Woman and the Law in Measure for Measure

Abstract

Woman and the Law in Measure for Measure My main interest in this paper is divided into two points: first, it is about the law and its obscene side, second, about the woman and the former superegoic law. These two points, however, are not simply separated, rather, the first is interrelated with the second like mobius strip around the pivoting role of woman. As indicated in the title of this paper, woman and the law seem contrasted simply or have nothing to do with each other, however, it is not. The logic in which the relationship of woman and the law functions is more complicated in its exclusion and its inclusion of each other. I think that if there is something provocative and surprising in Measure for Measure, it is that this drama shows how woman exposes the obscene side of the law in her submission or manipulation by the law, and how woman disrupts this intact superegoic boundary of the law by making a hole within the law. When I talk about woman and the law, I do not simply mean that woman is wholly submitted to the law, or completely exceeds the law. My point in the relationship of woman and the law is that woman, being wholly situated within the law, creates a crack or distortion inside the law. In this way, my argument about the woman and the law follows Lacan’s feminine side of sexuation: "There is not one x that is not submitted to the phallic function." And "Not all x is submitted to the phallic function."