, which Eva recollects in one of
her letters to her dead husband:
I don’t know what took me so long to notice that you
were simply assuming that our baby would take your
surname . . . I said, “ . . . Khatchadourian . . . has more of
a ring.”
“It has the ring of a kid who’s not related to
me” . . . You drummed your fingers. “Can we at least nix
Plaskett-Khatchadourian? . . . And since somebody’s
gotta lose, it’s simplest to stick with tradition.”
“According to tradition, women couldn’t own property
. . . Men have always gotten to name their children after
themselves, while not doing any of the work . . . Time to
turn the tables.”
“Why turn them on me? . . . .”
I glared . . . “But you care about your last name just
because it’s yours. I care about mine---well, it seems
more important.”
“My parents would have a cow. They’d think I was
denying them. Or that I was under your thumb. They’d
think I was an asshole.”
141
“I should get varicose veins for a Plaskett? It’s a gross
name!”
You looked stung. “You never said you didn’t like my
name . . . Now I know why you didn’t take it when we
got married. You hated my name! . . . Tell you what,” you
proposed . . . “If it’s a boy, it’s a Plaskett. A girl, and you
can have your Khatchadourian.”
I . . . jabbed your chest. “So a girl doesn’t matter to
you . . .”
You raised your hands. “If it’s a girl, it’s a Plaskett,
then! . . . .” (Shriver 70-72)
Here, Eva (the Woman-Mother) implicitly emerges as the Word,
the Phallus, the Privileged Signifier, effectively violating the Law-of-
the-Father (the Name-of-the-Father) in patriarchy that propagates the
golden rule for the child (boy/girl) to be named after its father. This
initiates the wonderful possibility of a semiotic system alternative to the
phallocentric realm of signification in patriarchy, dismissing the
dominance of the Lacanian Symbolic. In other words, Franklin’s
submissiveness to Eva, here, manifests how the Name-of-the-M(Other)
wins over and replaces the Name-of-the-Father, challenging the
Symbolic order of patriarchy. Thus, Kevin, in the novel, is named after
his woman-mother as Kevin Khatchadourian. Though Franklin has
142
demanded that the child should be named after him, if it happened to be
a girl, later on in the novel, when a girl-child is born to Eva and
Franklin, it is he who insists that the girl-child should have the same last
name as her brother’s since he had no choice. Eva recollects
Franklin’s words: “Two kids, different last names? People would
think one was adopted . . . Whatever you want, Eva, . . . is fine with
me” (Shriver 259). Thus, the second child is also named after her
woman-mother as Celia Khatchadourian. This instance, therefore,
initiates Franklin’s degeneration into the state of being a passive and
inarticulate paternal discursive force.
The novel denies Franklin (the patriarchal man/father) any
independent space in its plot as he is given life only through Eva’s voice.
Thus, his access to the novel’s plot is limited, and he seems to be Eva’s
presumably estranged husband – a silent or absent passive listener in the
background showing no response to Eva’s letters – until Eva’s disclosure
of Franklin’s murder committed by their son Kevin. In love with the idea
of fatherhood (the unquestioned patriarchal Daddydom) and the
patriarchal model of family (the “familial Triad” consisting of Franklin,
Eva and their two children), Franklin adores his killer-son Kevin and
even goes to great lengths to place the best possible interpretation on his
son’s misdeeds. But, there are several instances in the novel where
Franklin is finally rebuked and silenced by Kevin, which in turn suggest
143
the underlying Oedipal current in the father-son relationship. Eva, in one
of her letters, recollects such an instance where Kevin addresses Franklin
and says: “I mean, Dad . . . Not sure you remember too good, being a kid
. . . Hey, Mister Plastic . . .” (Shriver 348). While recalling this incident,
Eva addresses Franklin and comments on the archetypal teenager angst
in Kevin, which can be regarded as an implicit reference to the Oedipal
instincts boiling within the teenager-boy:
I could feel you internally beaming. Here was your
teenager trotting out his archetypal teenager toughness,
behind which he hid his confused, conflicted feelings . . .
He was plenty confused and conflicted, but if you looked
into his pupils they were thick and sticky as a tar pit. This
teenage angst of his, it wasn’t cute. (Shriver 348)
Here, Eva (the Woman-Mother), by referring to the ignorance that
Franklin (the patriarchal man/father) deliberately forces on himself
neglecting his son’s real emotions, mocks at the baseless dominance of
the Law-of-the-Father (the Lacanian Symbolic).
