AN ANALYSIS OF MARY SHELLEYS FRANKENSTEIN AND ROBERT L. STEVENSONS DR. JEKYLL AND MR.

HYDE IN RELATION TO LACANIAN CRITICISM

A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES OF MIDDLE EAST TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY

BY

SELEN (EVK) BARANOLU

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

NOVEMBER 2008

Approval of the Graduate School of Social Sciences

_______________ Prof. Dr. Sencer Ayata Director I certify that this thesis satisfies all the requirements as a thesis for the degree of Master of Arts.

_______________ Prof. Dr. Wolf Knig Head of Department

This is to certify that we have read this thesis and that in our opinion it is fully adequate, in scope and quality, as a thesis for the degree of Master of Arts.

_______________ Assist. Prof. Dr. Drrin Alpakn Martinez-Caro Supervisor

Examining Committee Members Prof. Dr. Ayten Cokunolu Bear (METU, ELIT) _______________

Assist. Prof. Dr. Drrin Alpakn Martinez-Caro (METU, ELIT)_______________ Assist. Prof. Dr. Nil Korkut (BAKENT, AKE) _______________

I hereby declare that all information in this document has been obtained and presented in accordance with academic rules and ethical conduct. I also declare that, as required by these rules and conduct, I have fully cited and referenced all material and results that are not original to this work.

Name, Last name: Selen (evik) BARANOLU

Signature: iii

ABSTRACT AN ANALYSIS OF MARY SHELLEYS FRANKENSTEIN AND ROBERT L. STEVENSONS DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE IN RELATION TO LACANIAN CRITICISM

Baranolu (evik), Selen M.A., Department of English Literature

November 2008, 92 pages This thesis carries out an analysis of Mary Shelleys Frankenstein and Robert Louis Stevensons Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by focusing on the Lacanian concepts of desire, alienation and sexuality. It achieves this by providing brief background information about Lacanian psychoanalytic literary criticism and the relations of this criticism with the concepts of desire, alienation and sexuality. Through the analysis of the main characters in the mentioned novels, this study asserts that these concepts are structured with the effect of the Lacanian symbolic order and the language. In other words, in this study, it is argued that the formation of the human personality takes place in the unconscious, where desire, alienation and sexuality are formed. In both of these Gothic novels, the personalities of the characters are structured in relation to their life experience in the symbolic order.

Keywords: Lacan, psychoanalysis, individual, unconscious, Gothic

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Z MARY SHELLEYNN FRANKENSTEIN VE ROBERT L. STEVENSONIN DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE ESERLERNN LACANCI ELETRYE GRE NCELENMES

Baranolu (evik), Selen Yksek Lisans, ngiliz Edebiyat Blm

Kasm 2008, 92 sayfa

Bu tez Mary Shelleynin Frankenstein ve Robert Louis Stevensonn Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde eserlerinin Lacanc arzu, yabanclama ve cinsellik kavramlarna gre bir analizini yapmaktadr. Bunu, Lacanc psikanalitik edebi eletiriyle ilgili ksa ve z bir bilgi vererek ve bu bilgiyle arzu, yabanclama ve cinsellik kavramlarnn ilikisini gstererek baarmaktadr. Ele alnan romanlardaki ana karakterlerin incelenmesiyle, bu alma, bahsedilen kavramlarn Lacanc sembolik dzen ve dilin etkisi ile olutuunu ortaya koymaktadr. Dier bir deyile, bu almada insann kiilik oluumunun arzu, yabanclama ve cinselliin meydana kt bilinaltnda gerekletii savunulmaktadr. Bu Gotik romanlarn her ikisinde de karakterlerin kiilikleri onlarn sembolik dzendeki hayat tecrbeleriyle olumaktadr.

Anahtar Kelimeler: Lacan, psikanaliz, birey, bilinalt, Gotik v

To my family,

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor Assist. Prof. Dr. Drrin Alpakn Martinez-Caro for her supportive attitude, helpful suggestions and unwavering belief in my study. It has been a pleasure to write this thesis under her guidance.

I would also like to thank Prof. Dr. Ayten Cokunolu Bear and Assist. Prof. Dr. Nil Korkut for their most valuable and enlightening suggestions and comments.

Moreover, I am greatly indebted to both of my families (evik and Baranolu) for their affection and support they have always shown me. I would especially like to thank my sister, Glen evik, for her motivation and lasting faith in me.

Finally, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my husband, Besim, for his unlimited support, love, affection and encouragement throughout my preparation of the thesis.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS PLAGIARISM ................................................................................................. iii ABSTRACT .................................................................................................... iv Z..................................................................................................................... v DEDICATION ................................................................................................. vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS................................................................................ vii TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................. viii CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION........................................................................................ 1 2. DESIRE........................................................................................................ 12 2.1 FRANKENSTEIN ........................................................................... 14 2.2 DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE ....................................................... 28 3. ALIENATION ............................................................................................. 38 3.1 FRANKENSTEIN ........................................................................... 40 3.2 DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE ....................................................... 54 4. SEXUALITY ............................................................................................... 63 4.1 FRANKENSTEIN ........................................................................... 65 4.2 DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE ....................................................... 76 5. CONCLUSION ............................................................................................ 82 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................... 88 viii

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

This thesis will be an attempt to explore how Lacanian concepts of desire, alienation as well as sexuality are reflected in the major characters of Mary Shelleys Frankenstein and Robert Louis Stevensons The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Psychoanalytic theories on literature span much of the twentieth century. Throughout the twentieth century, they have undergone many changes as important developments in practice. When the first psychoanalytic criticism on literature appeared with Freud, the critical focus was on the psychology of the author. In other words, traditional applied psychoanalysis, which is known also as Freudian psychoanalysis, considered the work of literature as the fantasy of a particular author (Sarup 161). The aim of Freudian psychoanalysis was to reveal the authors unconscious by analyzing the sexual instincts, slips of tongues and physical demands of the characters. By doing so, traditional psychoanalysis point[ed] out the role of desire in the figuring and structuring of texts (Wright MLT 150) and disclosed the relation between the work of literature and the author. However, traditional applied psychoanalysis was not adequate to present the relationship between author and reader as well as text and language because, in traditional psychoanalysis, the text was assumed to be a steady object and to have a fixed code. Therefore, in recent years, the new psychoanalytic criticism has appeared. This new psychoanalytic criticism is associated with the name of a French poststructuralist and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. The works of Lacan are the re-interpretations and critiques of Freudian psychoanalysis with regard to the structuralist and post-structuralist theories. Unlike Freudian psychoanalytic 1

literary approach, in Lacanian criticism, the main concern is that the unconscious is limited to the level of language used in literary texts. In other words, Lacan does not deal with an instinctive unconscious that anticipates language. Moreover, most of Lacans key concepts do not have a counterpart in Freuds own theory (iek 4). For instance, Freud has never mentioned the symbolic order, the big Other or the speaking subject (iek 4). Lacan emphasises the concept of speech which is disregarded in Freudian psychoanalysis. In other words, he interprets the Freudian theories in the language of Saussure. As iek puts it:

Lacans thesis is that Freud was not aware of the notion of speech implied by his own theory and practice, and that we can only develop this notion if we refer to Saussurean linguistics, speech acts theory and the Hegelian dialectics of recognition. (4)

Following Saussure, Lacan asserts that language is a system of signs. This system of signs includes a signifier (a sound or an image) and a signified (the concept or the meaning). Elliot claims that in line with structuralist linguistics, Lacan argues that the relationship between signifiers and signifieds is arbitrary and based on convention Meaning is created through linguistic differences, through the play of signifiers (105). This uncertainty in language causes the emergence of the unconscious. In the unconscious, the subject always experiences a lack which cannot be filled with language. As a result, the lack forms the identification of the subject in the symbolic order of the signifiers. For Lacan, the subject is represented in the signifying chain which consists of the imaginary, symbolic and real orders. While the real reflects the fullness of the subject without language, the imaginary signifies the alienation of the subject because of the uncertainty of language. The reason why Jacques Lacan is a very significant figure in literature lies in the truth that he stressed the need for interdisciplinary studies for the incorporation of the humanities (Sarup 162) into literary criticisms. In other words, the work of Lacan includes transitivity among psychoanalysis, linguistics, 2

anthropology and philosophy. Because of this transitivity, Lacan is widely read in literary criticisms. As Sarup puts forth, It is interesting to note that literary critics welcomed Lacan long before the psychologists (162). With Lacans new psychoanalytic criticism, the critical focus shifts from author to the relations between author, reader, text and language. Accordingly, Lacans psychoanalysis and its application to literature mainly focus on his concept of language, as in a sense psychoanalytic criticism is the re-expression of an individuals life. In other words,

The reason why it is appropriate for psychoanalysis to speak about literature is that it has something to say about language. It is first and foremost the talking cure, for it is out of the dialogue between patient and analyst that the therapy precedes, the diagnostic material being largely linguistic. (Wright MLT 145) In Lacanian psychoanalysis, the work of literature is clarified on two levels, the first of which is the level of reading and writing. And, the other level is the level of language use within the text. According to the first level, Lacan suggests that the interpretation of a literary text may differ with regard to the conscious levels of readers. In other words, a reader or the author is as important as the literary text because it is the reader or the author who interprets the meaning of the text that lies under the concept of signified. Whatever the author writes in the text or whatever the reader appreciates from the text, the signifiers always mean more or less than what is intended to be said or appreciated, because there is no final signified in Lacanian poststructuralist literary criticism. At this level of analysis, language has no adequate function for conveying meaning. The focus is on the desires of the reader or the author. The second level, on the other hand, focuses on the way of talking rather than what is talked about. That is, on this level of the criticism, the characters self-referential language is important. Here, the character is analyzed as the speaking subject (Selden, Widdowson and Brooker 162). Again, Lacanian literary criticism will tend to focus on the structures of desire as determined by a signifying chain (Wright MLT 155) as without language there would be 3 no desire. Accordingly, Lacanian

psychoanalysis analyzes the literary text on the basis of the desires of the characters by uncovering their unconscious and split personalities, alienation by identifying the imaginary, symbolic and the real, and sexuality by mirroring the relations of the characters with others and interpreting their dreams. Lacanian criticism aims to display the personality developments of the characters and according to these developments, the desires of the characters, the reasons for their alienation and the effects of their sexuality on their relations are explored. In this thesis, these characteristics of Lacanian literary criticism will be applied to two Gothic novels: Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The reason why Gothic fiction is usually discussed in a psychoanalytic context is that Gothic fiction is one of the most fruitful genres combining the elements of horror, terror and romance with its characters desires, repressive thoughts and split personalities. As Hogle states,

The longevity and power of Gothic fiction unquestionably stem from the way it helps us address and disguise some of the most important desires, quandaries, and sources of anxiety, from the most internal and mental to the widely social and cultural. (4) In Gothic fiction, there is a particular emphasis on its psychologically obscured individuals such as evils, monsters, wanderers and freaks who are obsessed with their fears, desires and repressed sensations, and that makes Gothic fiction a basis for the new psychoanalytic criticism. In other words, psychological rather than supernatural forces became the prime movers in [gothic] worlds where individuals could be sure neither of others nor themselves (Botting Gothic 12). Accordingly, the characters of Gothic fiction are quite convenient for psychoanalytic readings. Botting asserts,

Gothic fiction can be said to blur rather than distinguish the boundaries that regulated social life, and interrogate, rather than restore, any imagined continuity between past and present, nature and culture, reason and passion, individuality and family and society. (47) In view of this aspect, it is clear that Gothic fiction does not draw a distinct line between the normal and the abnormal or the natural and the cultural. Instead, Gothic fiction reveals the truth that everything in nature is interrelated, and questions the connections of those interrelated elements in nature. As psychoanalytic literary criticism considers the behavioural anomalies of the characters as results of their repressed desires, it aims to uncover the interrelations between author, reader, text and language. Similarly, Hogle argues that the Gothic clearly exists, in part, to raise the possibility that all abnormalities we would divorce from ourselves are a part of ourselves (12). In other words, Gothic fiction and psychoanalytic criticism share the same ideas about the interrelation of things in nature. That is another reason why Gothic fiction is usually read by psychoanalytic critics. As Hogle states,

The Gothic also serves to symbolize our struggles and ambivalences over how dominant categorizations of people, things, and events can be blurred together and so threaten our convenient, but repressive thought patternsto make Gothic show us our cultural and psychological selves and conditions, in their actual multiplicity, in ways that other aesthetic forms cannot manage as forcefully or with such wide public appeal. (19) As a Lacanian reading goes through the nature of the subject by displaying its conflicts, complexes and relationships of meaning and identity, it aims to interpret a literary work by focusing on the characters. Mary Shelley and Robert Louis Stevenson are considered important figures in Gothic fiction having dealt with mad scientists and their destructive creations, and for their themes in which the individual rather than society is in the 5

foreground. Although Mary Shelley is an author of the Romantic period, her Gothic fiction Frankenstein is still discussed widely among psychoanalytic critics because of the longevity of its psychological implications. As Lisa Nocks puts it, literary critics have dealt extensively with Frankenstein from psychoanalytic perspectives - for example, the views that the creature is Victor Frankensteins other self, or that the two characters represent Mary Shelleys own dichotomous psyche (138). Similarly, Robert Louis Stevenson, being an author of the Victorian period, is among the figures usually discussed from psychoanalytic perspectives. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde reveals the duality of man including his good and evil sides respectively. One reason why Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is accepted as one of the major works of literature appropriate for psychoanalytic reading is that it plunges immediately into the centre of Victorian society to dredge up a creature ever present but submerged; not the evil opponent of a contentious good but the shadow of self of a half man (Saposnik 717). Both Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde have parallel elements in different ways. First, the main characters of these novels are both scientists who are accredited by the society in which they live. Both Dr. Jekyll and Victor Frankenstein feel alienated. As a result, each creates destructive beings for himself to carry out his unconventional passions such as the idea of creating a supreme being by playing God or wanting to imitate evil. Besides, both Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are important novels having introduced major characters that are complex mixtures of scientific curiosity, altruism, and ego (Nocks 144) for Gothic fiction. Their villains are also the heroes and victims of the novels. So, while these novels represent standard Gothic conventions such as gloomy settings and double characters, they are also distinguished from early Gothic fictions in which gothic produced emotional effects on its readers rather than developing a rational or properly cultivated response (Botting Gothic 4) with the scientific backgrounds and psychological implications of their characters. However, Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde belong to different periods. While the former is from the Romantic period, the latter is from the Victorian era.

In the Romantic period, the sense of experiment and freedom as well as imagination showed itself in almost every literary genre. As a result, the novel of terror and the use of the supernatural in fiction started to be popular giving rise to the expansion of Gothic fiction. Mary Shelley, the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin and the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley, was among the well-known authors of the period. Mary Shelley believed in the importance of the power and responsibility of individuals challenging the conservative politics (Bennet 2). In other words, Mary Shelley, being the daughter of such an eminent feminist, believed that the socio-political inequities of the larger society were mirrored within the family and the individual (Bennet 3). Also, the inspiration of her father and husband for her cannot be disregarded. Botting elaborates on the effect of her father and husband on her writing of Frankenstein: The names of William Godwin and Percy Shelley occupy a predominant position within Frankensteins biographical criticism. Personally, intellectually, artistically and politically, their influence is found everywhere by critics of the novel and its author (Gothic 76). Today, Frankenstein is considered as the most prominent novel of Mary Shelley embracing questions of power, responsibility and complexity of the individuals characteristics. The emergence of Frankenstein is told by its author in the 1831 introduction of her book:

My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, gifting the successive images that arose in my mind with a vividness far beyond the usual bounds of reverie. I saw - with shut eyes, but acute mental vision - I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together... Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful it would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the creator of the world. (F 4) It is clear that Frankenstein includes a blend of traditional Gothic elements such as terror, horror and psychological implications such as repressed sensations of desiring to substitute God. Besides, Mary Shelley describes her inspiration for the novel as a hideous idea (F 5), and she states in the 1831

introduction of her book that Frankenstein was to be: a story which would speak to the mysterious fears of our nature, and awaken thrilling horror to make the reader dread to look round, to curdle the blood and quicken the beatings of the heart (F 8). It is apparent that Frankenstein is not just a traditional Gothic fiction, but also the representation of human nature with its psychological connotations. For that reason, Lacanian elements of desire, alienation and sexuality can be uncovered with a thorough analysis of the work. The desire of Victor Frankenstein to create a supreme being and to expose a creation by imitating God can be seen as symptoms of his unconscious. Similarly, the desire of the Creature for the connection with the outer world and for friendship and education reflect his yearning to go into the symbolic order which represents the civilized world full of symbols. For Lacan, the monster in a work of Gothic fiction is identified as the return of the repressed. Moreover, Mary Shelleys personal values, such as her giving emphasis to the responsibility of the individual, are represented in the depiction of her characters. Botting claims that Frankenstein appears a most appropriate subject for analysis to revel in and reveal the effects of profound unconscious wishes and traumas, conflicts of ego and id, and of course, oedipal anxieties and fantasies (Gothic 90). In fact, the place of Frankenstein in literary history increases its popularity for many critics. Robert Louis Stevenson, on the other hand, combined the Victorian elements of the novel with Gothic tradition. As Reid puts it, throughout his life, Stevenson was fascinated by what he saw as the unconscious roots of artistic appreciation and creation (13). With the advent of rationalism and scientific materialism, the controversy between science and religion led the Victorian people to think about double consciousness. By focusing on this double consciousness which reveals the thought structure of the Victorian period, Stevenson creates a psychological narrative which spans the generations, he breaks down barriers between the past and the present and unsettles the notion of a unified identity (Reid 13) with his novel Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Vrettos argues that Robert Louis Stevensons The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde explored multiple personality at about the same time as psychologists

were recording early case studies of this phenomenon (68). Stevenson uncovered the nature of the individual by revealing his good and evil sides and his wish to face the evil side unconsciously. Here, the unconscious plays a major role because for Stevenson, literary inspiration, also, arises in the unconscious. He explained this belief in his letter to W. Craibe Angus in 1891.

