로렌스의 ？태양？과 『처녀와 집시』에 나타난 욕망의 환유

Abstract

The Metonymy of Desire in Lawrence’s “Sun” and The Virgin and the GipsySeung Hyun Hong (Dongguk U)The heroines in Lawrence’s “Sun” and The Virgin and the Gipsy are not that of Descartian thinking subject as reflexive consciousness, but that of desiring subjects in Lacanian sense. As Lawrence emphasizes the importance of body and unconsciousness, Lacan denounces Descartes’s “cogito ergo sum” (I think therefore I am), which means the supremacy of mind and consciousness of human experience. Using Lacan’s critical tools, this paper aims to analyse Juliet’s desire in terms of the concepts of “need,” “demand,” and “desire” and Yvette’s desire from the perspective of “eye” and “gaze”. Although different concepts of Lacan are borrowed, “Sun” and The Virgin and the Gipsy are common in that desire fundamentally stays forever in the dialectical reciprocity between the Imaginary and the Symbolic.In “Sun,” Juliet wants to have sexual communion with the farmer, but by accepting the Symbolic law, she diverts her sexual object on to her husband. Likewise, Yvette in The Virgin and the Gipsy doesn’t make any plan with the gipsy after their one-night sexual affair, and moves on, searching to situate herself anew in that desire-causing relation to a certain kind of look. The object of the subject’s desire is crytallized in a signifier to the demand in which the objects persued by the subject are modified. The gipsy’s particular way of looking, desire-inspiring look causes her to desire, giving her feeling that Yvette is looked upon, not from the outside, but from the inside, from secret female self. As a result, they are subjected to the pressure of symbolic order, with respect to the world of language, law, and order. These erotic works of Lawrence seem to demonstrate that the metonymic slippage of desire is insatiable because it comes from the unconscious desire and the absolute lack it conceals.