Franklin, by giving no attention to his son’s real interests, was
forever dragging Kevin off to some cluttered Native American museum
or dreary Revolutionary War battlefield, or to other things of the man’s
own interests like photography. This gradually intensifies Kevin’s anger
and his urge to rival his father, ultimately resulting in the boy’s final
144
outburst at Franklin in the very morning of the day of the massacre.
During this instance, Kevin bursts out with anger at Franklin as the
patriarchal man/father, with pride, tries to begin one of his usual sessions
of teaching his son lessons of photography, while having breakfast:
“Shut up!” Kevin barked suddenly . . . “That’s enough.
Shut up! . . . I don’t care how your camera works,” he
continued levelly. “I don’t want to be a location scout
for a bunch of crappy products. I’m not interested.
I’m not interested in baseball or the founding fathers
or decisive battles of the Civil War. I hate museums
and national monuments and picnics. I don’t want to
memorize the Declaration of Independence in my spare
time . . . I don’t give a fuck about stamp collecting or
rare coins or pressing colorful autumn leaves in
encyclopedias. And I’ve had it up to my eyeballs with
heart-to-heart father-son talks about aspects of my life
that are none of your business.” (Shriver 425-26)
Kevin’s outburst at Franklin, as Eva recollects here, sends
the man/father into an utter shock. Following his son’s outburst
at him, Franklin, being stunned by his son’s total rejection of
his until-then-unquestioned-Daddydom, immediately falls into
submissiveness and silence. This sudden degeneration of Franklin that
145
reduces the patriarchal man/father into a passive, inarticulate
father-figure in turn serves as a harbinger of Franklin’s death. The
Oedipal crisis reaches its peak as Kevin finally murders his own father
on the very same day by shooting him with arrows from the crossbow
which Franklin presented the boy with. Franklin’s death, in the novel,
simultaneously marks the termination of the dominance of the Lacanian
Symbolic (the Law-of-the-Father) over the Woman-Mother. Thus, the
novel We Need to Talk About Kevin, different from the three novels
previously analysed in this chapter which reject the scope of any Oedipal
space, uses the Oedipal crisis as a factor that facilitates the metaphorical
reunion of the woman-mother (Eva) and her son (Kevin) by causing the
death of the patriarchal man/father (Franklin) towards the end.
However, despite the running currents of Oedipal crisis in
the novel, there are several instances in the work that reveal
Eva’s (the Woman-Mother’s) strong and effective attempts to challenge
the Lacanian Symbolic, the paternal-oriented signifying realm
represented by Franklin. The fact that the novel is entirely narrated in
Eva’s voice, in the form of letters which she writes to her dead husband
Franklin, makes the woman-mother’s act of challenging the Lacanian
Symbolic all the more successful and powerful, particularly in the total
absence of an alive and active paternal discursive force. The following
instance, where Eva speaks to her dead husband in one of her letters,
146
illustrates how Eva (the Woman-Mother) deconstructs the Lacanian
Symbolic, re-establishing herself as the Word, the Phallus, the Privileged
Signifier, and initiating the process of signification for Kevin:
I didn’t expect to have a little Franklin Plaskett clone
running around the house . . . I was gratified that his
appearance was noticeably Armenian . . . Moreover, the
furtiveness of his gaze and the secrecy of his silence
seemed to confront me with a miniature version of my
own dissembling. He was watching me and I was
watching me, and under this dual . . . I felt doubly self-
conscious . . . When you came, Kevin refused to repeat
his loquacious performance, but I recited it word by word
. . . And I attended less to his grammar than to what he
said. I know this kind of assertion always gets up your
nose, but I did sometimes consider that, between us, I was
the more interested in Kevin . . . I mean, interested in
Kevin as Kevin really was, not Kevin as Your Son, who
had continually to battle against the formidable fantasy
paragon in your head, with whom he was in far more
ferocious competition . . . for several weeks he would talk
to me during the day, and when you came home he
clammed up . . . I may have found a guilty pleasure in the
147
exclusivity of my son’s discourse . . . Kevin had a
specialized vocabulary . . . . (Shriver 135-37)
Here, as Eva recollects her memory of the first attempts made by her son
Kevin to talk, she insists on her crucial role in initiating her little boy
into the process of signification, denying Franklin’s contribution in the
same act. Eva, at this instance, also expresses her pleasure in denying
Franklin the access to the exclusive initial maternal-oriented signifying
realm, the womb-like space consisting of the woman-mother and her
son. Eva, thus, re-establishes herself as the Word, the Phallus, the
Privileged Signifier, for Kevin. There is an instance in the novel when
Eva even goes to the extent of openly declaring with anger that her son’s
real dilemma was actually Franklin (the patriarchal man/father) himself.