[I] sit a long while silent on my eggs. Unconscious thought, there is the only method: macerate your subject, let it boil slow, then take the lid off and look in and there your stuff is, good or bad the will is only to be brought in the field for study, and again for revision. The essential part of work is not an act, it is a state. (Colvin 3:361) For Stevenson, thought which stems from the unconscious is the source of creativity while the will only plays a minor role in his literary studies. In his novel Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Stevenson uses the unconscious as the common trait. For example, Henry Jekyll helplessly accepts that it is his own choice to live a double life: I made this choice perhaps with some unconscious reservation, for I neither gave up the house in Soho, nor destroyed the clothes of Edward Hyde (JH 79). In Ecrits, Lacan explains the presence of the unconscious, being situated in the locus of the Other, can be found in every discourse, in its enunciation (707). Here, Lacan emphasizes that the unconscious plays a major role in the dealings of the people with others and in the fulfilment of their desires. Normally, each individual has two contrastive sides, one of which is a conscious side with a mind that is accessible. However, the other side is the unconscious with a series of drives and forces which remain inaccessible. While Henry Jekyll represents the conscious side, Edward Hyde remains as the unconscious. It shows that embracing two different mental states in one mind, the human subject is always split. In other words, as Sullivan states, While the Lacanian ego is intrinsically unified, the human subject is split into conscious and unconscious parts (Sullivan 2).

As in Lacanian reading of Gothic fiction literary works are accepted as productions of desires of the characters, it is important to understand the meaning of desire for Lacan. Therefore, in the following three chapters Lacans concept of desire will be explained by examining this concept in two similar Gothic fictions, Mary Shelleys Frankenstein and Robert Louis Stevensons Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in relation to Lacanian psychoanalytic criticism to reveal how the major characters of these novels bare their unconscious. Additionally, the concepts of alienation and sexuality as Lacanian terms will be explored in the following chapters in order to discover the reasons for the isolation and repressed sexuality of the characters. With this aim in the second chapter, the Lacanian concept of desire will be discussed in detail by focusing on the main characters of Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein and the Creature, and of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Henry Jekyll and Edward Hyde, to see how these characters reflect their unconscious in relation to their desires and the motives of their desires. In the next chapter, the Lacanian concept of alienation in the main characters of the mentioned novels will be explored to show why these characters are alienated by uncovering their attempts to go into the Symbolic world of Lacan. In the fourth chapter, on the other hand, the Lacanian concept of sexuality will be focused on to explore the influence of the Other on the formation of the sexuality of the characters by uncovering their dreams and their use of language. On the whole, the aim of this thesis is to analyze Lacanian concepts of desire, alienation and sexuality with regard to the major characters of Mary Shelleys Frankenstein and Robert Louis Stevensons Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Therefore, this thesis will claim that the psychological states of the characters are determined by the fulfilment of their desires, successful interactions between their imaginary, symbolic and real worlds and the development of their innate sexualities. Hence, this study will examine the causes and effects of Lacanian concepts of desire, alienation and sexuality in the psychological states of the characters. Consequently, this thesis will reveal that the concepts of desire, alienation and sexuality are of utmost importance in the formation of human

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character and that Jacques Lacan has formed the framework in which these concepts can be studied properly.

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CHAPTER 2

DESIRE

In analyzing an example of Gothic fiction, one of the most significant elements to be studied is the unconscious wish of the characters because in Gothic fiction imagination and emotional effects exceed reason (Botting Gothic 3) and passion, excitement and sensation transgress social properties and moral laws (Botting Gothic 3). Here, unconscious wishes signify the desires of characters. In Gothic fiction, desire symbolizes the subjectivity of characters. Without this subjectivity, no character can be considered as a whole. For Lacan, as Anthony Elliot claims that subjectivity is radically divided between the conscious ego and unconscious desire (102). So, each character should have a conscious and an unconscious side in order to stand as a real individual. For Lacan, with the use of language, characters can express and satisfy their needs. However the minute when words are used, another register comes to the scene. From that moment, the need is not important anymore, the important thing is the feeling of the other. The reason is that the meaning of the subjects desire is not determined by the subject but by other people. Bruce Fink states: because of the very nature of languagemeaning is always ambiguous, polyvalent, betraying something one wanted to remain hidden, hiding something one intended to express (67). Accordingly, the cost of using language is that it reveals desire as it creates a lack. In The Signification of the Phallus Lacan distinguishes desire from need and demand that need is conscious and full of signifiers, and with the occurrence of lack, it turns into an unconscious desire that cannot be satisfactorily fulfilled (crits 582).

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As Gothic fiction is full of characters with split personalities, obsessive passions and infatuated behaviour, it is clear that the unconscious of these characters revealing their unfulfilled desires causes the abnormal manners mentioned above. In other words, the concept of desire in analyzing a Gothic text from a Lacanian point of view uncovers the causes of the abnormal behaviour of the characters by revealing their unconscious. Hence, it is of utmost importance to focus on desire in Gothic fiction. Sarup expresses his comments on analyzing a text according to Lacan in the following way:

Lacan frequently makes use of the term desire to denote both the lived primal lack or need for union with the mother, and the desire to have which succeeds it after the entry of the subject into language. Desire lies beyond demand. To say that desire is beyond demand means that it transcends it, that it is eternal because it is impossible to satisfy it. (165) In order to clarify the concept of desire in a Gothic fiction, firstly, it is important to note the entry of the subject into language by focusing on the use of language of the characters in the light of their unconscious. Both Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are significant Gothic novels in terms of the duality of their main characters. As a result of this duality, their use of language reveals their unconscious, and because of their unfulfilled desires they have split personalities. Therefore, it is apparent that the concepts of language, unconscious and desire are interrelated. By analyzing the concept of desire in the main characters of Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, it will be put forth that the desires of the characters uncover their unconscious and the causes of their split personalities. As the main characters of Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are always searching for something unattainable, the lack of the desired object is inevitable. About this, Fink asserts: In its essence, desire is a constant search for something else, and there is no specifiable object that is capable of satisfying it, in other words, extinguishing it (90). In the following

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parts of this chapter, the sources of the desires of these characters will be examined in detail.

2.1 FRANKENSTEIN Frankenstein originated in Mary Shelleys mind in the summer of 1816 and was first written in Switzerland between 1816 and 1818. However, in the summer of 1823, Frankenstein was adapted with Godwins arrangements and republished. Finally, the last revised edition of Frankenstein was published in 1831. About these revisions Mary Shelley wrote in the 1831 introduction of the novel: I will add but one word as to the alterations I have made. They are principally those of style. I have changed no portion of the story; nor introduced any new ideas or circumstances. I have mended the language where it was so bald as to interfere with the interest of the narrative; and these changes occur almost exclusively in the beginning of the first volume. (F 5) Shelley stated that she had made the changes only in the narrative not in the focus of the novel. Frankenstein is still the most discussed and complex novel of Shelley because of its own three authorial texts of 1818, 1823, and 1831, plus the many translations, and the early and late prefaces, and its blend of the Gothic, and the Godwinian psychological, socio-political novel with Mary Shelleys own particular Romanticist sensibility (Bennet 30). And all these factors open it to many possible readings, among them Gothic, political, biographical,

psychological (30). Bennet also asserts:

Mary Shelleys novels dwell on questions of power, responsibility, and love Mary Shelley represented the injustices of the world. But rather than offer figures who were clearly good or bad, generating transparent reader responses, Mary Shelley continued to delineate complex lives that ultimately challenged and discomforted readers in her commitment to both educate and elevate. (104) 14

Because of this complexity of its characters and their lives she mentioned in Frankenstein, Mary Shelleys novel is a fruitful source for analyzing the Lacanian concept of desire. Lacan argues that individuals are driven by their desires which are originated in their unconscious. He also emphasizes that the repressed thoughts are the symbols of the unfulfilled desires. So, desire is one of the key concepts for a Lacanian reading of Frankenstein as it introduces Victors and the Creatures desires by unfolding their unconscious. It will be seen that all the actions of Victor and the Creature are the results of their unfulfilled desires. These desires have disastrous effects destroying the possibility of a congruous union of good and evil sides of the characters. In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley focuses on the duality of man by depicting the good and the evil sides of human nature, the issue of the responsibility of the creator towards its creation and the turning of natural demands into repressed desires. It has been claimed that Frankenstein carries some important aspects of human psychology as it depicts the sentimentality of the characters and explains their desires in relation to this sentimentality. The reason for this sentimentalist approach of Shelley is that Mary Shelley undermines the values, characters, and situations, ironically revealing the sentimental traditions basically flawed, irrational, incomplete, and untenable nature (Thornburg, 63). As a result of Shelleys promoting the sentimental tradition in Frankenstein, another characteristic appears in her fictitious characters, which is sensitivity to the world they live in. This sensitivity is already apparent in the sub-title of Frankenstein, The Modern Prometheus. According to Aeschylus drama, the hero steals fire from the gods to give it to humans and endures the punishment of Zeus. Similarly, Victor aims to help humans by ignoring his limitations. As a result, he is punished by the rebellion of his creation. As Tim Marshall explains,

As a young man, Victor Frankenstein subscribes to Godwins utopian scheme and dreams of delivering the promised land in the eyes of the world. Before he begins the long task of creation which culminates in a reanimated corpse, he is explicit on the point: Wealth 15

was an inferior object, but what glory would attend discovery if I could banish disease from the human frame and render man invulnerable to any but a violent death [F 33]. To achieve his objective he devotes himself to the science of anatomy. (8) It is apparent that the aim of Victor was at first quite altruistic. He would like to serve humanity by finding ways to expel diseases and to create a prodigious world. He gives details about how he has started to deal with the elixir of life:

My father was not scientific, and I was left to struggle with a childs blindness, added to a students thirst for knowledge. Under the guidance of my new preceptors, I entered with the greatest diligence into the search of the philosophers stone and the elixir of life; but the latter soon obtained my undivided attention. (F 32) Here, what Victor mentions as new preceptors signifies Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus and Albertus Magnus, the famous alchemists, occultists, and theologians of Middle Ages. All these names symbolize the unconscious defiance of Victor against his father. Victor Frankenstein explains:

When I was thirteen years of ageI chanced to find a volume of the works of Cornelius Agrippa. I opened it with apathy; the theory which he attempts to demonstrate, and the wonderful facts which he relates, soon changed this feeling into enthusiasm. A new light seemed to dawn upon my mind; and, bounding with joy, I communicated my discovery to my father. My father looked carelessly at the title page of my book, and said, Ah! Cornelius Agrippa! My dear Victor, do not waste your time upon this; it is sad trash. . (F 31) Victor mentions that he has just chanced to see the works of Agrippa, and naturally, with the curiosity of his age, he has started to feel enthusiasm for Agrippas works. However, his enthusiasm is met with indifference by his father. Later, Victor continues: 16

If, instead of this remark, my father had taken the pains to explain to me that the principles of Agrippa had been entirely exploded, I should certainly have thrown Agrippa aside, and have contented my imagination, warmed as it was, by returning with greater ardour to my former studies. (F 32) He apparently puts the blame of his fatal impulse that led to [his] ruin (F 32) on his father. He, also, adds: The cursory glance my father had taken of my volume by no means assured me that he was acquainted with its contents; and I continued to read with the greatest avidity (F 32). Even though Victor does not utter the rivalry between his father and himself explicitly, his unconscious, uncovered with his use of language, discloses his defiance against his father. Father figure, for Lacan, serves as power and temperament simultaneously (Lacan 149). When the son challenges his father, he has gained his fathers power and temperament. Thornburg puts it:

Agrippa is a figure through whom Victor Frankenstein could attempt to reinforce his masculinity. By studying Agrippa on his own initiative and by continuing to do so after his fathers expression of disapproval, Victor could quietly but effectively assert his own independence from his father in the approved masculine arena of intellectual activity. (82) So, Victors hunger for uncovering the elixir of life (F 32) symbolizes his desire to gain his fathers power and temperament. In other words, Victors thirst for [scientific] knowledge (F 29) signifies his intense desire to identify himself with a masculine pursuit (Thornburg 82). In crits, Lacan states that The father represents a person who dominates and arbitrates the avid wrenching and jealous ambivalence that were at the core of the childs first relations with its mother and its sibling rival (149). In view of Lacans this statement, Victors first desire which he describes as Curiosity, earnest research to learn the hidden laws of nature (F 30), derives from the existence of his father as a rival. When Victor asserts his earliest scientific curiosity, he makes it clear that it arose directly in response to his fathers belittling of his first show of interest 17

(Thornburg 82). Still, it has been claimed that Victor Frankenstein wants more than the position of the father (Botting MM 133). As Botting puts forth, [Victors] Promethean theft of the secret of life from nature has endowed him with the power to create life and he has dispensed with the need for all differences natural, sexual or familial (MM 133). Victor becomes so bound to the possibility of the fulfilment of his desire that he admits that this passion afterwards ruled my destiny (F 31). As Lacan argues that desires are impossible to fulfil because they signify something lost and unattainable, the more the subject wants to fulfil his desires, the more he becomes constrained by his desires. The situation of Victor supports Lacans argument, as he speaks of his desire as a passion [arising] like a mountain river, from ignoble and almost forgotten source; but, swelling as it proceeded, [becoming a] torrent which, in its course, has swept away all [his] hopes and joys (F 31). Besides, Victor admits:

My passions [were] vehement; but by some law in my temperature they were turned, not towards childish pursuits, but to an eager desire to learn. I confess that neither the structure of languages, nor the politics of various states, possessed attractions for me. It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn; and whether it was the outward substance of things, or the inner spirit of nature and the mysterious soul of man that occupied me, still my inquiries were directed to the metaphysical, or, in its highest sense, the physical secrets of the world. (F 30-31) Victors confession of the intensity of his desire for knowledge shows that he becomes obsessed with his passion. As a result, his altruistic aim becomes an egoistic desire. In Lacanian desire, as Fink states, there is only a cause that brings [desire] into being (91). Accordingly, what Lacan calls objects of desire substitutes for the causes of desire. In this case, the first object for Victors desire is the cursory glance (F 32) of his father and consequently, his altruistic aim to banish disease from the human frame (F 33). Because of this cause, Victor ardently desired the acquisition of knowledge (F 36). In this point, it seems that 18

Victors father represents the cause of his desire. Elliot explains: Our deepest unconscious feelings and passions are always expressed, as it were, through the relay of other people (100). However, the real object of the desire of Victor is the mother. As Victors father expands the lack in Victor which cannot be filled with anything but the love of the mother, Victor unconsciously wishes to challenge his father. According to Lacanian point of view, the subject, here, is Victor, and the Other is his mother. So, there is no place for the father. Fink agues that the father typically acts in such a way as to disrupt that unity [mother and child], intervening therein as a third term often perceived as foreign and even undesirable (55). Thus, the advent of the father creates a rivalry environment between the son and the father because the subject attempts to fill the mOthers lack (Fink 54). Although Victors aim first seems as an attempt to allay human misery, he unconsciously desires to gain the attention of his mother. Therefore, Victors first desire arises as a challenge to his father, Alphonso. It has been very often claimed that Frankenstein puts forth the idea of incestuous familial relations. Although the detailed analysis of these incestuous relations will be uncovered in the following chapter, the influence of incest on Victors unconscious cannot be discussed without mentioning his desires. It is important to note that The next critical event in Frankensteins history is his mothers death, and a period of mourning delays his departure for the university (Sherwin 30). When Victor learns about his mothers death, he expresses his agony through such a poetic language that his desire for the reincarnation of his dead mother is revealed openly: She died calmly the brightness of a beloved eye can have been extinguished, and the sound of a voice so familiar, and dear to the ear, can be hushed, never more to be heard (F 35). The death of his mother causes his lack, which has already existed, get more profound. As a result, while the Other has substituted for the mother before her death, now, the Other becomes the death of the mother for Victor. As it is understood from his language, the death of Victors mother, Caroline, has become the new object for his desire. So, this death signifies the new cause of his desire to form his subjectivity. Therefore, Botting states, in Making Monstrous, that The Other, the unconscious and linguistic systems of differentiation, constructs subjectivity and 19

meaning (118). Once he attends the university of Ingolstadt, Victor resumes his former studies under the influence of Professor Waldmans words on modern chemists: These philosophers penetrate into the recesses of nature ascend into the heavens command the thunders of heaven mock the invisible world with its own shadows (F 38). Waldmans expressions create the idea of reincarnation and replacement of the lost object for Victor. With this idea, Victor redefines his purpose:

Such were the professors words-rather let me say such words of fate, enounced to destroy me. As he went on, I felt as if my soul were grappling with a palpable enemy; one by one the various keys were touched which formed the mechanism of my being: chord after chord was sounded, and soon my mind was filled with one thought, one conception, one purpose Treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation. (F 38) Later, he admits how he has worked to discover so astonishing a secret (F 41).

