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Woman: Revealed Or Reveiled?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 March 2020
Abstract
My aim is to examine Lacan's views on women's sexuality and desire in general. I use Hawthorne's novel The Blithedale Romance to supply a concrete narrative context in which to understand Lacan's two modes of femininity: the “veiled lady” and the “phallic mas-querader.” I criticize Lacan for holding (like Hawthorne) an essentially Romantic picture of the Ideal Woman who achieves happiness or peace outside the male/phallic sphere of activity and strife.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © 1986 by Hypatia, Inc.
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Notes
—. I am grateful to Ann Ferguson, Tamsin Lorraine, Linda Podheiser, Andreas Teuber, Dan Warren and Tom Wartenberg for their comments; I must also thank an anonymous referee. In addition, I have learned much from the discussion of related materials in Stanley Cavell's seminar at Harvard on psychoanalysis and literary theory. This essay is dedicated to Pierre Pellegrin, who has helped me to improve my understanding of French psychoanalytic thought on these topics.
1 Henceforward references to this volume will cite it as “FS”, with the page number. Other works influenced by Lacan include the French feminists represented in Marks and Courtivron, eds. 1980, and the literary critics in Felman, ed. 1982. For convenience I refer to other of Lacan's translated writings according to the following method of coded abbreviations: “Écrits” designates Ecrils, A Selection, Sheridan, tr., 1977; and “4Concepts” designates TheFour Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, Miller, ed.,1978.
2 Coverdale's ironical manner makes it especially hard to discern the author's attitude to the feminist issues he discusses in this novel.
3 See Aristophanes’ story in Plato's Symposium, 189c-193e, especially 190d-e.