For Kevin, Eva says, “Only one eventuality must have seemed worse,
and that was living with you, Franklin. Getting stuck with Dad. Getting
stuck with Dad the Dupe” (Shriver 410). This strong declaration made
by Eva in turn manifests the Woman-Mother’s attempt to dismantle the
Lacanian Symbolic.
Moreover, as Eva, being the narrator of the fiction, gains
complete control over the plot; it is she (the Woman-Mother) who, at
several instances, claims and re-affirms the sense of Oneness or
Wholeness that her son Kevin shared with her. For example, Eva once
accidentally happens to break Kevin’s arm. To her great relief Kevin
148
surprised Eva by concealing the fact from his father, telling Franklin a
lie that he broke his arm himself. At this instance, Eva makes a reference
to the feeling of “togetherness” shared by herself and her son in
concealing the accident from Franklin (the patriarchal man/father):
For in one respect I was touched, and remain so: I think
he had experienced a closeness to me that he was
reluctant to let go. Not only were we in this cover-up
together, but during the very assault we were concealing,
Kevin too may have felt whole, yanked to life by the
awesome sisal strength of the umbilical tie. For once I’d
known myself for his mother. So he may have known
himself also . . . for my son. (Shriver 238)
At this moment, the feeling of “togetherness” or “closeness” shared
by the woman-mother and her son, as Eva herself suggests, illustrates
the “umbilical-cord” experience of Oneness or Wholeness in Kevin – a
unique, defining experience that characterizes the Lacanian psychic
stages, Imaginary and Mirror-stage.
Another instance, which Eva recollects in one of her letters to her
dead husband, that clearly manifests Kevin’s endless unconscious desire
to return to his woman-mother, violating the laws of the Lacanian
Symbolic, occurs when the boy falls sick at the age of ten. Kevin, during
the entire period of his illness, resorted completely to his mother’s
149
company and simultaneously developed a curious aversion to his father’s
company. While recollecting her memory of a sick ten-years-old Kevin,
Eva addresses Franklin and states:
The other thing that amazed me was his curious aversion
to your company . . . I comforted you that children
always prefer their mothers when they’re sick, but you
were still a little jealous. Kevin was breaking the rules,
ruining the balance . . . You and Kevin were close, . . .
But I think . . . the very reason he recoiled: your
insistence, your crowding, your wanting . . . Daddishness.
It was too much. (Shriver 280)
Thus, as Eva suggests, Kevin’s return to his mother for a short while
transgresses the determining rules of the Law-of-the-Father, breaking
the balance in the Lacanian Symbolic. Kevin’s rejection of the
Lacanian Symbolic and his desire to return to his woman-mother also
get implied in Eva’s later reference to the transformation in the
teenager-boy: “ . . . Kevin’s Gee, Dad routine now extended to Gee,
Mumsey” (Shriver 419). This transformation in Kevin can be further
taken as an effective illustration of the wonderful psychological
phenomenon happening in the boy – the extension of the Imaginary and
Mirror phases into the Symbolic.
150
Another instance that clearly testifies and substantiates the
extension of the Lacanian psychic stages (Imaginary and Mirror-stage)
in the seventeen-years-old Kevin occurs while Eva recollects her
memory of watching a documentary on television in which her killer-son
was interviewed at his room in prison. This instance makes a reference
to Kevin’s final embrace of his mother Eva, and therefore implicitly
suggests the Woman-Mother’s re-emergence as the Word, the Phallus,
the Privileged Signifier for her child. When the interviewer tries to
blame his mother, Kevin, with sharp and menacing voice, says:
Oh, lay off my mother . . . Shrinks here spend all day
trying to get me to trash the woman, and I’m getting a
little tired of it, if you wanna know the truth . . . She’s
been all over the world, know that? You can hardly name
a country where she hasn’t got the T-shirt. Started her
own company. Go into any bookstore around here, you’ll
see her series. You know, . . . I used to cruise into Barnes
and Noble in the mall just to look at all those books.
Pretty cool. (Shriver 414)
This instance, recollected by Eva, reveals Kevin’s until-then-hidden love
for his mother. The novel also uncovers Kevin’s love for his mother
when it is revealed that he actually kept and treasured Eva’s photo all
along, which once went missing as Eva returned home from the hospital
151
after delivering her second child. While watching Kevin’s interview on
television, Eva finally discovers her photo being taped over his bed in
prison:
Just then the camera angle panned ninety degrees,
zooming in on the room’s only decoration that I could see
taped over his bed. Badly creased from having been
folded small enough to fit in a pocket or wallet, it was a
photograph of me. (Shriver 413)
This in turn implicitly expresses Kevin’s undying love for Eva and his
intense desire to return to his woman-mother.