After days and nights of incredible labour and fatigue, I succeeded in discovering the cause of generation and life; nay more, I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter. (F 41) After this point, it is clear that Victors unconscious assumes control of his reason. He claims: After so much time spent in painful labour, to arrive at once at the summit of my desires was the most gratifying consummation of my toils (F 42). His language, while expressing his purpose and obsession for his purpose, emphasises the causes of his desires by uncovering his unconscious. Lacan argues in the following statement:

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The effect of language is to introduce the cause into the subject. Through this effect, he is not the cause of himself; he bears within himself the worm of the cause that splits him. For his cause is the signifier, without which there would be no subject in the real. (crits 708) According to Lacans statement, the death of Victors mother remains as a signifier which determines the unconscious of the subject, Victor. As Victor speaks of his unconscious by mentioning the influences that affect him such as Professor Waldman, the effect of language is to signify the lack. Victor associates his lack with the death of his mother: It so long before the mind can persuade itself that she, whom we saw everyday, and whose very existence a part of our own, can have departed forever (F 35). Victor states that he accepts his mothers existence as his own. With this separation, Victor, as the subject, experiences some kind of loss as his sense of unity with the mother is broken. Fink expresses: Lack and desire are coextensive for Lacan. The child devotes considerable effort to filling up the whole of the mothers lack, her whole space of desire (54). If it is the case that the primary motivation for Victors desire to animate life is the death of his mother, then his main aim can be said to possess his dead mother. In other words, it can be said that beneath his quest to manufacture life, after all, Victor Frankenstein confronts a desire to reunite with his dead mother and somehow engender artificial life from her ( Hogle 5). As in Lacans theory the conscious and unconscious cannot be separated (Wright NLH 619), human beings are always split. As a result of this split, Victor becomes the dealer of an egoistic wish. In other words, it becomes apparent that it is of utmost importance for Victor to take credit for his creation. He expresses his expectations out of his success recklessly: Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of life into our dark world. A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs. (F 43) 21

Victor sees himself as a father figure as his egoistic motivation in bestowing animation upon lifeless matter (F 41) results in his wish to receive the blessing and the respect of new species dependent on him as their creator. Victors standing for a father figure is supported in the novel as Frankensteins nameless creature responds to its maker as a child to its father (Miller 60), and promises him as to be mild and docile to my natural lord and king (F 77). However, Victor displays no rational affection for his creature nor an ability to subdue his own passions (Roberts 201). In fact, his seeing himself as a father figure signifies Victors desire for the mother again. In Kaplan and Klosss explanation of the novel, Frankensteins desire to possess the mother is manifested as a fantasy of paternity (119-45). Substituting for the father represents the unconscious desire of the subject to unite with his mother. In other words, this paternal fantasy signifies the formation of a primal repression. With the entrance of Victor into the symbolic world of signifiers, his disclosure of his unconscious is reflected by his use of language, by difference. In other words, as Eagleton puts forth,

the unconscious is a particular effect of language, a process of desire set in motion by difference. When we enter the symbolic order, we enter into language itself; yet this language, for Lacan is never something entirely within our individual control. On the contrary language is what internally divides us. (150) When he utters that no father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs (F 43), Victor expresses his desire in the context of the symbolic order by referring to the relationship between father and son. Therefore, in an attempt to represent himself, Victor enters the symbolic order which is out of his control. When Victor enters into the symbolic order,

22

 the subject attempts to represent itself, to give expression to desire through language. Yet this proves to be a far from easy task, since the subject has become an effect of the signifier, inserted into the spacings or differences that constitute language. (Elliot 106) As a result of his loss in the symbolic order of signifiers, Victor unconsciously creates an alter ego to perform his unconventional passions. His alter ego not only helps him bare his unconscious, but also encourages him to pursue his repressed desires. Victor exclaims his real purpose: I thought, that if I could bestow animation upon lifeless matter, I might in process of time renew life where death had apparently devoted the body to corruption (F 43). Even though Victor still suggests some altruistic purposes in his words, in his symbolic world, he hopes to be the only master of his beings in his unconscious. Victor expresses his purpose with the subject I showing that he is both the real speaking subject and the splitting one between his ego and his unconscious. In other words, while he is speaking his desires with the subject I, he intends to communicate something else. When Victor claims:

my limbs now tremble and my eyes swim with the remembrance; but then a resistless, and almost frantic, impulse urged me forward; I seemed to have lost all soul and sensation but for this one pursuit. (F 43) he intends to signify his ravenous attempt for his desire. However, his alter ego is reflected through his words to communicate his egoistic aim. Namely, what his alter ego intends to say does not coincide with what his ego says. With the purpose of giving advice to Walton, Victor remarks: If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections, and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind (F 44). With his confession, Victor intends to show his regret, for his egoistic desire, to Walton. However, while Victor is expressing his remorse to

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Elizabeth, he uses a more subjective language with the subject I in order to reflect his intimacy to her.

A selfish pursuit had cramped and narrowed me, until your gentleness and affection warmed and opened my senses; I became the same happy creature who, a few years ago, loved and beloved by all, had no sorrow or care. (F 55) As Elizabeth represents sexual and familial connotations for Victor, Victor, being aware of his selfishness, also intends to apologize to Elizabeth for his egoistical intentions. It is significant to note that Victors relationship with nature represents another object for his desire for the mother. Victors witnessing, at the age of fifteen, the most violent and terrible thunderstorm (F 33) doubles the urgency of his endeavours to penetrate natures secret (Sherwin 30). Victor describes his eager study of nature with an almost sexual language: I have described myself as always having been imbued with a fervent longing to penetrate the secrets of nature (F 32). Botting argues that, Victor, the young scientist performs his research with the ardour of a lover (MM 129). At this point, for Victor, the role of nature as a signifier represents his desire for the mother. As nature is female, Victor dreams about entering the citadel of nature (F 32), therefore he pursued nature to her hiding places (F 43). However, in one point, nature loses her importance for Victor. Botting puts it:

After theft of natures secret principle of life renders her powerless, she is no longer an object of desire. Once the knowledge concealed within natures citadel has been plundered and its power assumed by Frankenstein, nature is no longer necessary to his plan. (MM 130) As soon as Victor discovers the secrets of nature, his unconscious starts to look for a new object for his desire. Again Botting makes a clear statement about the

24

relation between nature and woman by depicting their roles in the structure of Victors desire:

Nature and woman are located within a nexus of terms which is distinctly opposed to the position occupied by Frankenstein. These constitute the differences by which the scientists identity is constructed, and also structure the direction of his desire. (MM 130) It is clear that the role of Victors desires is to help him construct his identity and bare his unconscious by substituting new objects. Unlike Victor, the Creature does not have an unconscious desire. Rather, he has an instinctual desire, or need, like an infants interest for the outer world in which he is not included. First, the Creature states his admiration for the outer world: I was delighted when I first discovered that a pleasant sound, which often saluted my ears (F 80). After that, he claims: I began also to observe, with greater accuracy, the form that surrounded me, and to perceive the boundaries of the radiant roof of light which canopied me (F 80). With his statements, the Creatures instinctual desire to discover the world and his environment is uncovered. His first passions are quite benevolent and reasonable. Luchene claims that

the education of the creature, from the first flicker in that yellow eye, until he is discovered by the cottagers, provide his detailed development from a creature motivated by benevolent passions, till he becomes a fiend driven by destructive passions, which issue from his rejection by the human race. (189) In other words, when the Creature is living out of the symbolic order with a suffering unconscious, it is not important for him to find an object for his desires. The reason for his benevolent passions is that he feels like an infant. The Creature expresses his feelings about his first desire:

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As I yet looked upon crime as a distant evil; benevolence and generosity were ever present before me, inciting within me a desire to become an actor in the busy scene where so many admirable qualities were called forth and displayed. (F 98) As the Creature is accepted as an infant, his most important desire is his unconscious wish to discover his environment. In Lacanian terms, having no one to tutor him about his needs and environment, the Creature develops a lack in his personality. The creature lacks the mother and father figure as Victor Frankenstein has rejected him. For Lacan, an infant at first does not recognize any distinction between himself and the other object who meets his needs. As the Creature has the lack of the Other inborn, which means he does not have a sense of a self or individuated identity, and he does not have an object for his desire. When the Creature learns about the fatal effect of [his] miserable deformity (F 88), he starts to shape an identity. As a result, he becomes a creature, who moved from the pathos of the suffering subject of the unconscious to a logical or linguistic mode of apprehension via the signifier (Rabat 11). When the Creature finds a signifier for his miserable deformity, he finds an object for his desire for recognition. Thus, Victor, the creator, the father, becomes the object of the Creatures desire to enter into the symbolic world. Botting portrays the broken unity of the Creature:

The monster, supremely isolated, unique and separated from all other things, exists both as a cruel parody of the wish for totality and exclusivity and, as the mark of the overthrow Frankenstein has undergone, it forms a figure of monstrous differences that turns singularity and unity into multiplicity and disintegration. (MM 135) The more the Creature starts to understand the outer world and other people, the more he expands his expectations for his desire. In other words, when the Creature sees other people and their living, he understands what he is deprived of

26

and develops a lack. As a result, his unconscious is shaped by his lack. The Creature describes the revelation of his unconscious desires:

The more I saw them [the cottagers], the greater became my desire to claim their protection and kindness; my heart yearned to be known and loved by these amiable creatures: to see their sweet looks directed toward me with affection was the utmost limit of my ambition. (F 101) While the Creature is making his way towards the symbolic order of signifiers, he gains self-consciousness. However, while the Creature is living in the real world, which is the uncivilized world without language for Lacan, anything can satisfy him as in the state of nature, man is free and unselfconscious; in so far as he can gratify his primal desires easily, he is happy (Mellor 46-47). For instance, for the Creature, a hovel is indeed a paradise compared to the bleak forest, [his] former residence, the rain-dropping branches, and dank earth (F 83). Similarly, the Creature does not understand why the DeLacey family is unhappy, although they have everything he needs:

They possessed a delightful house and every luxury; they had a fire, to warm them when chill, and delicious viands when hungry; they were dressed in excellent clothes; and, still more, they enjoyed one anothers company and speech, interchanging each day looks of affection and kindness. What did their tears imply? (F 86) All the things the Creature has listed in the delightful house of the DeLacey family are the things he lacks; shelter, food, mothers love and affection. According to his real world, the family should be happy with all their possessed things. Compared to Victor, the desires of the Creature are more instinctual as he could not find a proper and instable object for his desires. The first thing that the Creature needs is the satisfaction of his basic demand, the love of the mother. However, the Creature has the lack of the mother inborn. Thus, it becomes 27

difficult for him to enter into the symbolic order. Rose states that the precedence of the Real in the Lacanian scheme, as the point of the subjects confrontation with an endlessly retreating reality, signals this definition of the subject in terms of an object which has been lost (19). As the Creature has had the lost object since he was born, he lives in the real order. As a result, his desire is directed to a lost object which he cannot identify. Finally, when the Creature looks for an object, he finds Victor as the new object of his desire by entering into the symbolic world (Rose 18). These forms of identification reflect the Lacanian division of the imaginary, symbolic and the real (Rose 18). The desires of Victor Frankenstein and his Creature reflect their unconscious. While Victor is substituting his mother for the cause of his desire, the Creature cannot find a substitution for his desire because he does not have a language. Brooks states that the Monster understands that it is not visual relationship that favors him but rather the auditory, the interlocutory, the relationship of language (592).

2.2 DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was first published in 1886 and sold as a paperback for one shilling in the U.K. It originated in a dream Stevenson once had. In other words, the material of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde grew organically from a nightmare into a work of art (Hubbard 23). Upon waking up from a fine bogey tale, Stevenson started to write it down. In need of money, Stevenson racked his brain for a plot. He admits:

I dreamed the scene at the window, and a scene afterwards split in two, in which Hyde, pursued for some crime, took the powder and underwent the change in the presence of his pursuers. All the rest was made awake, and consciously. (Elwin 96) Kucich states that Stevensons novels and stories particularly The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are haunted by the demonic impulses deep within human nature (131). Namely, the main concern of Stevenson in his 28

writings, especially in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, is the revelation of the unconscious. However, he manages to handle this concern with his engagement with evolutionary psychology. Here, evolutionary psychology reflects the position of Stevenson about the relations between savage and civilized psychologies (Reid 14). It is this position of Stevenson that makes him an ideal author for a Lacanian reading. His concern for the relations between savage and civilized psychologies reflects Lacans symbolic order including the stages of imaginary, symbolic and the real. An increasing interest in the unconscious mind helped Stevenson to form a psychological basis for his Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. DAmato claims, [Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde] embraces the notion of duality in man and the presence of unconscious impulses (93). The focus of the novel is on the split personality and the emergence of the unconscious. For a Lacanian reading of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, it is important, firstly, to understand the concept of desire. For Lacan, language is the fundamental medium in which desire is represented, and through which the subject is constituted to itself and to others (Elliot 105). As the main character of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Henry Jekyll, at the same time symbolizes his other self, Edward Hyde; it is of utmost importance to discuss their desires by focusing on the language they use. Naturally, their use of language differs according to the fact that they represent the diverse characters of a united self. It has been widely argued that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde represents the split personality of the man by uncovering his struggle between the conscious and the unconscious. The reason for Stevensons concern about the split nature of man originated from his own unconscious. In his essay, A Chapter on Dreams, Stevenson describes the nightmare of a college student. Later, Stevenson recognizes this student as himself. According to the nightmare, the college student passes a long way in the surgical theatre seeing monstrous malformations and the abhorred dexterity of surgeons. All night long in his wet clothes, he climbs stairs in an endless series (218); and he constantly meets beggarly women of the street muddy labourers, passing downward and all brushing against him as they pass (218). According to DAmato,

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the dream was repetitive and Stevenson, the college student, became so obsessed with it that he could hardly separate his daily obsessions from the nightly images. Fearing insanity, he consulted a physician who prescribed a draught that cured him of the dream and its maddening ruminations. Shortly after having this dream, Stevenson wrote The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, whose setting mirrors the dreamscape. (97-98) It is clear that Stevensons own psychology affects his thoughts about the split nature of man as once he has been the subject of his own strange case. Although in Lacanian terms the subject is split between ego (upper left) and unconscious (lower right), between conscious and unconscious (Fink 45), Stevenson uses the split subject to refer not only to the relation between the conscious and the unconscious, but also the connection between moral and immoral, good and bad, primitive and civilized. Accordingly, the desires of the characters, Jekyll and Hyde, are mainly caused by their split natures. Like Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll starts from altruistic motives (Toumey 419) for his desire to reveal Hyde. While Jekyll is thinking about the emergence of his other side, he bares his desire to help mankind. Toumey claims that Stevenson depicted Jekylls initial goodness in terms of altruistic intent (430). Jekyll claims that, with the separation of mans good and evil sides,

life would be relieved of all that was unbearable; the unjust might go his way, delivered from the aspirations and remorse of his more upright twin; and the just could walk steadfastly and securely on his upward path, doing the good things and no longer exposed disgrace and penitence by the hands of this extraneous evil. (JH 70-71) So, the doctor brings healing with him, but he carries it in a black bag (Millhauser 301). At this point, there is an important issue that Jekyll does not take into account. It is the position of the evil part, which Stevenson also refers to as the unconscious part. While he is talking about his altruistic aims, Jekyll does not make it clear what he is going to do with the other part. It shows that there is 30

another motive behind Jekylls desire to create the embodiment of mans other self. Apparently, this motive cannot be the wish for reputation as the name of Henry Jekyll is very well known and often printed (JH 13) which means a lot for the people in London. Besides, while Jekyll is talking about his childhood, he states that he has been raised in a respectable and honourable family:

I was born to a large fortune, endowed besides with excellent parts fond of the respect of the wise and good among my fellow-men, and thus, as might have been supposed, with every guarantee of an honourable and distinguished future. (JH 69) It is apparent that Henry Jekyll has been a member of a well-known family in an elite environment. According to Schmitt, the first remarkable feature of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is that brutal crimes are carried out in the midst of the well-populated streets of London (313-314). Accordingly, Jekylls childhood has spent in this family living in accordance with the rules of a symbolic world. As Jekyll states while mentioning his childhood memories:

The worst of my faults was a certain impatient gaiety of disposition, such as has made the happiness of many, but such as I found it hard to reconcile with my imperious desire to carry my head high, and wear a more than commonly grave countenance before public. Hence it came about that I concealed my pleasures. (JH 69) In his symbolic world, there is no place for the pleasures, sexuality, passions and the unconscious. Put another way, Henry Jekyll has been raised in a family, in which a masterful consciousness represses the real unconscious (Milbank 164). As a result, Jekyll has to hide his impatient gaiety of disposition (JH 69). Martin Thom expounds in his article called The Unconscious Structured as a Language that the childs cultural achievement entails the installation of a repetition compulsion in the unconscious (61). As a result of this compulsion, his unconscious creates an alternate world in his mind by collecting his lacks. 31

In other words, the motive for Henry Jekylls desire is his primitive side that has never been liberated in his childhood. While Jekyll is mentioning the perennial war among my members (JH 70) by referring to the conflict between his conscious and unconscious, he revolts against his nature. Although it is the nature of man that two sides, the conscious and the unconscious, live together, as Jekyll reveals that man is not truly one, but truly two (JH 71), he still denies it. Moreover, Jekyll regards this nature to be the curse of mankind. He enunciates:

