복장전환: 남근으로 존재하기 위한 여성의 전략 － 『베니스의 상인』(The Merchant of Venice)을 중심으로

Abstract

C. L. Barber, Peter Erickson and Clara Claiborne Park discuss the topic of transvestism in Shakespeare’s plays in view of the opposition between men and women. For them, transvestism allows women to get more freedom and widen the area in which they can wield their autonomy. The focus of their explanations is how much freedom and autonomy women can get in the relationship with men or how much rights and power men can keep from women. Based on their views on transvestism, this paper proposes that transvestism can serve women as a strategy of becoming the phallus in the sexual relationships between men and women as well as a means to provide women with masculine freedom and power. According to Jacques Lacan, to become the subject one must take up a position as either a man or a woman and the sexual position of the subject is determined not by identification with father or mother but by the relationship of the subject to the phallus. Men or women are not distinguished by the presence of penis or not. Phallus is not a signifier which represents a physical organ called a penis but a signifier of totality, wholeness, and identity. It is a pure, abstract signifier which transcends physicality and exists without any signified, for it represents wholeness which is just imaginary in that the subject supposes he has it by way of imaginary identification at the mirror stage. Lacan explains how men and women relate themselves to the phallus by using the verb, ‘to be’ and the verb, ‘to have.’ Women try to be the phallus and men try to have the phallus in the sexual relationship. While men give up existing as the phallus and try to establish themselves as having the phallus when faced with the threats of castration during the Oedipal stage, women accept the fact that they are castrated and don’t have the phallus, and try to be the phallus by becoming the object of other person’s desire. Women keep their position as the object of desire by way of a strategy, appearances or dissimulation. Fantasy, travesty, make-up and masks are means of becoming an object of desire. Portia’s transvestism can be read as a female desire to be the phallus. Male clothing provides her with a psychological device to hide her lack and temporarily become the desired object of the phallus.