Eva, the Woman-Mother, being the all-powerful narrator
in the novel, re-establishes herself as the Word, the Phallus, the
Privileged Signifier, for her son Kevin, hinting at the extension of
the Imaginary and Mirror phases in the boy. For example, at an
instance, Eva declares herself as the “mirror-image,” the Other, for
her son: “I had created my own Other Woman who happened to be
a boy” (Shriver 407). This can be read along with Eva’s identification
with her son: “I looked at him straight on . . . I confronted my own
wide-bridged nose, my narrow jaw, my shelved brow and dusky
complexion. I was looking in the mirror . . . ” (Shriver 347). Reading
these two instances cited above, together, also emits the sense of
Oneness or Wholeness shared by the woman-mother and her child in
152
the Imaginary and Mirror phases. Thus, in this novel, it is the
Woman-Mother (Eva) herself who hints at the extension of Lacanian
psychic stages (Imaginary and Mirror-stage) in Kevin. In other words, as
the novel ends, Eva replaces the patriarchal man/father (Franklin) as the
Word, the Phallus, the Privileged Signifier, for her son Kevin.
As the novel ends, when Eva visits Kevin in prison on the
day of the second anniversary of the massacre, her son finally
behaves like her “little one.” Three days from adulthood, looking at
manhood in an adult prison, Kevin finally becomes a “child” before
Eva (the Woman-Mother), implicitly embracing his inherent desire for
his mother’s love. Finally, when Eva is about to leave the prison after
her visit, there occurs the final reunion of Eva and Kevin, the Woman-
Mother and her child:
When I hugged him good-bye, he clung to me childishly,
as he never had in childhood proper. I’m not quite sure,
since he muttered it into the upturned collar of my coat,
but I . . . think that he choked, “I’m sorry.” Taking . . .
that I’d heard correctly, I said distinctly . . . “I’m sorry,
too, Kevin. I’m sorry, too.” (Shriver 465-66)
This emotional reconciliation between Eva and Kevin, in the end, marks
the metaphorical reunion of the mother and her son, generating the sense
of Oneness or Wholeness shared by the woman-mother and her child in
153
the Lacanian psychic stages. Thus, the novel, with Franklin’s death and
with the mother-son reunion, therefore challenges and deconstructs the
authority and fixity of the patriarchal “familial Triad.” As the novel
ends, despite all her suffering and losses in life, Eva resumes her life by
getting herself a job at a travel agency and shifting to a serviceable
apartment where she finally leaves a bedroom ready for Kevin with a
copy of his favourite book Robin Hood lying on the bookshelf, though
she is very well aware of the fact that her son has five years left to serve
in an adult prison. Thus, as the novel ends, Eva resurrects as the strong,
independent Woman-Mother, who finally brings in a re-affirmation of
life over death not only for herself but also for her son. Therefore,
Shriver’s novel We Need to Talk About Kevin can be regarded as a piece
of fiction which, by rereading Lacanian concepts, clears the space for the
re-emergence of the Woman-Mother as an alternative discursive figure
powerful enough to challenge the Law-of-the-Father.
Like the four novels analysed above, another work of fiction
which, by redefining and reinterpreting Lacanian concepts, gives
expression to the voice of the Woman-Mother is Maracle’s collection of
short stories First Wives Club: Coast Salish Style. In this collection,
there are three stories in which the Woman-Mother re-emerges as a
strong challenge to the phallocentric universe. These short stories which
create an effective literary space marking the re-emergence of the
154
Woman-Mother as an indubitable threatening discursive challenge to the
Lacanian Symbolic (the Law-of-the-Father) include the stories titled
“First Wives Club: Coast Salish Style,” “Blessing Song,” and
“Laundry Basket.”
In the story “First Wives Club: Coast Salish Style,” the
Woman-Mother, being the all-powerful narrator of the entire short piece
of fiction, reawakens herself as one who strongly dismisses the
autonomous dominance of the Lacanian Symbolic (the Law-of-the-
Father) in patriarchy, as she explains:
In the original Salish cultures, it was the women who
chose the partners and our women Elders who negotiated
the marriage--- if there was even going to be one. If a
woman desired a man and no marriage was in the offing
for her, there was going to be an affair of the heart,
because women were free to indulge in sexual activity if
and when they pleased. (Maracle 4)
This Salish tradition, as explained by the Native Canadian woman-
mother in the story, deconstructs the patriarchal institutions of
motherhood, family, marriage and so on.