It was the curse of mankind that these incongruous faggots were thus bound together that in the agonized womb of consciousness these polar twins should be continuously struggling. (JH 71) Although Jekyll sees the nature of man as the curse of the mankind, his real intention is not to help humanity, but to reveal his unconscious freely. When he is inverted to Hyde, Jekyll confesses: There was something strange in my sensations, something indescribably new and, from its very novelty, incredibly sweet (JH 72). Here, Jekyll finds out that the experience his other self is quite pleasurable even though he becomes more wicked, tenfold more wicked a slave to [his] original evil (JH 72). As Jekyll recognizes in Hyde his other self (Elbarbary 122), Hyde becomes the object of Jekylls desires. The language Jekyll uses always carries the subject I as he is in the position of the subject expressing his desire. In other words, Henry Jekyll stands for the real subject representing I and the conscious. However, Edward Hyde is the object, the cause of the desire, representing the unconscious. Hurley explains:

Gothic monsters are displaced and distorted versions not only of tendencies repressed across a culture, but also of the bad (the Other) with whom those tendencies have already been identified, and who has already been labelled monstrous. (198)

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Therefore, Hyde signifies the Other for Jekyll representing his lack of unconscious. In Lacanian terms, Hyde represents the return of the repressed and the embodiment of the unconscious desires. In The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, Lacan states that the subject encounters a lack in the discourse of the Other (141). Hyde, the Other, creates such a lack in Jekyll, the subject, that Jekyll becomes obsessive about the materialization of his desire. He declares: I knew well that I risked death. But the temptation of a discovery so singular and profound at last overcame the suggestions of alarm (JH 71-72). Besides, after he sees his other self, Hyde, in the mirror, Jekyll does not feel any regret. Although Mr. Utterson describes Hyde as hardly human (JH 23), Jekyll claims: When I looked upon that ugly idol in the glass, I was conscious of no repugnance, rather of a leap of welcome. This, too, was myself. It seemed natural and human (JH 73). Jekylls statements support Lacans idea about the split nature of man. From this aspect, in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde [it is] seen how ineffective is that suppression of the other (Doane and Hodges 74). Edward Hyde also symbolizes the primitive existence of Henry Jekyll. As Miyoshi claims that Hyde is in fact merely Jekylls unrepressed spontaneous existence (473). Primitive existence embodies the pre-language state of the man. Fink states that the real is an infants body before it comes under the sway of the symbolic order, before it is instructed in the ways of the world (24). Therefore, Hyde can be seen as an infant who is not instructed about the symbolic order of the world. For that reason, it is impossible to expect him to have desires. He is already the representation of the unconscious desires, so he cannot be the subject at the same time. Moreover, as Hyde is excluded from the symbolic order, instead of using language, he just snarled loud into a savage laugh (JH 23). For Lacan, desire is associated with the use of language. In other words, when people enter into the symbolic order by using signifiers, they start to desire as their unconscious let it happen. The situation of Edward Hyde is the same. He does not have an unconscious because he already represents the unconscious part of Jekyll. As Jekyll states, all human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good and evil: and Edward Hyde, alone, in the ranks of mankind, was pure evil (JH 73). At this point, it becomes apparent that Hyde symbolizes only the evil 33

part of Jekyll. DAmato expresses his comments on the duality of Jekyll in the following way: While Hyde was Jekylls protection of pure evil, Hyde represents one aspect of Jekyll. Stevenson flirts with the idea that good and evil are not quite so separate. (99) Accordingly, Hyde is only the other self of Henry Jekyll. At this point it is important to note Saposniks comments on the malignancy of Hyde: He is not the antithetical evil to Jekylls good nor is evil at all. His cruelty derives from his association with Jekyll, not from any inherent motivation toward destruction (727). Hyde does not have a language, an identity and a desire. The reason for Jekylls descent is that he gives an identity to his other self. The first noteworthy thing is that Jekylls other self has a name, Hyde. From the very moment of the emergence of his other self, Jekyll calls it Hyde. He desires, unconsciously, to make his other self more powerful than himself because with the emergence of Hyde, he has escaped from the rules of the symbolic order. Jekyll admits:

I felt younger, lighter, happier in body; within I was conscious of a heavy recklessness, a current of disordered sensual images running like a mill race in my fancy, a solution of the bonds of obligation, an unknown but not an innocent freedom of the soul my original evil braced and delighted me like a wine. (JH 72) With this intention, Jekyll attempts to insert Hyde into the symbolic world. He even thinks about the possibility of living his remaining life as Edward Hyde. He explains: I took and furnished that house in Soho I announced to my servants that a Mr. Hyde (whom I described) was to have full liberty and power about my house in the square I next drew up that will so that if anything befell me in the person of Dr Jekyll, 34

I could enter on that of Edward Hyde without pecuniary loss. (JH 75) Later, Jekyll continues: by sloping my own hand backwards, I had supplied my double with a signature, I thought I sat beyond the reach of fate (JH 76). With his words, it is clear that Jekyll is also aware of the fact that his other self is gaining power. As a result of his actions about the decisions on Hyde, his unconscious part has started to seize him. He confesses: I had gone to bed Henry Jekyll, I had awakened Edward Hyde (JH 77) and it was always as Hyde that I awakened (JH 86). However, Jekyll admits: my new power tempted me until I fell in slavery (JH 74). Later he explains why Hyde has gained power and his fear of this situation:

That part of me which I had the power of projecting had lately been much exercised and nourished; it had seemed to me of late as though the body of Edward Hyde had grown in stature, as though (when I wore that form) I were conscious of a more generous tide of blood; and I began to spy a danger that, if this were much prolonged, the balance of my nature might be permanently overthrown, the power of voluntary change be forfeited, and the character of Edward Hyde become irrevocably mine. (JH 78) As a result of this change of roles, Hyde and Jekyll are inextricably joined because one without the other cannot function in society (Saposnik 731). In Lacanian terms, there occurs a rivalry between Jekyll and Hyde as happens between father and son. Henry Jekyll defines the roles of his two sides: Jekyll had more than a fathers interest; Hyde had more than a sons indifference (JH 79). From that moment on, as Hyde gains an identity owing to Jekyll, he desires to repress Jekyll. At this point, for Lacan, Hyde becomes the subject while Jekyll turns out to be the object of Hydes desire. Saposnik comments: One of the most fascinating developments in the story is Hydes growing malice, his increasing premeditation as he becomes more and more a mortal. (727) 35

It is clear that after Hyde becomes the subject and seizes Jekyll, he turns into a real evil. When Hyde does not have an identity, Jekyll declares him as I. However, after Hyde gains power, Jekyll does not use the subject I while mentioning Hyde: He, I say I cannot say, I (JH 84). It is a very useful example to show the submission of Jekyll because, with this statement, Jekyll enunciates his loss, and accepts to be the object of the Others desire. He reports:

That child of Hell had nothing human Once a woman spoke to him, offering, I think, a bow of lights. He smote her in the face, and she fled. (JH 85) Although he talks about his other self, Jekyll does not use the subject I, and he does not remember the events as he says I think. Saposnik has pointed out the change of Jekylls use of language toward Hyde:

as objective as he would be by first describing Hyde as a little man with a stumping gait, his rising gorge forces his language toward the metaphors of hellish, damned Juggernaut, and Satan. . (723) This change in the use of language, according to Lacanian criticism signifies that the splitting of the I into ego (false self) and unconscious brings into being a surface, in a sense, with two sides: one that is exposed and one that is hidden (Fink 45). Here, Fink suggests that Hyde is exposed to language while Jekyll is hidden in language. As a result, Jekyll remains in the imaginary order in Lacans signifying chain while Hyde enters into the symbolic part. From that moment on, Jekyll becomes the object, and Hyde turns into a full subject. It is worth noting that Hyde starts to use I pronoun while he is talking about Jekyll. When Hyde asks Utterson: How did you know me, Utterson replies: common friends Jekyll, for instance (JH 22). After Hyde hears the name of Jekyll, he unconsciously reacts: I did not think you would have lied (JH 22). Both Jekyll and Hyde play the leading role in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. However, first, Hyde is the object of Jekylls desire. Later, the roles have changed, and Jekyll is converted into the place of the Other object. Lacan claims 36

that one is always responsible for ones position as subject (Fink 47). So, while Jekyll is responsible for Hydes position as subject, the opposite goes for Jekylls position. When Hyde turns into the subject, his desires start to develop by putting Jekyll in the place of the Other object, the cause of the desire. This drastic change of the leading roles gives way to the alienation of the subjects because for Lacan, in the concept of alienation, two parties are involved; the subject and the Other.

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CHAPTER 3

ALIENATION

The concept of alienation has always been an important aspect of the psychoanalytic literary criticism of Gothic fiction because in Gothic fiction, the culture and language of the characters represent subjectivity. In view of this subjectivity, the places of the characters are determined by the culture they live in and the language they are subject to. In other words, the alienation of the characters is determined by their becoming the subject of language as the culture is represented in language as well. At this point, in studying Gothic fiction, the morbid identities of the characters and their relations with the symbolic world carry great significance. There are two different kinds of alienation in Lacanian criticism. The first of which is the alienation of the characters as a result of their entrance into the symbolic order. When the characters realize the lack they have in the symbolic order, they experience alienation. This is called symbolic alienation. The other kind is the alienation of the characters arising after their deprivation of language. This is called imaginary alienation. For Lacan, imaginary alienation signifies the separation of the subject from the symbolic world of language. That is why Fink claims that alienation gives rise to a pure possibility of being, a place where one expects to find a subject, but which nevertheless remains empty (52). It is apparent that the state of imaginary alienation creates a lack or emptiness in the subject by keeping it in the imaginary order. At this point Fink claims that Alienation engenders, in a sense, a place in which it is clear that there is, as of yet, no subject: a place where something conspicuously lacking (52). When the subject remains in the imaginary order, it

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constitutes wholeness with the other by losing its own subjectivity. As Elliot states, the imaginary is already an alienation of subjectivity (104). In Gothic fiction, the acts and language of the characters represent their places in the symbolic order. Therefore, while analyzing the concept of alienation in Gothic fiction, it is important to focus on the language use of the characters in relation to their acts. By this way, the place of the characters in the symbolic order will be examined to signify their state of alienation. While defining Gothic fiction and its subject, Botting states:

Doubles, alter egos, mirrors and animated representations of the disturbing parts of human identity became the stock devices. Signifying the alienation of the human subject from the culture and language s/he was located, these devices increasingly destabilised the boundaries between psyche and reality, opening up an indeterminate zone in which the differences between fantasy and actuality were no longer secure. (Gothic 11) Without language, the characters cannot attend the symbolic world, where language is pre-constituted. Elliot explains the entrance of the subject into the symbolic world in the following way:

For Lacan, the position of each of us as individual subjects is determined by our place in our cultures system of signifiers. The signifier represents the subject for Lacan; the primacy of the signifier in the constitution of the subject indicates the rooting of the unconscious in language According to Lacan, the individual subject, once severed from the narcissistic fullness of the imaginary order, is inserted into the symbolic order of language. (106) If the characters cannot manage to enter the symbolic order of language, they experience the alienation of subjectivity by staying in the imaginary order. Besides, as the regression from the symbolic to the imaginary is always

39

possible (Thom 49), the subject who survives in the symbolic order can be alienated from language when its need is transformed into desire. By analyzing the concept of alienation in the novels of Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, it will be suggested that if the characters stay away from language, they cannot realize the lack they have already had. As a result, their individualization is hindered as they are excluded from the symbolic order, and they become alienated characters. Their state of alienation will be uncovered through their acts and their use of language. In this context, the reason for the alienation of the characters in relation to their unconscious and their use of language will be focused on in the following parts of this chapter.

3.1 FRANKENSTEIN In addition to being one of the most significant Gothic novels of the Romantic period, Frankenstein, also, symbolizes the formation of human character by depicting the process of the individualization. In this process, the language use of the characters occupies a notable place because only with the help of language, the characters can get into the symbolic order. In the symbolic order, the characters face up to the main elements of language, signifier and signified. With the use of language, the final meaning gets forever lost. Consequently, the unconscious of the characters becomes a part of their identity. At this point, Lacanian concepts of the imaginary and the symbolic order come into prominence. In other words, it is the symbolic relation which defines the position of the subjectIt is speech, the symbolic relation which determines the greater or lesser degree of perfection, of completeness, of approximation, of the imaginary (Botting MM 14). With language, the subject is introduced to the Other, and the Other constitutes the human subject in language through the effects of speech (Botting MM 14). In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley manifests the relationship between Victor and the Creature by focusing on the interactions between a rejecting father and his rejected creature (Miller 59). When the Creature first opens his eyes to the world, he has felt absolute loneliness. In fact, the first thing he is faced with is alienation. He expresses his feelings to Victor: It is with considerable difficulty 40

that I remember the original era of my being: all the events of that period appear confused and indistinct (F 79). When he is first confronted with the world, he experiences an emptiness which lacks its object inborn. According to Lacanian point of view, in a normal state, an infant first feels a fullness between him and the Other who meets his needs. As the infant does not have an individuated identity, he feels himself as a whole with the Other. At this point, the infant stands in the real order, without language and with the state of fullness. When this unity is broken, the infant develops a desire for the lost object. However, the Creature, who is seen as an infant, does not stand in the real order at all because he does not experience any fullness with the Other. Therefore, he does not even realize if there is a lost object. In Lacanian signifying chain, the imaginary represents the position of the subject when he cannot be given its object (Rose 18). Mellor claims that From the moment of the creatures birth, Frankenstein has rejected it as demoniacal [F 46] and heaped abuse upon it (43). Accordingly, as the Creature is rejected by the Other, Victor, as soon as he opens his eyes to the world, he skips the real order and directly gets into the imaginary order. Victor expresses his first rejection:

How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart. Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room, and continued a long time traversing my bedchamber, unable to compose my mind to sleep. (F 45) This rejection symbolizes something very important for Lacan, the renunciation of the Other by the subject. Normally, this renunciation is supposed to happen when Victor establishes fullness with his creature by accepting him. However, without experiencing fullness, the Creature is directly rejected. Because of this rejection, the Creature loses his opportunity to exist in the symbolic order. As the Creature claims his first day:

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It was dark when I awoke; I felt cold also, and half frightened, as it were instinctively, finding myself so desolate I was poor, helpless, miserable wretch; I knew, and could distinguish nothing; but feeling pain invade me on all sides. (F 80) With these feelings, the Creature explains his alienation from the outer world. As a result, the Creature is in search of an identity within the symbolic order he is excluded from. Similarly Thornburg states, Victor Frankensteins rejection is a recognition and rejection of his own human nature (75). In other words, Victor, who stands for the creator, the Other and the mother of the Creature, leaves his own child in desolation. This desolation causes alienation for the Creature. As Marshall puts it, The Creature signifies the man without relatives or friends (174). Thus, the Creature does not have an object for his identity and unconscious. For Lacan, the Other refers to the numerous forces that structure the identity and the unconscious. From this aspect, the Creature has not got any forces that help him establish his identity and unconscious. As Sullivan argues that

The Other is more than the Real other or mother of early infant nurture Lacans special attention to the relationship between infant and mother during the mirror stage does not mean that the unconscious is created in a static one-to-one equation or with the force of a biological bond. (16) Accordingly, the function of the mother can be fulfilled by any nurturer. Lacans formulation of the human subject is originated by the identification of the subject with an object, usually the mother (Sullivan 16). The first six months of human life is called pre-mirror stage by Lacan. At this stage, the infant sees its body as fragmented. Besides, there is no sense of the unity of an individuated identity at this stage. Furthermore, Sullivan continues: in the humans natural reality, Lacan says, there is an organic insufficiency Nonetheless, the infant perceives the world around it from the start of life (18). When the Creature describes his 42

first sensations about the world, he claims: A strange multiplicity of sensations seized me, and I saw, felt, heard, and smelt, at the same time (F 79). This first description of his senses symbolizes the earliest period of infancy (Mellor 48). Although the Creature can perceive the world around him, he cannot talk or know how to obtain food. For that reason, he spends much of his time by gazing and hearing. He explains:

I remember, a stronger light pressed upon my nerves, so that I was obliged to shut my eyes. Darkness then came over me by opening my eyes the light poured in upon me again No distinct ideas occupied my mind; all was confused. I felt light, and hunger, and thirst, and darkness; innumerable sounds rung in my ears, and all sides various scents saluted me. (F 79-80) However, in time, the Creature accepts that he has learned everything that is necessary to survive on his own: My sensations had become distinct, and my mind received every day additional ideas I distinguished the insect from the herb, and, by degrees, one herb from another (F 80-81). In other words, the Creature discovers the distinction of his sensations. Lacan stressed that earliest perception is inseparable from the effects of the outside world, both linguistic and visual (Sullivan 18). Sullivan continues to explain how Lacan considers the formation of human subjectivity:

since the primordial subject of unconsciousness is formed by identification with its first images and sensory experiences, it will thereafter reflect the essence of these images and objects in identity [it] is an experience Lacan calls primary identification. (18) The Creature completes his primary identification in a normal sense. So, there is no identification problem in the pre-mirror stage of the Creature. However, when he is transferred to the mirror stage, his alienation starts. As Sullivan remarks, Lacan postulated an irreducible symbolization of the body in the first six moths

