chapter – 2 rereading lacan: towards an alternative...

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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

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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

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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.

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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,

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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

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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

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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

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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.”

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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)

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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.

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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

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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).

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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

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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,

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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

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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)

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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

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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.

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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,

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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,

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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.

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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

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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

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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.

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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-

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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.”

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“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.

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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:

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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

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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.

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. . . “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

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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

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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)

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.”

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“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

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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

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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

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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

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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,

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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?”

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“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.

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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

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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

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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:

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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“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

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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-

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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.