As the story “First Wives Club: Coast Salish Style” progresses to
its core, the Woman-Mother recollects a story from her rich Salish
culture that re-affirms the unchallengeable strength of the Maternal
155
Power residing in women. This story, that the narrator recollects,
happens during the Great Flood which is referred to in the Genesis. This
Salish flood narrative, different from the Christian one, challenges the
phallocentric notions of Western philosophy and Christianity which hold
patriarchy intact. The Woman-Mother narrates:
When the flood hit us, most of us perished. The women
who survived made it to the top of some very large
mountains with the help of one sister or another. The
heroes in most of our flood stories are women---sisters
who saved Elders, other sisters, their children, or
sacrificed themselves for expectant mothers and the like.
The women did not generally rescue men. At least, if any
woman did rescue a man, that story did not get handed
down in my family . . . my mother and grandmother used
to say that women did not try to save the men because
they couldn’t save both men and women and while it
takes all the women to repopulate a village, it takes only
one man. (Maracle 6-7)
According to the Salish flood narrative, which the Woman-Mother
recalls here, as the waters receded, a pair of sisters, who survived the
flood, climb down from the mountain on which they had waited out the
flood. These sisters, one with a child and the other with none, decide to
156
settle on the valley floor at the ocean’s edge, constructing a lean-to from
woven cedar mats, and begin life anew. Meanwhile, a solitary man
arrives at the place in a big canoe, and the woman-mother among the
sisters, by satisfying his sexual hunger, uses the man as a tool to clear
the delta and settle over the place. Soon the man grew restless for the
sea, and thus hopped into his canoe and left for the sea. In the course of
time, the sister with the child became pregnant and since they were
running short of food, the other sister dies as she gave up her share of
food for the sake of her pregnant sister and her child. The surviving
sister, the woman-mother, was now alone on the shore with her two
children from different men/fathers. The Woman-Mother, while
narrating the Salish story, refers to the surviving sister:
The surviving sister bore her baby and was now alone
with her two children (both by different fathers. I see a
pattern developing here) . . . The loss of her sister meant
the loss of her assistance and the winter became
increasingly difficult and fraught with hardship. Still, she
and the children survived. (Maracle 8)
This instance refers to the real power or strength of the woman-mother
which brings in the endless re-affirmation of life over death as
she re-emerges as the triumphant Survivor who restarts life anew
not only for herself but also for her children. Moreover, as the narrator
157
comments: “both by different fathers. I see a pattern developing here,”
the patriarchal model of family (“familial Triad” with Father, mother and
children) gets deconstructed with a new familial pattern developing. This
new developing familial pattern, which the narrator hints at, refers to a
new womb-like familial space consisting of woman-mother and her
children alone with the patriarchal man/father being a mere passive and
peripheral presence or absence. In the Salish flood story, as the Woman-
Mother recalls, the man frequently runs ashore to the survivor-sister and
returns following which the woman-mother becomes pregnant each time.
But, the man/father in this Salish flood narrative remains a mere passer-
by, one who comes and goes, owning no right to the woman-mother and
her children, and therefore causing no intrusion into the new familial
space of woman-mother and her children. This patriarchal man/father is,
thus, portrayed as a disinterested paternal presence whose sole focus is
on satisfying his sexual desire, and therefore remains unaware of his
children. Interestingly, in the Salish story, it is the woman-mother who
deliberately keeps the man/father ignorant of his children. The
Woman-Mother (the narrator) recounts:
The weather began to change in the spring and sure
enough, he returned . . . On her back was this baby, but he
didn’t know what it was.
He asked her, “What’s that ugly thing on your back?”
158
“You don’t know?” she purred, and she trotted her fingers
along his arm, his chest and touched his face. The pull of
her husky voice distracted his mind and woke up his other
head . . . He followed her, focused on . . . his own desire.
Soon he forgot his question. All summer long he
complained about the noisy ugly thing, but she never said
anything to him when he did. ‘Let him complain,’ she
thought, ‘I know how to quiet him’ . . . Eventually he
grew restless again, though. As he was getting ready to
leave that next fall, he asked her again, “Where did you
get that thing?”
“You don’t know?” she answered.
“No,” he said.
“You will know when you need to know,” she responded
coyly, then lifted her lashes and turned her face partially
toward him in that shy way that excited him . . . and again
he forgot what he had asked. (Maracle 8-9)
Likewise, the woman-mother in the Salish story induces in the
patriarchal man/father total ignorance about his children which in turn
reduces him to a rather passive, silent or even absent paternal discursive
force for the children.