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of life, followed by a mirror stage that anchors body identification to the human Gestalt (21). For the full development of the identity in the mirror stage, a child needs to establish completeness with the mother. Wright states that a child is lured by its mirror image (Lacans Imaginary order), which seems to promise it a completeness it does not have (NLH 620). However, in the case of Victor Frankenstein and the Creature, there is no possibility to establish completeness. Victor does not consider himself as the father of his creature. Therefore, he does not accept any responsibility for the Creature. As Mellor puts forth, Frankensteins inability to sympathize with his child, to care for or even to comprehend its basic needs, soon takes the extreme form of putative infanticide (42). Victor confesses his feelings for his creature: When I thought of him, I gnashed my teeth, my eyes became inflamed, and I ardently wished to extinguish that life which I had so thoughtlessly bestowed (F 71). The Creature has been rejected by his own father. For that reason, he always tries to remind his creator, Victor, of his parental duties to provide for his child. The Creature rises against Victor:

I am thy creature I will be docile to my natural lord if thou wilt also perform thy part, the which thou owest me. Oh, Frankenstein, be not equitable to every other, and trample upon me alone, to whom thy justice, and even thy clemency and affection, is most due. Remember, that I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam; but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest joy for no misdeed. (F 76-77) Hence, the Creature, reasonably and desperately, talks to Victor by claiming his needs. Miller states that the creature continually insists that rejection by his father is the origin of his suffering, and therefore his vengefully malicious behaviour (71). After the Creature learns about

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the difference of sexes; and the birth and growth of children; how the father doated on the smiles of the infant how all the life and cares of the mother were wrapped up in the precious charge and all the various relationship which bind one human being to another in mutual bonds. (F 93-94) in the De Lacey family, he realizes his lack of familial identification. Without this identification, the Creature knows that it is impossible to take part in the symbolic order. Mellor explains that Victor Frankenstein has failed to give his child the mothering and the nurturance it requires (101). Therefore, this ignorance of Victor confirms his failure to embrace his smiling creature with parental love (Mellor 101). Thus, the Creature laments: No father had watched my infant days, no mother had blessed me with smiles and caresses (F 94). Mary Shelley enounces the despair of the Creature on the frontispiece of her title page in Frankenstein:

Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay To mould Me man? Did I solicit thee From darkness to promote me? (Paradise Lost, X, 743-5)

This epigraph represents the situation of the Creature after its creation. Having been abandoned by its creator, the Creature is confined to the imaginary order without an object. Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust (F 100), the Creature curses. He blames Victor for his alienation. He even refers to Paradise Lost: I remembered Adams supplication to his Creator. But where was mine? He had abandoned me (F 101). He experiences neither the fullness of the real order nor the lack of the symbolic order. Owing to the fact that he gets stuck in the imaginary order, he becomes alienated. In order to gain a sense of identity and to get out of the imaginary order in which he is locked, the Creature attempts to take care of himself. That is, the Creature ascertains that he should find a place in the symbolic order. As Mellor 45

claims, At the same time he [the Creature] learns the causes of his pain or pleasure and how to produce the effects he desires by obtaining clothing, shelter, food and fire (48). As he has no one to provide food and shelter for him, the Creature tries to get what he needs by communicating with other people. He expresses: I longed to obtain food and shelter The vegetables in the gardens, the milk and cheese that I saw placed at the windows of some of the cottages, allured my appetite (F 82). With this intention:

One of the best of these I entered; but I had hardly placed my foot within the door, before the children shrieked and one of the women fainted. The whole village was roused; some fled, some attacked me. (F 82) As a result of his first attempt to be a part of the symbolic world, he experiences alienation. Other people with whom the Creature expects to communicate exclude him from their symbolic worlds because they cannot relate the appearance of the Creature with theirs. However, the most awful impact of being alienated for the Creature is felt when the Creature is rejected by the De Lacey family. Miller explains the importance of the rejection of the Creature by the De Lacey family:

De Laceys rejection of the creature is the turning point in the creatures history; De Laceys refusal to provide the creature human sympathy touches off the chain of violence and vengeance that eventually destroys both the monster and the original rejecting father, Frankenstein himself. (73) The last opportunity of the Creature to inject himself into the symbolic world of the others is destroyed with the rejection of the De Lacey family. He asserts: My protectors had departed, and had broken the only link that held me to the world (F 106). He even confesses to the father of the De Lacey family: if I fail there, I am an outcast in the world forever (F 103). The reason is that the Creature has substituted the De Lacey family for the mother. As in the mirror 46

stage, the subject identifies itself with the mother; they experience the world in almost the same sense. That is, when the mother cries, the child cries; when the mother becomes happy, the child sympathizes with her and shares her joy. The Creature admits: When they [the De Lacey family] were unhappy, I felt depressed; when they rejoiced, I sympathized in their joys (F 87). As Victor rejects him, the Creature thinks that the De Lacey family is his last chance in order to bring an end to his alienation. For Lacan, the subject, who is searching for an object, attempts to substitute others for the Other. This substitution signifies the entrance of the subject into the symbolic order. When the Creature is rejected, he has lost all his hopes for being a social creature and his rationality that ensures his kindness to humanity. He announces: From that moment I declared everlasting war against the species, and, more than all, against him who had formed me For the first time the feelings of revenge and hatred filled my bosom (F 105-106). As Nocks claims, Frankensteins man becomes violent only after he is repeatedly rejected by society (146). As a result, when he understands that his alienation is endless, he loses the possibility of forming an identity. The condition of the Creature is best described by the words of Nocks: A character expresses the necessity of fraternity for a satisfactory life, yet is unable to connect with other human beings the characters isolation leads to a tragic outcome (145). Miller comments on the wickedness of the Creature by praising the technique of Mary Shelley:

Perhaps the chief artistic triumph of Frankenstein is the fact that Shelly expresses her creatures malice and violence thoroughly, yet manages to keep him almost entirely sympathetic. She accomplishes this chiefly by allowing the creature to describe his sufferings at great length. (75) The recognition of the self in the mirror has a significant effect on the alienation of the Creature, as well. For Lacan, in the mirror stage, the child learns how to recognize himself in the mirror. This first recognition of the self is accepted as the first formation of the unconscious because the child learns to

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identify his body separated from its mother to create his own personality. However, the Creature cannot associate his image with the other images around him. Conversely, the recognition of his own self in the mirror even distorts his imaginary unity with the Other. The Creature confesses:

I had admired the perfect forms of my cottagers but how was I terrified when I viewed myself in a transparent pool! At first, I started back, unable to believe that it was indeed I who was reflected in the mirror; and when I became fully convinced that I was in reality the monster that I am, I was filled with the bitterest sensations of despondence and mortification. (F 88) The Creature cannot complete his mirror stage identification. As a result, his awareness of the self unity is broken. As Sullivan puts it, mirror-stage identifications entail the concomitant experience of awareness and delimiting alienation (25). In other words, mirror stage plays a major role in the formation of identity and the frustration of the subject. As the Creature is unable to complete his mirror stage identification, he cannot get out of the imaginary order. As Nocks explains, With no idea where he came from, and with no role model who is like himself, he has no identity (143). Therefore, he experiences frustration which symbolizes the state of alienation in Lacanian terms. Another reason for the alienation of the Creature is that he does not have a name. While he is working on his creature, Victor has assumed that it will have an identity because he has selected his features as beautiful (F 45). However, later, Victor explains the physical appearance of his creature as his yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black his teeth his watery eyes his shrivelled complexion (F 45). He judges his creature according to the norms of his symbolic world. On the other hand, as Victor rejects his creature immediately after it opens its eyes into the world, he does not have an intention to accept his creature as a part of himself and his symbolic world. Thus, he starts calling the Creature it, the monster, hideous guest, and my enemy (F 48). Only after Victor has realized that the 48

Creature could be the murderer of William, he includes his creature into his symbolic order by calling him he. With the murder, Victor involuntarily accepts the existence of his creature in his symbolic order. How Victor has discovered the Creature as the murderer is explained below, with his own words:

I perceived in the gloom a figure I stood fixed A flash of lightning illuminated the object, and discovered its shape plainly to me; its gigantic stature instantly informed me that it was the wretch, the filthy demon, to whom I had given life. Could he be the murderer of my brother Nothing in human shape could have destroyed that fair child. He was the murderer I thought of pursuing the devil; but He soon reached the summit, and disappeared. (F 60) It is apparent that Victor does not want to see his creature again. However, the more he tries to escape from the Creature, the closer he gets to him. Even though the Creature does not have a name, it is a victory for him to rise from the object it to the subject he in the eyes of his creator. It shows that the Creature manages, though unintentionally, to enter into the symbolic world of Victor Frankenstein by murdering William. Mellor states: Searching for his only legitimate parent, the creature encounters William Frankenstein. Once more thwarted in his desire for a family when the child refuses to accompany him (4647). Even after the Creature kills William in anger, he does not exactly gain an identity. He is still alienated from his environment. He confesses: I am still alone, and miserable; man will not associate with me (F 111). Still, in the case of the Creature, it is noticeable that when he gets close to the family of Victor Frankenstein, it becomes possible for him to enter into the symbolic order. This is the real reason for his murdering the people who are very close to Victor. By doing so, the Creature tries to prove his existence to his creator, Victor Frankenstein. After killing William, the Creature explains:

I gazed on my victim, and my heart swelled with exultation and hellish triumph I, too, can create desolation; my enemy is not invulnerable. (F 110)

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With such words, the alienation of the Creature is realized because if he had not been alienated, he would not have attempted to take place in the symbolic order. He gets pleasure when he realizes that he can, also, do anything to his creator. Even though the deaths of Clerval and Elizabeth signify the revenge of the Creature after Victor refuses to create a mate for him, the deaths of William and Justine signify the personality development of the Creature with his attempt to enter into the symbolic order. By murdering William and Justine, the Creature establishes a connection between him and his creator. At the end, the Creature understands that Victor is similar to him, and that he can damage him. In this way, the Creature puts himself in the place of the subject and makes Victor the object of his unconscious. The language acquisition of the Creature, also, displays the reasons for his alienation as language is the most important trait that leads humans to the symbolic order. As the Creature cannot find a place for himself in the symbolic order of language, he continues to live in alienation in his imaginary order. At this point, the Creature experiences imaginary alienation. As Brooks puts forth,

Language is also the principal theme of the Monsters story . His first experience with humankind has laid bare the hopelessness of specular relationship, its necessary result in alienation and rejection. (593) The first moment the Creature realizes his unconscious is when he starts learning language in the hut of the De Lacey family. For Lacan, the role of language is to establish subjectivity. In other words, without the use of language, it is impossible to be a part of the symbolic order. The unconscious is created with the use of language. As a result, as soon as the subject uses language by entering into symbolic order, his unconscious comes out. In other words, for Lacan, as Jameson claims, the apprenticeship of language is an alienation for the psyche (11). The Creature learns language with the De Lacey family. The De Lacey family stands for the first school of the Creature about human nature and language. The Creature first discovers human language in the shed of the De 50

Lacey family through overhearing the instructions of Safie by Felix and Agatha. Mellor states that the De Laceys also introduce him [the Creature] to the concept and function of a spoken and written language (49). For Lacan the childs first discovery of language represents his identification and his first lack of the Other as the Other is also the system of cultural and linguistic assumptions in which the subject is identified (Botting MM 200). The Creature utters, at his first discovery of language, thus:

the youth began, not to play, but to utter sounds that were monotonous, and neither resembling the harmony of the old mans instrument nor the songs of the birds: I since found that he read aloud, but at that time I knew nothing of the science of words or letters. (F 85) The Creature realizes that the system of words is totally foreign to him. Still, he appreciates that this system enables communication: I found that these people possessed a method of communicating their experience and feelings to one another by articulate sounds (F 86). From that moment, the Creature wishes to be a part of this communication. This was indeed a godlike science, and I ardently desired to become acquainted with it (F 86-87), claims the Creature while mentioning the concept of the function of language. As he wants to introduce himself to the De Lacey family, the Creature has to explain his needs. With this aim, he attempts to enter into the symbolic order. Brooks puts it:

the Monster witnesses his outward identity as alien to his inner desire, estranged, determined by the view and the judgement of the Other, clinches the importance of language as the symbolic order which must compensate for nature. (595) After the Creature understands the significance of language in his integration into the symbolic order, he determines to be a master in language in order to end his alienation. So he claims:

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 although I eagerly longed to discover myself to the cottagers, I ought not to make the attempt until I had first become master of their language; which knowledge might enable me to make them overlook the deformity of my figure. (F 88) Thus, if the Creature learns the use of language, he can manage to enter into the symbolic order and gain an identity. The entrance of the Creature into the symbolic order signifies the appearance of his desire for recognition as he exclaims, I perceived that the words they spoke sometimes produced pleasure or pain, smiles or sadness, in the minds and countenances of the hearers (F 86). Brooks states that it is only in the symbolic order that he may realize his desire for recognition (593). However, at first the Creature is unable to appreciate the concept of the signified, and thus, he uncovers the larger problem of arbitrariness, or immotivation, of the linguistic sign (Brooks 594). Therefore he explains:

Their pronunciation was quick; and the words they uttered, not having any apparent connection with visible objects, I was unable to discover any clue by which I could unravel the mystery of their reference. (F 87) For the Creature, the understanding of language means the understanding of the systematic organization of signifiers (Brooks 594). The Creature knows that it is of utmost importance for him to be a member of this chain of existence (F 113). According to the Lacanian criticism of the novel, the alienation of the Creature is caused because of his exclusion from the chain of existence which is identified as the symbolic order. As language of the cottagers is the first language of the Creature, he can learn this language as his native language. For that reason he improves rapidly in language as he states: in two months I began to comprehend (F 91). Also, the Creature compares his improvement with the Arabian Safie, who is learning the same language as a second language. He claims: I improved more rapidly than the Arabian (F 92). The reason for his rapid improvement is that the acquisition of native language takes place in the 52

natural environment for the Creature. Besides, the Creature does not have a prior system of signifiers in his mind. On the other hand, the Arabian has already a constructed system of signifiers in her mind. So, it becomes relatively difficult for her to construct a new system of signifiers onto the previous one. This linguistic relation signifies the crisscrossing structure of language. Brooks describes the cultural background of Frankenstein:

with the arrival of Safie, we have a lesson in French being offered to a Persian, in the midst of a German-speaking region, the whole rendered for the reader in English. (595) The entrance of the Creature into the symbolic order is also sustained with his readings. Volneys Ruins of Empires, Miltons Paradise Lost, Plutarchs Lives and Goethes Sorrows of Werter are the books the Creature has read. From these books, he learns many things about politics, religion, history and human nature. Among these books, the Creature is most affected by Paradise Lost. He claims: Paradise Lost excited different and far deeper emotions Like Adam, I was apparently united by no link to any other being in existence (F 99-100). Moreover, when he discovers some papers in the pocket of the dress (F 100) which he has taken from Victors laboratory, the Creature notices his origin. At this point, his self awareness appears and he realizes his alienation: Was I then a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled, and whom all men disowned (F 93). With this awareness, the Creature has taken a step into the symbolic order. However, he pays the price for his entrance into the symbolic order. He confesses: sorrow only increased with knowledge (F 93). From that moment, nothing can remain as the same for the Creature. He realizes the lack within himself and his unconscious leads him to destroy his creator by murdering his friends and family members. Still, The monster flees from Frankenstein, yet desiring never to escape completely, intent that Frankenstein maintains his pursuit, for now pursuit alone represents the Monsters last tenuous link to the signifying chain. (Brooks 599) 53

In short, for the Creature, language symbolizes direct access to the formation of an identity. With language, the Creature looks for a place in society, in the symbolic order. However, finally, the Monster learns that the world of sentiment he has come to love and admire is one he can never inhabit (Thornburg 100). As a result, the Creature manages neither to be a part of the symbolic order nor to remain in the imaginary order. Brooks describes his position as post-natural and pre-cultural (600).

