The Ring in The Mayor of Casterbridge: Gaze and Voice as Surplus Objects
Like the ring discerned by Henchard on the grassy floor when he wakes up from his drunken sleep, surplus objects are found all along The Mayor of Casterbridge: objects which are disruptive out of place, in excess of reality, Letters, for instance, when read prematurely or by the wrong people, can ca...
Enregistré dans:
| Dans: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/fathom, |
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| Auteur principal: | |
| Format: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Langue: | Anglais |
| Publié: |
FATHOM
2019
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| Sujets: | |
| Accès en ligne: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Résumé: | Like the ring discerned by Henchard on the grassy floor when he wakes up from his drunken sleep, surplus objects are found all along The Mayor of Casterbridge: objects which are disruptive out of place, in excess of reality, Letters, for instance, when read prematurely or by the wrong people, can cause disaster in the lives of the protagonists. But then such objects always involve eye-sight or voice, so I will argue that the “something more” which disrupts reality in this novel is the “object-gaze” or/and the “object-voice” (two Lacanian concepts), the climax in the story being the intrusion in Lucetta’s reality of the two effigies representing herself and Henchard. Lucetta dies of a fit after this scene, killed by a vision of herself seen by others and by the indomitable “uproar” which persecutes her, whatever Elizabeth-Jane may do to shut out sight and sound. Indeed the “roar”, like the “ring”, is a voice that cannot be silenced. Absolute silence is reached when tragedy comes to a resolution: Henchard fails to reply to Elizabeth-Jane, shutting his lips “like a vice”. He will be heard no more. Neither will the “poor little songster”, the bird starved to death in its cage. The rest is silence. But then the literary text is precisely this: a silent voice, “dry and papery” (like the voice of the wind on Egdon Heath), which paradoxically can be a delight to the ear of the reader. Thus the tragic “ring” of the diegesis can be made into a “poetic ring” by Hardy’s pen, which can turn the surplus object into a “surplus enjoyment” (“plus-de-jouir”, in Lacan’s formulation). |
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