159
The woman-mother in the Salish story, thus, re-emerges as the
Word, the Phallus, the Privileged Signifier, for her children by forming a
strong barrier herself separating the man/father and her children. In
doing so, she rejects the Oedipal space and therefore dismisses the
dominance of the Lacanian Symbolic, initiating the possibility of a new
semiotic system which is “maternal/female-oriented” as an effective
alternative to the phallocentric realm of signification. This revival of the
woman-mother as the only source of signification for her children in the
enclosed clearing on the deserted delta, particularly in the absence of an
active and articulate father-figure, suggests the possibility of the
wonderful psychological phenomenon which may occur in the psychic
development of her children – the extension of the Lacanian psychic
stages (Imaginary and Mirror-stage). In other words, the woman-mother
in the Salish story reconstructs a new familial space exclusively for
herself and her children where she re-establishes herself as the Word, the
Phallus, the Privileged Signifier initiating the process of signification for
her children. This new familial space, a reincarnation of the Maternal
Womb, takes complete shape later on in the Salish story as other women,
who had survived the flood, arrive from the mountains to the woman-
mother’s camp. The woman-mother invites them to join her and her
children. Together, they finally realize that they could easily convert the
clearing into a village of women-mothers and their children. Soon, under
160
the first woman-mother’s instruction, the women decide to use the man
as a tool to become pregnant and create their new village of women-
mothers and their children. Thus, following the first woman-mother’s
advice, the women-mothers tactfully make use of the fertility and
industry of the man/father, and also perpetuate his ignorance about his
children. The Woman-Mother (the narrator) describes:
. . . women . . . sang and danced, told stories of the flood
and how they survived. Their laughter at the antics of
their growing children . . . and industry of the man, all
brought joy to the camp. He worked hard, falling trees,
splitting shakes for them. But finally, the children began
nagging him and annoying him---and he still didn’t know
how these women got them. So in early winter he left
again. This time all the women gathered at the shore to
see him off. (Maracle 11)
This Salish story, which the Woman-Mother in “First Wives Club: Coast
Salish Style” recollects, therefore deconstructs the patriarchal “familial
Triad” and replaces it with a new reawakened familial space of
women-mothers and their children, a space in which the patriarchal
man/father is reduced to the state of being a mere passer-by visitor
who remains submissive to the Maternal Power in women. The
Woman-Mother (the narrator), after recollecting the flood story from her
161
rich Salish culture, finally expresses her wish to re-affirm herself as the
strong independent and powerful woman-mother like those in the Salish
story as she concludes:
To this day, no Salish woman has ever broken the
promise they made to each other. I know, because every
time I told my Salish husband I was pregnant he
responded with shock: “How did that happen?” And like
all good Salish women before me, I just said, “You don’t
know?” And I traced my fingers along his arms, his chest
. . . ---and just smiled. (Maracle 12)
Thus, the story “First Wives Club: Coast Salish Style” can be seen as a
literary attempt that challenges the Lacanian Symbolic (the Law-of-
the-Father) by delving deep into the Salish culture and rediscovering an
all-new powerful Woman-Mother who overpowers the rather weak and
vulnerable patriarchal man/father.
In the story “Blessing Song,” the sense of Oneness or Wholeness
which the Woman-Mother (the narrator) shares with her daughter Tania
is a characteristic unique to the Lacanian psychic stages – Imaginary and
Mirror-stage. The Woman-Mother, the narrator, describes the sense
of “togetherness” that she and her daughter Tania share, while standing
on the deck of the boat:
162
We have come to watch the whales, my granddaughter,
my daughter and myself. My daughter stands more erect
than I have seen her stand for a long time, a smile etched
on her face . . . Tania turns to look at me; the richness of
her joy is contagious. We laugh out loud. We are where
we were always meant to be . . . She slips her thin arm in
mine, looks across at me, eyes brimming with tears of
joy. We stay like that, rocking back and forth as though
readying ourselves for song . . . We look at one another
and chuckle, our grip on one another’s arm tightens . . .
We stand pressed up against one another. The biggest of
the whales swims within six feet of the boat, stands
straight up and murmurs at us . . . The song emerges from
my daughter and me as we stand there before this
mammoth, both of us sing the oldest Salish song we
know. The very moment the song ends, the whale slaps
the water. The spray douses us and we break into that
relieving sort of laughter . . . We remain quiet and just
stand there, arms still locked together . . . This whale
managed to close all the spaces between us . . . It isn’t
the song that matters though. What matters is the
163
closing of the gap between us; the creation of
oneness . . . . (Maracle 29-31)
This instance, as the Woman-Mother narrates, refers to the moment of
extraordinary joy that accompanies the sense of Oneness or Wholeness
shared by the mother and her daughter on their boat trip. The sense of
“togetherness” or “reunion” that the narrator and her daughter
experience here resembles and reflects the sense of Oneness or
Wholeness which the woman-mother and her child experience in
their umbilical-cord connection. This can be further seen as an excellent
illustration of the sense of Oneness or Wholeness shared by the
woman-mother and her child in the Lacanian psychic stages. Moreover,
the “tears of joy” that fill the eyes of the overjoyed daughter Tania
effectively hints at the unique psychological phenomenon happening in
her psyche – the extension of the traces of the Imaginary and Mirror
phases into the Symbolic. Thus, the story “Blessing Song” can also be
seen as a short piece of fiction which revives the Woman-Mother as the
Word, the Phallus, the Privileged Signifier, challenging the dominance
of the Lacanian Symbolic and thus celebrating the possibility of a new
maternal/female-oriented semiotic system alternative to the phallocentric
realm of signification.