3.2 DR.JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE In addition to being a novel uncovering the double personality of man, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is also a significant story depicting the results of imaginary alienation. As imaginary alienation is described as the inability to enter into the symbolic order in Lacanian terms, its results can be interpreted as an attempt to be accepted into the symbolic order. However, in the case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, this situation is a little bit different. Although both of them actually represent one physical body, it is impossible to think of them as separate from the other. Henry Jekyll has created Edward Hyde in order to bare his own unconscious desires freely in a different body. Saposnik states: Having recognized his duality, he [Dr. Jekyll] attempts to isolate his two selves into individual beings and allow each to go to his separate way (721). With this attempt, Henry Jekyll divides his ego between the conscious and the unconscious. As a result, Jekyll stays in the symbolic order while Hyde remains in the real order. Normally the Real is that which is concrete and already full the world of objects and experiences (Sullivan 131). If the subject experiences the fullness of objects, it means that the subject does not have a lack and thus, the unconscious. Normally, the subject consists of two contrastive sides, as the conscious and the unconscious. At this point, Hyde, himself, is the unconscious, representing only one part of the subject. Jekyll, on the other hand, corresponds to the conscious part of the subject. In other words, it would be misleading to assume Edward Hyde as a totally different character with separate conscious and unconscious side. Hyde signifies only the unconscious and uncivilized part of Jekyll. For that reason, 54

while uncovering the concept of alienation in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Henry Jekyll and Edward Hyde are discussed together as one character. Dr. Jekyll first experiences alienation when he was driven to reflect deeply and inveterately on that hard law of life (JH 69). What he means with the hard law of life is mans dual nature (JH 69). In order to uncover the dual nature of man, Jekyll risks his own life. With this aim, Jekyll creates an image out of himself by putting his other self in the centre of his desire. Thus, before creating Hyde, Jekyll prepares suitable conditions for his other part to live. In other words, Hyde is integrated into the symbolic order before his birth. For Lacan, as Julien states, even before his or her birth, the human being has been assimilated into the symbolic order (144). This act leads to the alienation of Jekyll because he sees his desire in the image of the other. Julien asserts thus:

Even before birth, the child is inscribed in a symbolic universe that determines its place. Indeed, the symbolic order subordinates the imaginary The imaginary alienation, in which the subject sees his or her own desire in the image of the other, is coupled with symbolic alienation, in which the subjects desire is recognized as desire of the Others desire. (50) Here, Jekyll experiences the imaginary alienation at first because his desire is symbolized by the advent of the other. However, after the alienation of the other part of Jekyll, his imaginary alienation is united with symbolic alienation. Jekyll explains: I was still cursed with my duality of purpose; and the lower side of me, so long indulged, so recently chained down, to growl for licence (JH 82). When Hyde gains power, he starts to form a new identity without Jekyll. When Hyde becomes dominant, Jekyll loses the conscious part of his identity by becoming alienated. Actually, it is Jekyll, who helps Hyde gain power by assimilating him into language. Although Hyde is born into the symbolic order with language, he is represented by the whole unconscious. This is the reason behind his monstrosity. Mr. Enfield describes him:

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There is something wrong with his appearance; something displeasing, something downright detestable. I never saw a man I so disliked and yet I scarce know why. He must be deformed somewhere; he gives a strong feeling of deformity, although I couldnt specify the point. (JH 15) Enfield stresses the fact that he cannot understand the point behind his monstrosity and deformity. This is because Enfield is a man living in the symbolic order with his two sides, the conscious and the unconscious. However, Hyde is the unconscious itself, which is only felt by the others intrinsically. Hyde signifies the repressed thoughts of the subject. Then, he creates the feeling of estrangement on the others. While explaining the Lacanian unconscious, Fink states:

The unconscious is not something one knows, but rather something that is known it is not something one actively, consciously grasps, but rather something which is passively registered, inscribed, or counted. And this unknown knowledge is locked into the connection between signifiers; it consists in this very connection. (23) In other words, the unconscious can only be inscribed. However, Hyde is the emergence of something that has always been hidden. Although Jekyll has learned the thorough and primitive duality of man (JH 70), he cannot resist the thought of the separation of these elements (JH 70). Therefore, his unconscious part is transpired and, being represented by two different others, Jekyll experiences alienation. If the subject is excluded from the symbolic order, he becomes alienated for Lacan. In this case, Jekyll gradually loses his subjectivity by being excluded from the symbolic order. On the other hand, Edward Hyde gains the subjectivity of Jekyll, and he penetrates into the symbolic order because he can speak a language, which enables him to possess speech perception. Thus, he can bring about the unconscious part within himself. As Nobus clarifies,

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Without speech, a creature can never attain selfconsciousness; speech constitutes the necessary condition for a human being to transcend consciousness and self-sentiment, and to develop selfconsciousness Speech also allows the human being to reveal him or herself as self. (112) Indeed, Edward Hyde has an identity from the beginning of his life. He has a house; he has Jekylls servants in his service, and most importantly, he has a name. Jekyll claims: I took and furnished that house in Soho I announced to my servants that Mr. Hyde was to have full liberty and power about my house in the square (JH 75). Jekyll calls his other part Hyde. The name of Hyde is quite symbolic from Lacanian point of view because, for Lacan, the signifier is the main element that constitutes the unconscious. The name Hyde has a resemblance with the word hide in English. The signifier becomes meaningful in the form it is used as Fink claims, the meaning of these letters [signifiers] cannot be defined without reference to the messages in which they appear (38). Thus, the name Hyde refers to the unconscious and repressed thoughts, which are always hidden and inaccessible, of the subject. In other words, The unconscious is just a continual movement and activity of signifiers, whose signifieds are often inaccessible to us because they are repressed (Eagleton 146). In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the handwriting signifies the formation of identity. Writing, as a written a language, is also reflected in the symbolic order. When Hyde signs the cheque with the name of Henry Jekyll, which was a name at least very well known and often printed (JH 13), he gives the first sign about his identity. Upon reading the notes requesting drugs, Utterson states: This is unquestionably the doctors hand (JH 52). Here, the handwriting of Jekyll proves his identity. Saposnik claims: the hand is disassociated from the body and operates as an independent metaphor that is at first the sign of the character, identity, and the possession of truth and certainty (71). Through the novel, the hands of Jekyll and Hyde are always mentioned. This repetition, for Lacan, symbolizes the recurrence of the ambiguous relationship affecting the positions of Jekyll and Hyde in the symbolic order. When Jekyll is no longer in control of his

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transformations, he looks at his hands in order to understand whether he is Jekyll or Hyde (Saposnik 71). So, it is a way to understand whether he is in the symbolic order or transferred into the imaginary order. When Jekyll writes a letter to justify his innocence, he uses Hydes handwriting. However, upon comparing the handwritings of Jekyll and Hyde, Mr. Guest, the handwriting analyst, states that theres rather a singular resemblance; the two hands are in many points identical; only differently sloped (JH 38). This resemblance proves that Jekyll and Hyde stand for the same character. Even if Jekyll remains in the imaginary order, and becomes alienated, he still maintains his existence in the symbolic order as Edward Hyde. Saposnik comments on the significance of the hand in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde:

Yet the hand is not always so steady; in the course of the story, the hand becomes the sign of erupting emotion. Writing for help from Dr. Lanyon, Dr. Jekyll says his hand trembles at the bare thought of the possibility that Dr. Lanyon will not listen to his appeal [JH 62] The hand cannot be maintained as a stable sign of distinction, certainty, and identity. Increasingly, it becomes a sign of collaboration, a place where identities merge. (71) Even though Jekyll loses his own identity and worries about his return, he knows that his handwriting is the only thing he possesses about his identity: one part remained to me: I could write my own hand (JH 83). His handwriting is the only link between him and the symbolic world. Another reason for the alienation of Jekyll lies in his wish to leave his legacy to Edward Hyde. This act of Jekyll shows that he has accepted to be the alienated part and the excluded identity. Besides, it proves that Jekyll does not see Hyde as part of himself but as a different character. He asserts the reason for his writing a will for Hyde: so that if anything befell me in the person of Dr. Jekyll, I could enter on that of Edward Hyde without pecuniary loss (JH 75). At this point, Jekyll submitted to his other part, and envisages being the alienated part. The will has a significant meaning for Jekyll. It represents his submission to

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Hyde as he would like to guarantee that Hyde will possess everything after his disappearance. In the Will, it is said that in case of Dr. Jekylls disappearance or unexplained absence for any period exceeding three calendar months Edward Hyde should step into Henry Jekylls shoes free from any burthen or obligation (JH 17). At this point, Jekyll is in a self delusion because he forgets that Hyde is his other self. He behaves as if Hyde were the Other in an inaccessible position. With this will, Jekyll attempts to imprison himself into the imaginary order and to put Hyde into the symbolic order. Saposnik states:

By seeing Hyde as another being rather that as part of himself, he [Jekyll] is forced to deny the most significant result of his experiment and indeed of his entire story, the inescapable conclusion that man must dwell in uncomfortable but necessary harmony with his multiple selves. (724) It is apparent that the alienation of Henry Jekyll threatens the formation of his natural identity. Thus, Jekyll confesses:

I had come to the fatal cross roads. Had I approached my discovery in a more noble spirit, had I risked the experiment while under the empire of generous or pious aspirations? (JH 74) Although Jekyll is aware that he should reside in coherence with his opposite self, he cannot manage to restrain from the perennial war among [his] members (JH 70). This proves that both sides of Dr. Jekyll are aware of their other parts. DAmato claims that When Jekyll is in control, he and Hyde alternately assume opposing identities, each being aware of the other (98). Even though they are aware of their existence, they also know that one part is going to disappear. Lacans concept of alienation, and its function, is noted by Fink in The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance:

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the sides are by no means even: in his or her confrontation with the Other, the subject immediately drops out of the picture. While alienation is the necessary first step in acceding to subjectivity, this step involves choosing ones own disappearance. (51) In other words, by seeing Hyde as a different character, Jekyll accepts his own disappearance. Thus, while Hyde takes the first step in the formation of his identity, Jekyll chooses to be the alienated part. Although at first Jekyll seems to be willing to be alienated, then he states his remorse when he loses control of his other part: I became, in my own person, a creature eaten up and emptied by fever, languidly weak both in body and mind, and solely occupied by one thought: the horror of my other self (JH 86). As Wright puts it in Modern Psychoanalytic Criticism, This alienated relationship of the self to its own image is what Lacan calls the domain of the Imaginary (156). The other part of Jekyll becomes so dominant and threatening for him that he is pictured by Jekyll in the following way:

The powers of Hyde seemed to have grown with the sickliness of Jekyll. And certainly the hate that now divided them was equal on each side. With Jekyll, it was a thing of vital instinct. He had now seen the full deformity of that creature The hatred of Hyde for Jekyll was of a different order. His terror of the gallows drove him continually to commit temporary suicide. (JH 86) It is apparent that Hyde becomes a threat for Jekyll day by day. As Jekyll becomes the alienated part, he cannot manage to interfere with Hyde in the symbolic order. Poole tells Utterson that he has witnessed a mask on the face of Dr. Jekyll: Sir, if that was my master, why had he a mask upon his face (JH 52). While he has the appearance of Hyde, Jekyll is seen to have put on a mask on his face by Poole. In other words, Hyde has been Jekylls mask; Poole, in effect, is suggesting that the mask itself is wearing yet another mask (Hubbard 33). Similarly, Hyde sees Jekyll as a mask. Botting claims that for Hyde, Jekyll 60

is no more than a respectable mask; a cavern in which a bandit hides from pursuit [JH 79] (Gothic 141). The alienation of the self leads to tragic outcomes for Jekyll. As Jekyll, the conscious and accessible side of the subject, is excluded from the symbolic order, Hyde tries to fill this gap in the symbolic order. He would like to continue his life as Hyde. Thus, he creates a separate unconscious within himself. As a result, while he is the representation of the unconscious part of the subject, he becomes the subject itself. For that reason, he does not need to be together with Jekyll anymore. However, as he is aware of the fact that he shares the same body with Jekyll, Hyde cannot destroy his other part because his love of life is wonderful (JH 87). Still, Jekyll states that Hyde does everything to harm him:

he loathed the despondency into which Jekyll was now fallen, and he resented the dislike with which he has himself regarded. Hence the ape-like tricks that he would play me, scrawling in my own hand blemishes on the pages of my books, burning the letters and destroying the portrait of my father, and indeed, had it not been for his fear of death, he would long ago have ruined himself in order to involve me in the ruin. (JH 87) Hyde tries to dissuade Jekyll from his attempt to gain control of his other part. At that time, Jekyll plans to terminate his own life with the intention of destroying his other part. He declares: this my true hour of death, and what is to follow concerns another than myself. Here I bring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end (JH 88). For Lacan, death drive signifies the impossible relationship between the alienated subject and the demand of the Other. Thus, according to Saposnik; the final suicide is thus fittingly a dual effort (724). In other words,

though the hand that administers the poison is Edward Hydes, it is Henry Jekyll who forces the action. Never before they have been so much one as when Hyde insures the realization of Jekylls death wish. (Saposnik 724) 61

In short, the suicide of Henry Jekyll brings an end to his alienation. Julien explains the state of Henry Jekyll with the intention of suicide: In destroying the other, I destroy myself. In the process, the imago as such is reduced to pieces, and I am returned to a period preceding the mirror stage (39). At this point, it becomes apparent that Dr. Jekyll sees Hyde as his converted other, as the image of the ego. By destroying Hyde, Jekyll attempts to punish himself. Consequently, although Hyde suffers from this suicide as the subject, Jekyll becomes content with the result as the alienated part.

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CHAPTER 4

SEXUALITY

Sexuality as a Lacanian concept displays the repressed desires of the individuals in relation to their familial complexes. According to this disclosure of the desires, the subject establishes the idea of the Other in its relations to other subjects. According to Lacan, sexuality plays a major role in the unconscious. So, sexuality occupies a significant role in the Lacanian unconscious. For Lacanian criticism, the repressed desires generate the unconscious, and as Jones states, repressed impulses are either sexual or hostile (cruel, aggressive) in nature, but most of the hostility is engendered as a result of sexual impulses being thwarted, so that one may say that repressed impulses are predominantly sexual (31-32). The key elements in discussing sexuality are the phallus and the unconscious. The effects of repressed sexuality can be seen in the dreams of the subjects, language they use or their daily behaviour. Before gaining its subjectivity, the child lives in an illusion where the mother is seen inseparable from the child. However, when the child becomes a subject by appreciating the rules of the symbolic order, he experiences a separation from the mother. With this separation the first sexuality of the child emerges. As the child experiences a lack, a separation from the mother, the name of the father comes to the scene. As the father stands for the main figure that can be a unity with the mother forever, the child wishes to imitate the father. Fink states, Mans essence (as wholly, universally defined by the phallic function) thus necessarily implies the existence of the father. Without the father, man would be nothing (110). As a result, the child wants to be the phallus in order to satisfy [the mothers] desire (Lacan crits 582). 63

In Lacanian sexuality, language is also important because the subjectivity of an individual is connected with language and the culture he lives in. Sexual differences arise with the use of language, with the symbolic order. For that reason, language, the name of the father and the phallus correspond to the transcendental signifier (Elliot 140). As a result, when the individual enters into the symbolic order, he starts to ascribe meaning to his/her sexuality with the signifiers. Elliot states the main point of Lacanian sexuality:

Lacans innovation is to develop a language-centred rereading of Freuds Oedipus complex- the crucial moment of physic individuation what Lacan does, in effect, is to redescribe the primary mother/infant bond as a realm of imaginary desire, while simultaneously shifting gears to the structuring of Oedipal desire, described at the level of the symbolic order. (141) When the child discovers his separation from the mother, he starts to use language in order to explain his demands. Thus, the separation from the mother signifies the entrance of the child into the symbolic order. At this point, the phallus represents the division between the imaginary and the symbolic order:

The key term in Lacans work which explains this division between imaginary unity and symbolic differentiation is the phallus. For Lacan the phallus is the marker of sexual difference par excellence. (Elliot 141) To speak of sexuality in Gothic fiction is quite an appropriate attempt because sexuality refers to the inexplicable behaviour of the characters. With the disclosure of the sexuality of the characters, their relations with the environment and the others, their ambitions and violence are uncovered. Botting explains the nature of Gothic fiction: Gothic fictions seemed to promote vice and violence, giving free reign to selfish ambitions and sexual desires beyond the prescriptions of law and familial duty (Gothic 4). In other words, Gothic fiction reveals the sexual desires of the characters. Thus, it manages to establish a relation between 64

literature and psychoanalytic literary criticism. As Gothic fiction is accepted as a blurring of boundaries between the masculine and the feminine, where monstrosity is associated with the copying, mirroring, or incursion of one gender form onto or into the other (Kavka 211), sexual identity plays a major role in portraying the sexuality of the characters and their gender roles. What Lacan means with sexual identity is the successive identifications with both parents that constitute subjectivity and being able to situate oneself on either side (Fink 116). In other words, the life of the characters is shaped according to their subjectivity. Hence, Lacanian sexuality is a very important element in the formation of human identity to be uncovered. By analyzing the concept of sexuality in Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, it will be put forth that the familial and sexual relations of the characters with others are prescribed by the effect of the phallus on them. Besides, the use of language as a representation of the symbolic order defines the sexual identities of the characters by displaying their desires.

