The theories of Jacques Lacan give explanation and intention to the narrator’s actions throughout the novel “Surfacing”. Although Margaret Atwood may not have had any knowledge of the French psychoanalyst’s philosophies, I feel that both were making inferences on behavior and psychology and that the two undeniably synchronize with each other. I will first identify the complex philosophies of Jacques Lacan and then demonstrate how the narrator falls outside of Lacan’s view of society and how this leads to her demand for retreat from that society in order to become ‘whole’.
Jacques Lacan was a French psychoanalyst that derived many of his theories from Sigmund Freud. His views of the conscious and unconscious being split and a phallocentric order as the center of society evolved from Freud’s. Lacan views our development in life as three stages or phases that one must enter into in order to become a part of society. The goal of these phases is the stabilization of signifiers. ‘Signifiers’, the elements of memory that make up the unconscious are floating around the unconscious. These ‘signifiers’ are held together by the phallocentric order which is realized in the stages of development. This may be confusing, but related to the narrator it becomes clearer. The narrator was raised in a distinct situation. When she enters into society she does not have the typical experiences of that society and therefore does not feel that she is part of it. She returns to the lake and feels she can no longer be a part of this society because the ‘phallocentric order’ is distorted. This is a brief explanation. First, Lacan’s formation of ‘self’ and ‘Other’ must be understood in great detail.
The first of the three phases of development is the REAL, “Lacan''s infant starts out as something inseparable from its mother; there''s no distinction between self and other, between baby and mother (at least, from the baby''s perspective). The baby has no sense of self or individual identity, and no sense even of its body as a coherent unified whole. There''s no distinction between it and anyone or anything else; there are only needs and things that satisfy those needs. This is the state of "nature," which has to be broken up in order for culture to be formed.”(Klages, 1). Lacan’s philosophies go on to say that language is always about this loss or absence that happens whe...
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...or they will do that to me again, strap me to the death machine, emptiness machine, legs in the metal framework, secret knives. This time I won''t let them" (165). This is the practice of the phallocentric order, the women should appear as what men want them to. Her lover forced the abortion on her. By becoming pregnant with the child and going against the Law of the Father it places her outside the phallocentric order and she is whole again. That part of herself she lost through abortion can be raised again outside the phallocentric order that she has left. Her journey from her position in the Symbolic to the Real is now complete and she feels whole, the goal of becoming an adult in Lacanian physchoanalysis.
Lacan’s theories of development and the structure of society explain the actions of the narrator in the novel. Her psychological breakdown is understood because she does not fit into society. By having a child and protecting it from society she knows that it will not be taken from her. Therefore, because of the child, she is whole again and exists outside of dominant culture in the Real.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Atwood, Margaret. 'Surfacing'. London; Virago Press, 1972.
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For one, brief hour she was an individual. Now she finds herself bound by masculine oppression with no end in sight, and the result is death.
gives us a hint of terror. The reality of the situation has not yet set into Pablo’s
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