In the story “Laundry Basket,” Marla, an aspiring writer,
re-emerges as the strong, independent Woman-Mother who challenges
164
and terminates the paternal dominance. Following her patriarchal
husband’s endless nagging, Marla wrote secretly during the day when he
was away at work and ran once a week to a laundromat with the pile of a
week’s unclean clothes. But soon, all her anger at her white husband’s
oppressive patriarchal nature began to flow into her writing:
The stories got closer, sharper, more vivid and more
honest. Finally, he crept into them. His rage . . . and male
dominance rolled out on the crisp, white sheets. She had
couched the essence of him in fiction, but he was still
recognizable. (Maracle 52)
In this way, in her writing the Woman-Mother secretly found relief from
her intolerable oppression in the patriarchal model of family (“familial
Triad” of Father, mother and children) that sanctified the patriarchal
man/father’s dominance. But, very soon, when one day Marla’s
patriarchal husband returned home early, he found the lot of her stories.
As he read through her stories, he saw himself in them and therefore
began crumpling sheet after sheet; he finally burnt the lot in the tub.
The sight of her stories being burnt up was unbearably hurting
and painful for Marla as in that sight, “She saw herself going up in
smoke” (Maracle 53). This terrible sight led the Woman-Mother to
finally release her emotional outburst at the patriarchal man/father. In
other words, this incident geared up the all-powerful Woman-Mother in
165
Marla: “The word ‘fire’ ignited her insides” (Maracle 53). Marla, in a fit
of anger, pours out all her until-then-suppressed emotions onto her
patriarchal husband:
“You want to burn this, do you? You want to burn---my
life. You want to burn---the inside of me, and the soul of
me. Burn me? Me?” And she had reached into the laundry
basket and hauled shirt after shirt out and then thrown
them onto the paper pyre in the tub. He yelled.
Momentarily caught by surprise, he had hesitated long
enough for the edges of the soiled shirts to char. He tried
to rescue a shirt by pouring water on the fire, then
backhanded her. It seemed like a single motion. It had
been enough. (Maracle 50)
Following this open emotional outburst, which Marla directs at
her husband, it did not take long for the patriarchal man/father
to disappear. With incredible swiftness, surprising herself,
Marla (the Woman-Mother) took the next few crucial decisions – the
injunction, the charges, the inability of the police to find her husband,
then the divorce – that transformed the life of the woman-mother and her
children. Thus, Marla’s husband (the patriarchal man/father), who
remains nameless throughout the entire story, is finally reduced to a
passive, silent or even absent paternal discursive figure as he finally
166
disappears from the life of Marla and her children without contesting the
divorce or the woman-mother’s application for the custody of her
children. Thus, the moment when Marla is granted divorce strikes her
inside with a strong feeling that she wanted to say about divorcing her
husband (the patriarchal man/father), “Excuse me, I just divorced . . . I
mean, I chucked out his entire lineage . . . ” (Maracle 55). Here, Marla
(the Woman-Mother) implicitly rejects the paternal lineage. This
instance, therefore, can be seen as an excellent illustration of the
Woman-Mother’s rejection of the Lacanian Symbolic (the Law-of-
the-Father). Following the divorce, the reawakened Woman-Mother in
Marla successfully reconstructs a new familial space exclusively for
herself and her two sons simultaneously completing the deconstruction
of the patriarchal “familial Triad,” particularly in the absence of an
active and articulate father-figure.
Hence, the Woman-Mother (Marla) in the story is one who has
successfully reconstructed a new familial space where she re-emerges as
the Word, the Phallus, the Privileged Signifier, for her two sons. As she
reconstructs this new familial space in the absence of an active and
articulate paternal discursive figure, the Woman-Mother (Marla) also
rejects the scope of any further Oedipal space, thereby disrupting the
coherence of the Lacanian Symbolic (the Law-of-the-Father). This,
simultaneously, initiates the possibility of a new alternative semiotic
167
system governed by the Woman-Mother, challenging the phallocentric
realm of signification in patriarchy.