4.1 FRANKENSTEIN Mary Shelleys Frankenstein is also notable for its incestuous familial and sexual relations. The subjectivity of the characters and their sexual identities are shaped according to these familial and sexual relations. As Botting claims in Making Monstrous:

The question of gender, of the way Frankenstein represents differences between male and female, masculine and feminine, and the significance of these representations, has come to be major issue for criticism of the novel. (100) The effect of masculinity over man and woman and the representations of male and female sexualities are presented in the novel. Among these representations, the elements of parenthood and monstrosity are discussed with a complex and disturbing formulation of relation (Johnson 57) in Frankenstein. Sexual identity, for Lacanian criticism, emerges when the child enters into the symbolic order. In

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other words, human sexuality first appears when the real turns into the symbolic. Althusser expresses the formation of sexuality according to Lacan:

That in the Oedipus complex the gendered child becomes a sexual human child by putting his imaginary phantasms to the test of the Symbolic and end up, if everything goes right, by becoming and accepting himself for what he is: a little boy among adults having full right to one day become like daddy, that is, a masculine human being having a wife. (56) In view of this aspect, the sexual identity of Victor Frankenstein can be discussed in terms of his relation with his mother. The development of the relation between Victors father, Alphonso, and mother, Caroline, encourages Victor to see Elizabeth as a sexual object for his desires. Victors mother, being an orphan, has been protected by his father. He [Alphonso] came like a protecting spirit to the poor girl [Caroline] and placed her under the protection of a relation (F 27), tells Victor about the affection that united them (F 26). The first relation between Elizabeth and Victor is also established in a similar way. At this point, the role of Victors mother cannot be underestimated because it is the mother who finds Elizabeth for his Victor as a substitution. While presenting Elizabeth to his son, Caroline offers Elizabeth to Victor as a gift of his own. Victor explains the arrival of Elizabeth and its first impact on him:

On the evening previous to her being brought to my home, my mother had said playfully I have a pretty present for my Victor tomorrow he shall have it. And when she presented Elizabeth to me as her promised gift, I, with childish seriousness, interpreted her words literally, and looked upon Elizabeth as mine mine to protect, love, and cherish. (F 29) From the moment of the arrival of Elizabeth, Victor sees her as his own property and substitutes her for his mother. This first substitution before the death of Caroline signifies the attempt of Victor and proves his sexuality in the eyes of his 66

mother. As a grown up man, Victor has already constructed his sexuality with his separation from the mother. As Elliot states, The moment of separation from the imaginary plenitude is experienced as a loss, the loss of connection with the imaginary, archaic mother (142). According to Lacanian criticism, the child sees the phallus as the desire of the mother, and the desire of the child is to be the exclusive desire of the mother (Elliot 141). That is why masculinity is constructed around the sign of the phallus (Elliot 142). Before his mothers death, Victor seems to have accepted Elizabeth as his more than sister (F 29). At this point, the beginning of the incestuous familial relations appears. Although Victor states that we called each other familiarly by the name of cousin (F 29), his unconscious intention about Elizabeth is distinguished with his words:

No word, no expression could body forth the kind of relation in which she stood to me my more than sister, since till death she was to be mine only. (F 29) From his words, it is apparent that Elizabeth has been a sexual figure for Victor Frankenstein from the beginning. At this point, the language of the characters to describe their feelings for each other symbolizes their incestuous relationship. Victor uses the name of Elizabeth as a sexual signifier. According to Lacanian criticism, if the cousin of Victor had been a male figure, then Victor would have seen him as a rival for parental attention, especially for the attention of the mother. However, as Elizabeth is a female character, Victor knows that she signifies his repressed sexual desires for his mother. When Victor Frankenstein learns that his mother, Caroline, has died, he uses affectionate language to depict his sorrow: She died calmly; and her countenance expressed affection even in death (F 35). His mothers death causes to expand his lack. As a result of this expansion, Victor intends to bestow animation upon lifeless matter (F 41) in order to reanimate his dead mother. Miller claims that the generation of the monster is an act tinged with sexuality a sexuality that has its roots in Frankensteins desire to possess his mother

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(62). The entrance of Victor into a solitary chamber, or rather cell, at the top of the house, and separates from all the other apartments (F 43) in order to work on his filthy creation (F 43) is described as Victors attempt to go on his studies in a womblike place (Miller 62). According to Lacanian criticism, the language Victor uses to describe the place he has stayed during his work shows that he recognizes his aim as a signifier for his longing for the mother. As Veeder puts forth,

The primary object of Frankensteins affection is presumed to be his mother, Caroline, and the primary object of his scientific labours is presumed to be the discovery of a principle of life which would bring her back from the dead. (108) For Lacan, this attempt symbolizes the hopelessness of Victor about his sexuality in the future because the death of the mother destroys the possibility of his living phantasms. As Sarup states, The unbearable dimension of possible human experience is not the experience of ones own death but the experience of the death of another. In Lacans view, a gap, a hole results from this loss (167). As the living phantasms of Victor are destroyed with his mothers death, he has to find a substitution for his mother in order to maintain his sexuality. Accordingly, Elizabeth Lavenza becomes the new signifier for the Other. Elizabeth signifies the mother whom Victor has just lost. Fink claims that Sexual difference stems from men and womens divergent relations to the signifier (118). Indeed, it is again the mother, who establishes the relation of the signifier for Victor. She wishes Elizabeth to be a substitution for her. On her deathbed, Caroline expresses his wish for the marriage of Elizabeth and Victor:

My children my firmest hopes of future happiness were placed on the prospect of your union. This expectation will now be the consolation of your father. Elizabeth, my love, you must supply my place to my younger children. (F 34)

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It is apparent from her words that, Caroline has already decided that Elizabeth should be her substitution for his Victor. As a result, Elizabeth becomes the surrogate mother (Marshall 155). However, Elizabeth does not consider herself as a figure for a passionate lover for Victor. Rather, she behaves like a mother figure. For instance, she calls William and Ernest, the brothers of Victor, our children (F 51) in her letter to Victor. Her dominant wish is not to be a wife for Victor but to be a mother figure for him. Otherwise, she cannot ask Victor as Do you not love another (F 143) when she suggests in a letter to Victor about his reluctance to get married. There is no passion in the words of Elizabeth. She expresses that the most important thing is not their union but the happiness of Victor. That is, the sexual identities of women in Frankenstein remain firmly in the novel; but, as Botting claims, the comfort and security of their family positions does not remain intact during the course of the novel (MM 100). Here, the role of the symbolic order and language is very important. For Lacanian criticism, sexual identities of the subjects are predetermined by the symbolic world they are supposed to live in. According to this symbolic world, the sexuality issue is regarded as a fixed concept. For instance, in a traditional patriarchal symbolic world, women feed their children and care for their husbands while men work to make money for the family and represent the symbol of power. In Frankenstein, there is the same situation about the roles of man and woman. Botting claims that in Frankenstein women are destroyed by their own obedience to their prescribed roles: Caroline dies as a result of nursing Elizabeths fever and the latter is murdered on her wedding night (MM 101). Although sexual identities are determined in advance before the birth of subjects, their repressed desires remain in the imaginary order. While living in the symbolic order by obeying their family roles, the subjects acquire their real sexualities in the imaginary order. The father figure, for instance, is an important element to be discussed in the imaginary order for displaying the sexuality of Victor. After Victor constructs his sexuality, the father as the possessor of the phallus appears in his symbolic order. The existence of the father constitutes the repressed unconscious of Victor. As a result, he sees his father as a rival for his 69

unification with the mother. Victor feels to be excluded from the life which he longs to have. As Veeder claims, The son is already feeling himself driven from home and mother by his rival the father (120). This rivalry between Victor and his father leads Victor to discover the elixir of life (F 32). In other words, his father is the main figure that shapes Victors destiny. Moreover, Victor is jealous of his father because of his intimation with the mother. While describing the portrait of his mother, Victor displays his envy: I gazed on the picture of my mother painted at my fathers desire (F 61). When he is sent to the university of Ingolstadt, Victor blames his father for his departure:

When I had attained the age of seventeen, my parents resolved that I should become a student at the university of Ingolstadt. I had hitherto attended the schools of Geneva; but my father thought it necessary, for the completion of my education. My departure was therefore fixed at an early date. (F 34) By putting the responsibility for his loss on the father, Victor makes his father an ambiguous figure, subject to a lack and split into a good and bad father, producing the object that cannot fit into the paternal law (Dolar 15). Accordingly, Victor sees his father as the cause of his loss. As Elliot states, Sexual subjectivity and loss are inextricably linked for Lacan (142). When Victor realizes that he has lost his mother, he generates his sexual identity upon this loss. In Lacanian criticism, the pain of this loss is castration depression and profound sense of emptiness (Elliot 142). Therefore, Victor has always taken his decisions in his life in an exact opposite way his father wishes. For instance, Victor becomes so obsessed with his attempt to discover the elixir of life that he confesses: My application gained strength as I proceeded, and soon became so ardent and eager that the stars of ten disappeared in the light of morning whilst I was yet engaged in my laboratory (F 40). By doing the opposite of his fathers advice, he devotes himself to the works of alchemists. At this point, the most significant thing is that while Victor sees his father as a rival, he also imitates his father. That is why Victor Frankenstein is a heterosexual man.

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Elliot explains the importance of the culture in the formation of sexual identity: sexual difference and gender identity are given meaning with reference to the patriarchal socio-sexual order (23). Another occasion that uncovers Victor Frankensteins sexuality is his dream, which he has had after running away from his Creature in repugnance. According to this incestuous dream, Victor Frankensteins strongest erotic desires are not so much for his putative lover as for his lost mother (Mellor 74).

I slept, indeed, but I was disturbed by the wildest dreams. I thought I saw Elizabeth, in the bloom of health, walking in the streets of Ingolstadt. Delighted and surprised, I embraced her; but as I imprinted the first kiss on her lips, they became livid with the hue of death; her features appeared to change, and I thought that I held the corpse of my dead mother in my arms; a shroud enveloped her form, and I saw the graveworms crawling in the folds of the flannel. (F 46) Victors dream signifies a sexual act because in his dream, his lover turns into his mother when Victor tires to kiss her on the lips. Elizabeth is a signifier for the incarnation of his mother. It is Victor, who ascribes this meaning to Elizabeth. Unconsciously, Victor desires to possess his mother by animating the lifeless matter. In his imaginary order, Victor still looks for his dead mother because it is only the mother that can fill his gap. Bruce Fink claims that every man, despite castration continues to have incestuous dreams in which he grants himself the privileges of the imagined pleasure-finding father (111). That is, the representation of the mother as a sexual figure in Victors dream proves that the mother is the object of love in Victors unconscious. As a result, again, the unconscious of Victor amounts to the same thing, to have the mother. In other words, the dream shows that incestuous wishes live on perpetually in the unconscious. Another interpretation of the incestuous dream of Victor relies on his violating the norm of human reproduction that requires a womans body (Smith 43). In Lacanian terms, in his attempt to create new species, Victor substitutes

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himself for the mother figure. In other words, Victor wishes to play the role of a mother figure by giving birth to his creature. Sherwin claims that there is a treacherous wishing-dreading circuit that links Elizabeth and the Creature to the mother, the central term of the triad (34). Accordingly, Victors attempt to to create a being can be seen as a tale of catastrophic male womb envy (Johnson 63). However, as he wishes to accomplish his desire on his own, without a female assistant, Victor collects the parts of his creature from charnel houses and graves as he confesses: I collected bones from charnel-houses with profane fingers (F 43). Then, as Mary Poovey states, the monster is made, not born, and, as the product of the unnatural coupling of nature and the imagination (90). However, here, the imagination stems from Victors repressed desires. By attempting to circumvent the female fertility violating the normal relations of family, Victor tries to escape from his maternal sein (in French both breast and womb) that dominates (Luepnitz 223) his life. For Lacan, the dreamy world of the mother is suppressed by the hard masculine world of language in reporting of a dream (DAmato 96). That is, while Victor is talking about his dream, he also wishes to dominate the world of the mother with his masculine language. For instance, he emphasises his masculine language while he is describing his work of creation: My eye-balls were starting from their sockets in attending to the details of my employment (F 43). Here, eye-balls, sockets and my employment have sexual undertones by referring to male, female sexual organs and sexual intercourse. Being under the effect of the symbolic order of language, Victor chooses the signifiers of his language in accordance with his unconscious desires. The sexuality of the Creature, on the other hand, develops in a different way from Victors sexuality. At first, the Creature lives in the imaginary order without language and without any desires. He first discovers language in a womblike hovel, as if it could be born again into culture by aping the motions of the family [the DeLacey] it spies on (Poovey 90). As the Creature asserts, I would remain quietly in my hovel, watching, and endeavouring to discover the motives which influenced their actions (F 85). Similarly, the Creature learns about familial relations and feelings such as kindness and affection (F 84) in 72

his hovel with the DeLacey family. With his entrance into the symbolic order of language, he starts to discover his sexuality gradually. At first, he discovers the family concept and the roles of the family members in a patriarchal society:

the young man returned, bearing on his shoulders a load of wood. The girl met him at the door, helped to relieve him of his burden, and, taking some of the fuel into the cottage, placed it on the fire She went into the garden for some roots and plants, which she placed in water, and then upon the fire. She afterward continued her work, whilst the young man went into the garden, and appeared busily employed in digging and pulling up roots. (F 84) At this point, the Creature learns the rules of the symbolic order of the society by discovering the roles of man and woman in a family. With this discovery, the Creature realizes that he has a lack of familial identity. Without gaining this identity, it is impossible for the Creature to live in the symbolic order. Besides, familial identity represents the sexuality of the Creature. As sexuality is shaped according to the symbolic order of language in a society, family means sexuality for the Creature. After the Creature realizes that he has the lack of sexual identity, he demands a mate from his creator, Victor Frankenstein. Without a mate, the Creature has to live with his lack without any substitution, without the Other. Being aware of this fact, he depicts his demand for love indirectly to Victor by comparing himself with Satan from Paradise Lost: Satan had his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and abhorred (F 100). He curses his creator for leaving him to eternal loneliness. His demand for love becomes dominant when he is lingering in the symbolic order. The more he enters into the symbolic order and appreciates the possessions of a civilized man, the more he becomes vicious about his demands. To give an example, after murdering William, the Creature realizes something glittering on his breast a portrait of a most lovely woman (F 110). While he is looking at the portrait of Caroline Beaufort Frankenstein, he describes his feelings with a sexual language:

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it softened and attracted me. For a few moments I gazed with delight on her dark eyes, fringed by deep lashes, and her lovely lips (F 110). However, the moment he remembers his abhorrence and loneliness, he curses his destiny by expressing his deprivation:

I remembered that I was for ever deprived of the delights that such beautiful creatures could bestow; and that she whose resemblance I contemplated would, in regarding me, have changed that air of divine benignity to one expressive of disgust and affright. (F 110) The Creature makes one final attempt to enter into the symbolic order in order to form his sexual identity. He asks for a female companion:

You must create a female for me, with whom I can live in the interchange of those sympathies necessary for my being. This you alone can do; and I demand it of you as a right which you must not refuse to concede. (F 111) It is significant that the Creature does not demand a male friend. He especially makes it clear that what he needs is a female creature. In Lacanian view, this preference represents his unconscious desire to create a mother-son relationship because Frankensteins creature is motherless, [and] has been abandoned by his father (Miller 68). He knows that he will never be accepted by his creator as the son. Thus, he wishes to have a mother figure. Without a female friend, the Creature knows that it is impossible to form his sexual identity. While his demand for a mate is a conscious act, his desire to have a female friend is the representation of the unconscious. Similarly, Victor is aware of the fact that the female friend of the Creature signifies the mother figure. This is the main reason for Victors destroying the female creature as Homans states: Frankenstein destroys the female demon he is in the process of creating, thus destroying another potential mother (137). Victor anticipates the potential dangers of the female creature when united with the Creature: Even if they were 74

to leave Europe, and inhabit the deserts of the new world, yet one of the first results of those sympathies for which the daemon thirsted would be children (F 127). Accordingly, the female creature represents a mother figure for both the Creature and Victor. Here, the sexual preference of the Creature for his mate also shows that he has a heterosexual identity. The reason for his heterosexuality is that he first discovers the man-woman relationship in the DeLacey family in a traditional context. Similarly, the relations between Victor-Elizabeth and Felix-Safie are of that kind. So, the symbolic order that the Creature endeavours to be included into maintains heterosexual characteristics. The Creature concludes that this heterosexuality is apparent from their language. For instance; Felix calls Safie as his sweet Arabian (F 90). Besides, the Creature prefers his female friend to be as hideous as himself. This preference is also very important in discussing the formation of the Creatures sexuality. It proves that the Creature has developed self-consciousness. In order to accept him with his deformity, the Creature knows that, the female creature must be hideous as well. While expressing his wishes to Victor, the Creature asserts:

What I ask of you is reasonable and moderate; I demand a creature of another sex, but as hideous as myself; the gratification is small, but it is all that I can receive, and it shall content me. (F 112) The Creature knows that, with a female companion, he can enter into the symbolic order. At least, he can use language to communicate as there will be someone listening to him. He confesses:

the love of another will destroy the cause of my crimes and my virtues will necessarily arise when I live in communion with an equal. I shall feel the affections of a sensitive being, and become linked to the chain of existence and events. (F 113)

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The chain of existence is the symbolic order that the Creature would like to be a part of. If the Creature manages to find a substitute Other for his desires, he promises to live in peace with other humans. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous (F 78), the Creature assures Victor. However, Victor Frankenstein destroys the final chance of the Creature to be a member of the symbolic order of language. After this disappointment, the Creature becomes forever alienated from the symbolic order. In other words, Victor breaks the mother-son unity by destroying the female creature, and by creating an irreplaceable lack in the Creature. Fink claims: the father can serve a very specific function: that of annulling the mother-child unity, creating an essential gap or lack between mother and child (55). Accordingly Victor represents the father figure that destroys the unity of the child with the mother. As a result, the Creature vows to Victor, I shall be with you on your wedding night (F 129). Margaret Homans comments on the revengeful vow of the Creature from Victors point of view: The demons promise to be present at the wedding night suggests that there is something monstrous about Frankensteins sexuality (137). As a result, the Creature defies Victor and threatens:

Slave Remember that I have power; you believe yourself miserable, but I can make you so wretched that the light of day will be hateful to you. You are my creator, but I am your master; - obey! (F 128) After that, the Creature loses all his hopes about forming his sexual identity. Besides, he understands that there is no chance for him any more to enter into the symbolic order. In other words, he is condemned to live in misery forever. He cries: Shall each man find a wife for his bosom, and each beast have his mate, and I be alone (F 128). As the Creatures direct access to the satisfying contact with his mother is hindered, he becomes a real monster from then on.