As part of beginning her new independent life with her two sons,
Marla, the Woman-Mother in the story, finally decides to earn a living
through her writing. Thus, as the story ends, Marla re-emerges as the
strong independent Woman-Mother who, with her unimaginable strength
and confidence, brings in a re-affirmation of life over death not only for
herself but also for her sons. Marla, as the story nears its end, finally
buys a washer and a dryer to get her laundry work done. And after she
and her sons manage to get the two machines into their apartment, Marla
stands surprised at seeing her two sons washing clothes in the
newly-bought machine. To her surprise, the Woman-Mother’s two sons,
unlike their patriarchal father, never regard “laundry” as “woman’s
work.” The story comes to a perfect close as the Woman-Mother silently
watches her two sons with implicit gratification:
She thinks of her sons . . . the three of them manage to get
the two machines into the apartment . . . the two boys
load the little Hoover and turn it on. Another milestone.
She hadn’t thought of that. It never occurred to her that
for the boys, laundry is not looked upon as “woman’s
work, wifely drudgery, not fit for male consumption.” It
is new and they want to be a part of it.
168
“Ooh, yuck, this one must be yours,” the older one
says to the little one, holding up the stiff sock that had
clung magically to the mound earlier. They roar with
laughter. “Killer socks,” the little one answers. She leans
against the bathroom doorway. (Maracle 55-56)
This instance, in turn, illustrates the Woman-Mother’s triumph at
re-establishing herself as the Word, the Phallus, the Privileged Signifier,
for her sons as the two boys finally reveal themselves as immune to
the Law-of-the-Father (the Lacanian Symbolic). This also suggests the
unique psychological phenomenon happening in the psyches of
Marla’s sons – the overlapping of the extended Lacanian psychic
stages (Imaginary and Mirror-stage) in the Symbolic. The instance
narrated above is indicative of how Marla’s sons stand beyond the reach
of the phallocentric universe as the story ends. Thus, the story “Laundry
Basket,” like “First Wives Club: Coast Salish Style” and “Blessing
Song,” also manifests the rebirth of the Woman-Mother as the
immensely powerful source of an alternative discourse that poses a
strong threat to patriarchy by severely rejecting the dominance of the
Lacanian Symbolic. In short, Maracle’s collection of short stories First
Wives Club: Coast Salish Style, with its three stories “First Wives Club:
Coast Salish Style,” “Blessing Song,” and “Laundry Basket,” emerges as
a poignant and powerful work which provides revealing glimpses into
169
the life-experiences of a woman-mother. These three beautifully
conceived and evocatively written short stories, by redefining Lacanian
concepts, rediscover new wider sexual and intellectual realms for
the Woman-Mother, and thereby re-acknowledge her Voice as the
source of an alternative politics challenging the Lacanian Symbolic or
the Law-of-the-Father.
Thus, the five works of fiction by women writers demonstrate, by
rereading Lacan, how it is possible to re-establish the Woman-Mother as
the source of an alternative semiotics, an alternative realm of
signification, that challenges the rigidity and fixity of the Lacanian
Symbolic which propagates the dominance of the Law-of-the-Father.
The fictional works selected for analysis illustrate how the effective
re-emergence of the Woman-Mother as the Phallus (the Word/the
Privileged Signifier) cures herself of the patriarchal construct called
penis-envy. These works, thus, constitute the new literary attempts to
re-establish woman’s “maternity,” her Maternal Power, as her
self-defining discursive identity. In all these fictional works, we
interestingly come across a Woman-Mother who sees her “maternal
body,” which generates the unique power of the Creator in her, as a way
to liberate herself from the shackles of the patriarchal world and which
in effect prompts her to continue shaping a world of her own for herself
and her child/children, challenging the Lacanian Symbolic (the Law-of-
170
the-Father). Thus, in the hands of daringly bold women authors like
McMillan, Donoghue, Hannah, Shriver and Maracle, the Woman-
Mother is reborn as a new Subject, new entity, who no longer remains a
victim to patriarchy that is founded on the Lacanian Phallocentrism.
These narratives are no longer simple “victim-and-survivor” stories, but
Woman-Mother’s celebration of her triumph over patriarchal discourses.
The extension of the Lacanian psychic stages into the Symbolic
challenges the patriarchal initiation and control of language and provides
a discursive space for an alternative realm of signification or alternative
semiotics, especially in the context of a silent/absent, inarticulate
paternal discourse or father figure. An alternative semiotics is possible
when the child acquires language in a space exclusively shared by the
Woman-Mother and her children where gendered connotations of
morphemes dissolve.