4.2 DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE Stevensons depiction of the duality of mans nature as good and evil also signifies the splitting of the subject between the conscious and the unconscious 76

for Lacanian criticism. According to this split, both Henry Jekyll and Edward Hyde are accepted as the representation of one person. Hence, it is inevitable that they are influenced by each other while forming their sexual identities. However, as Hyde represents the unconscious side of the subject, he has a repressed sexual identity. This repression is the repression of Dr. Jekyll, also because he is the conscious part of the subject. That is, while the sexuality of Hyde persists in the imaginary order and is repressed as a feminine identity, the sexuality of Jekyll survives in the symbolic order of the masculine language. As Doane and Hodges put forth, Stevensons story, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and .Mr. Hyde, is about a collaboration between the masculine and the feminine that subverts the identity of each (63). Accordingly, there is the instability of gender roles in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. This instability is something Stevenson establishes on purpose. He downplays the signification of sexuality in his story. In a letter he has written to Paul Bocock, Stevenson explains what he means by sexuality in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde:

Hyde was the younger of the two. He was not good looking however great gods! a mere voluptuary. There is no harm in a voluptuary; and none, with my hand on my heart and in the sight of God, none no harm whatever in what prurient fools call immortality. The harm was in Jekyll, because he was a hypocrite not because he was fond of women; he says so himself; but people are so filled full of folly and inverted lust, that they can think of nothing, but sexuality. The hypocrite let out the beast Hyde. (Maixner 231) Stevenson makes it clear that it is Jekyll, who has double sexuality. Although he seems masculine and heterosexual in the symbolic order of language, Henry Jekyll has homosexual tendencies in his unconscious, which is shown with the emergence of Mr. Hyde. That is why Hyde is described as a womanlike character. Jekyll depicts the appearance of Hyde: so much smaller, slighter, and younger than Henry Jekyll (JH 73). He uses feminine language for the description of Hyde. The signifiers he chooses to portray his other part prove that in the 77

symbolic order, as a member of a respectable society, he is supposed to be interested in women sexually. However, it also shows that by creating an effeminate character, Jekyll can enounce his homosexuality. Although Hyde is feminine in appearance, younger, lighter, happier in body (JH 72), he is as strong as a man. Perhaps, Lanyons description of Hyde best illustrates his sexual identity: combination of great muscular activity and great apparent debility of constitution (JH 65). His masculine strength symbolizes the homosexuality of Jekyll. At this point, Hyde represents the character that Jekyll has sexually interested in. Still, his femininity in the body of a beast-like man is seen as the deformity of Hyde as Enfield comments:

He must be deformed somewhere; he gives a strong feeling of deformity, although I couldnt specify the point. (JH 15) Henry Jekyll survives as a masculine and so called heterosexual man in the symbolic order. However, in his unconscious, Jekyll has a homosexual and feminine identity. Doane and Hodges claim that Hyde represents precisely this transformative power that is at once a brutal, violent force, yet feminine at the same time (65). For Lacan, the gender positions of the subject as masculine and feminine are determined within the terms of sexual difference, the symbolic order as well as language (Elliot 142). At this point, it is apparent that Jekyll experiences sexual difference in his unconscious because the part played in the unconscious by sexual impulses is very much more extensive than the part they play in consciousness (Jones 42). Besides, in the symbolic order he lives, there is little place for women. Most of them are alienated from the symbolic order. Saposnik claims that Victorias age was male-centred (719). That is why Jekyll cannot dare to publicize his femininity. Lastly, Victorian society uses quite contemptuous language for femininity such as small or lighter. As language is under the effect of the symbolic order, Jekyll has to live his femininity in the guise of Hyde. Wright states:

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Lacan sees the use of the signifier as always leading to an awareness of lack: the subject becomes aware of his alienation from what was originally represented. (MLT 162-163) In other words, for Jekyll, the symbolic order creates a conflict over his sexuality. When he becomes aware of this conflict, he wishes to form his ideal sexuality with Hydes personality. In his article, The Signification of the Phallus, Lacan states that male homosexuality, in accordance with the phallic mark that constitutes desire, is constituted along the axis of desire (crits 583). At this point, the important thing is the mothers establishing a lack for the child. If the child experiences the love of the father for the mother, he perceives the phallus as a signifier for the love of the mother. As a result, he tries to be like his father in his sexual tendencies. In other words, the phallus is the primary element that constructs masculinity (Elliot 142). Critics have long claimed that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a male story (63), state Doane and Hodges. Besides, DAmato asserts that Stevensons novella is also devoid of mothers and virtually ignores the female gender (94-95). As the mother is a figure, who is creating rivalry between father and son, the absence of the mother creates admiration for the father. In the novel, Jekyll always talks about his memories with his father, not those of his mother. To give an example, after Hyde murders Sir Danvers and turns into Jekyll in the house in Soho, Jekyll states:

The veil of self-indulgence was rent from head to foot, I saw my life as a whole: I followed it up from the days of childhood, when I had walked with my fathers hand. (JH 81) Besides, when Hyde destroys Jekylls possessions, Jekyll expresses his sadness by emphasising the importance of the letters and the portrait of my father (JH 87). Jekylls language depicts that his father is the most important family member in his life. Thus, the father substitutes for the Other in Jekylls life, and Jekyll establishes his unity with his father, who is always with him in his 79

memories. Besides, as the father is the object of his love, it is also the object of his sexual desire. In the situation of Jekylls sexuality, the instability of his sexual identity stems from his sexual desires. As Elliot explains:

Yet Lacans description of how one is constructed as masculine or feminine seeks also to destabilize dominant images of sexuality According to Lacan, though sexuality is articulated around the phallus, human subjects remain fundamentally split at the core. Desire lurks beneath the very signifiers that structure sexuality. Gender fixity is thus always open to displacement. (142) Jekyll confesses that being in the body of Hyde is incredibly sweet (JH 72). This pleasure is the evidence of his liberated sexuality, which results from the emergence of Hyde. As a result of this pleasure, Dr. Jekyll discovers a new freshness and joy in his life (Miyoshi 473). At first, it is only Jekyll, who gets pleasure in being Hyde. Later, however, Hyde discovers the same sexual pleasure of his own being. While Lanyon is trying to figure out the relation between his friend, Henry Jekyll and Edward Hyde, it is apparent that Hyde gets sexual pleasure by seducing Lanyon. After he completes the mixture and prepares to drink the potent drink, he turns to Lanyon and asks:

Will you be wise? Will you be guided? Will you suffer me to take this glass in my hand, and to go forth from your house without further parley? Or has the greed of curiosity too much command of you? Think before you answer, for it shall be done as you decide. As you decide, you shall be left you were before, and neither richer nor wiser, unless the sense of service rendered to a man in mortal distress may be counted as a kind of riches of the soul. Or, if you shall so prefer to choose, a new province of knowledge and new avenues to fame and power shall be laid open to you, here, in this room, upon the instant; and your sight shall be blasted by a prodigy to stagger the unbelief of Satan. (JH 67)

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With the acceptance of Lanyon to see what happens, DAmato claims that Hyde/Jekyll reveals his hidden, sadistic revenge motive (100). For DAmato, both sex and aggression are linked with each other in Hydes seduction of Lanyon. As Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is regarded as a novel devoid of heterosexual relationships (DAmato 102), the seduction of Lanyon signifies a homosexual relationship. So, the floating sexual identity of Jekyll damages his environment, also. After Lanyon has learned the truth and witnessed the rebirth of Henry Jekyll, he exclaims: I must die (JH 68). Consequently, it is obvious that femininity and masculinity can remain together in every subject. However, the mother figure plays a major role in the formation of dominant sexuality. As Jekyll has the lack of a mother figure, which constructs phallus identification for the child, he never accepts his father as a rival. On the contrary, he wishes to have the father figure sexually. That is why he becomes a homosexual man. However, Jekyll cannot disclose that he has homosexual tendencies because he is a member of a highly educated patriarchal society. Thus, Hyde represents his repressed sexuality in his unconscious.

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CHAPTER 5

CONCLUSION

This study has attempted to examine how the concepts of Lacanian desire, alienation and sexuality illustrate the formation of human character by discussing the Gothic novels of Mary Shelleys Frankenstein and Robert Louis Stevensons The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. While discussing these Gothic novels in relation to Lacanian concepts of desire, alienation and sexuality, the main elements of Lacanian psychoanalysis have been used to introduce a detailed analysis. Among these elements, language, the imaginary, symbolic and the real orders, the unconscious, the concept of the Other and repression have been included. According to Lacanian literary criticism, the character of a literary work is accepted as the speaking subject. Therefore, while analysing the characters of the mentioned works, language has played a major role. The reason why Lacanian literary criticism is suitable to discuss Gothic fiction is that the behavioural anomalies of the Gothic characters are considered to be the result of their repressed feelings in psychoanalytic criticism. After giving an overview of psychoanalytic literary criticism by focusing on the main differences between Freud and Lacan and analyzing the major elements of Lacanian criticism, the concepts of desire, alienation and sexuality have been discussed separately in three chapters. In the second chapter, the thesis has shown that the concept of desire is closely interrelated with the languages and the unconscious of the subjects. Then, Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde have been analyzed in turn. It was seen that in both Gothic novels the characters have formed their personalities and taken the most important decisions in their lives under the effect of their 82

unconscious desires. In other words, the desires of the characters stemmed from their unconscious conducting their lives. In Frankenstein, it has been established that the main character, Victor Frankenstein, is enslaved by his desires. First of all, he tries to discover the physical secrets of the world as a result of his repressed rivalry with his father. He claims that if his father had shown a little interest on what he is reading, the works of Agrippa, he would have continued his works in modern sciences. However, the ignorance of his father has changed his destiny irreversibly. In this analysis, the important thing is the explanation of his motive for his rivalry with his father. At this point, the Lacanian concept of the Other steps in. As the father symbolizes power in the family as he possesses the mother, Victor challenges his father in order to prove his supremacy. As his desires are impossible to fulfil, Victor becomes a captive. As a result, his first altruistic aim to save human life turns into an egoistic desire to be accredited by the others in the symbolic order. Another motive for Victors desire is the death of his mother. With this death his imaginary sense of unity is broken. So, Victor aims to reanimate life in order to incarnate his mother by creating an alter ego. As a result, Victor develops a split personality. The language Victor uses includes the subject I which means that he is both the speaking and the splitting subject. The role of nature in the desire of Victor is also noteworthy because the nature is depicted as a female figure in the novel. As the mother symbolizes repression for Victor, he always finds substitute objects for his desires. His father and nature are among these objects. As for the desires of the Creature, it has been shown that without a mother and father figure, the Creature does not have an object for his desires at first. Indeed, he does not have desires at first as he is out of the symbolic order. After he mirrors himself and sees his deformity, he feels hatred for Victor. Accordingly, Victor becomes the object of the Creatures desire for recognition. After he discovers language, his desire for recognition becomes ardent. However, as the Creature cannot find a stable object for his desire, he persists in living in the imaginary order without a given object.

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In Dr. Jekyll and .Mr. Hyde, it has been seen that the first aim of Jekyll to create Hyde is quite altruistic. He would like to bring an end to the unbearable side of man. The object of his desire, for his aim to separate two sides of man, comes from the repressed feelings he has experienced in his childhood. As Jekyll has grown up in a respectable family, he claims that his impatient gaiety of disposition has always been hindered. In order to live out his repressed desires that come from his childhood, Jekyll brings Hyde into being. The character of Hyde represents the unconscious part of the subject while Jekyll signifies the conscious part. Jekyll and Hyde, together, form the subject. However, when Hyde gains the power over Jekyll, he desires to be the subject alone with separate conscious and unconscious in the symbolic order. At first Jekyll has declared Hyde as the subject I because he has been aware that Hyde is himself. However, later, he calls Hyde he showing his complete separation from his other part. In the third chapter, it has been claimed that living in the imaginary order in deception results with the state of imaginary alienation. However, the subject can also experience symbolic alienation, which appears as a result of a lack. In this chapter, it has been claimed that both the imaginary and the symbolic orders are related with language. In Frankenstein, it has been shown that the inability of the Creature to form completeness with Victor causes his imaginary alienation. Without experiencing fullness, the Creature is rejected by its only parent. As a result, he is imprisoned into the imaginary order. At this point, there is not any language for the Creature. He does not even know how to talk. Thus, in the mirror stage his imaginary alienation shows up. Later, he blames Victor for his alienation, and reminds him of his duties towards his child. Yet, Victor again rejects him. The Creature tries to take care of himself. Although he does not have a name, a language, and an identity, he makes a great effort to be accepted by others. However, after he learns language, his unconscious brings forth new desires for him. In order to escape from the state of alienation and enter into the symbolic order to prove his existence to his creator, the Creature murders people, who are close to Victor. With these murders, he achieves his goal by gaining the 84

hatred of his creator. In summing up the case of the Creature, this thesis has established the effect that his state of alienation causes his murderous acts, and thus gives form to his social identity. In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the alienation of the subject stems from its splitting personality. Although Hyde represents only the unconscious part of the subject, he has already been integrated into the symbolic order by Jekyll. As Hyde is not excluded from the symbolic order, Jekyll experiences imaginary alienation. However, Hyde also represents Jekylls primitive side. So, his living in the symbolic order of language causes his symbolic alienation. As Jekyll and Hyde have the same body, it has been concluded that Jekyll experiences both imaginary and symbolic alienation. This is the reason for his behavioural abnormality. While Hyde is integrated into the symbolic order, Jekyll becomes alienated gradually. The first indication of his alienation is his wish to leave his legacy to Hyde. This shows that Jekyll accepts Hyde as a different character. As a result, when his unconscious gains power, Jekyll loses his subjectivity. In the case of Jekyll and Hyde, the state of alienation occurs as a result of the discordance between the conscious and the unconscious. Therefore, this alienation results in the death of the real subject. In the fourth chapter, the concept of sexuality and its effects on the relations of the characters have been discussed. In this chapter, it has been put forth that the reason for the catastrophic sexuality of the characters grows out of their relationships with their mothers. In Frankenstein, the sexuality of Victor is formed in accordance with his sexual and familial relations, especially parenthood and monstrosity. At first Elizabeth was a sexual figure to prove his manhood and heterosexuality. However, with the death of his mother, Victors existing fantasy is destroyed. As a result, Elizabeth becomes a mother figure for Victor. She becomes the signifier of the Other. Besides, in the context of the symbolic order of the society, Elizabeth sees herself not as a lover but as a mother of Victor. So, their union represents incestuous implications. The incestuous dream of Victor also proves that he keeps his wishes in the unconscious. In the dream, Victor establishes a connection between his Elizabeth, 85

his Creature and his mother. Being the central figure, the mother symbolizes Victors sexuality. He talks about his mother affectionately. The analysis has revealed that Victor also wishes to dominate the world of the mother with his masculinity. This is the reason for his creating a new being. He would like to escape from the maternal repression that dominates his life. It has been claimed that the unconscious of Victor affects his sexuality in such a way that he establishes an incestuous sexual identity. The sexuality of the Creature, on the other hand, is not shaped until he discovers his first sexual tendency in the cottage of the DeLacey family. Here, he witnesses the woman-man relations in a familial and sexual environment. Accordingly, he develops a heterosexual identity. However, as he is aware of his physical deformity, he demands a female creature as hideous as himself. The reason for his demand of a female friend is that the Creature wishes to substitute this female creature for the mother figure. It has been shown that, with this substitution, the Creature believes he can enter into the symbolic order. As a result, it has been proved that the Creature becomes a real monster only after he is excluded from the symbolic order. Besides, Victors destruction of the female creature destroys the last link between the Creature and the symbolic world. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde suggests an instable sexuality of the characters. As Jekyll and Hyde are the parts of one subject, their sexualities affect each other. While Hyde represents Jekylls repressed sexuality in his unconscious, Jekyll lives out his sexuality in the symbolic order. In the analysis, it has been shown that Jekyll has repressed homosexual tendencies. However, he cannot publicize his homosexuality in the symbolic order of masculine language. In the analysis, it has also been claimed that femininity and masculinity normally persist in every subject. It is the symbolic order that gives gender roles to the subjects. Also, the reason for Jekylls homosexuality stems from his lack of mother figure. Jekyll never mentions his mother. However, his memories are full of images of his father. It shows that, there is no phallus identification for Jekyll. Accordingly, he does not see his father as a rival. Rather, he admires him. Lastly, as a result of his unstable sexuality, Jekyll destroys his relations with his friends.

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Consequently, as the Lacanian psychoanalytic criticism has a very large and comprehensive framework, in this thesis this framework was narrowed down to the concepts of desire, alienation and sexuality. Although these concepts are all closely interrelated in Lacanian criticism, they are analysed separately in relation to the characters in the novels. These concepts were repeatedly elaborated on in each chapter because it was impossible to refer to one without referring to the other. Besides, the main elements of Lacanian criticism such as language, the unconscious, the imaginary, symbolic and the real were discussed in each chapter while analysing the main concepts in the characters of the novels. In conclusion, this thesis has demonstrated that the concepts of desire, alienation and sexuality are all integrated into the lives of individuals. In this study, by analysing these concepts, the formation of human identity has been uncovered. This study has also illustrated the close relation between psychoanalysis and Gothic fiction through a comprehensive analysis of two Gothic novels with the application of psychoanalytic criticism.

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