Down to the Last Syllable

Thank you, Ashley Sheldon, for assisting us in trying to understand Lacan.

We discussed in class our thoughts on why Miles Green was unable to voice his disapproval during the “treatment” he was receiving towards the end of part I in Mantissa. Using Ashley Shelden’s guest lecture on Lacan for support, I argue that it is because sexual satisfaction and identity are contradictory. Miles Green at first does not know who he is. In fact, it takes him a while to realize he is an “I.” It is only through the mirror stage, when he sees other people, that he realizes he is an I. However, he does not find this identity, because Lacan says that we are never able to reach our identity. Instead, through the mirror stage, Miles Green realizes that he is something fragile that is easily breakable. His refusal to participate in the treatment relates to his anxiety about not having a solid identity.

When Miles Green is forced to participate in the treatment (although the muse tells him he does in fact have a choice in the matter,) he is unable to voice his disapproval or concern. The treatment, or the sexual act, is an act of seizing the search for identity. All Miles Green works for in the earlier passages through language is shattered in one moment of orgasm. The death drive exists while the symbolic (language or search for identity) cannot.

And as we see this jouissance in the novel, we also see the death of the author. Of course this death is figurative. The doctor tries to encourage Miles Green to orgasm: “Keep going, don’t stop. Right to the very last syllable” (Fowles 41). In this moment of the death drive Fowles introduces the notion that language has something to do with their act. “There was a little gasp from her, as if she were the one who had really given birth” (Fowles 41). We find out from nurse after treatment had finished that through the death drive a novel was born. Therefore we have the death of the author and the birth of the novel.

The Abyss

There is nothing outside of language. That is, if you are a structuralist. John Fowle’s protagonist in Mantissa seem to be just this. When the novel opens, Miles Green awakes from a coma. His health is measured by tying the signified to the signifier. “Her mouth began to announce names, people’s names, street names, place names, disjointed phrases. Some were repeated. He had perhaps heard them before, as words; be he had no idea what relevance they were supposed to have, nor why they should increasingly sound like evidence of crimes he had committed.” (pg 5). The medical world has put an importance on language. To make a connection between the signified and the signifier will determine the health of the patient. Saussure argues that this relationship is arbitrary. That is, it doesn’t exist. The signifier (sound, image) and the signified (concept or idea) really have nothing to do with each other.

We see this idea illustrated in the conscious of Miles Green. The arbitrary relationship between the signifier and the signified is described as an abyss. “He tried to attack word to person, person to self; failed…Nothing. No past, no whence or when. The abyss perceived, and almost simultaneously, but irremediability. He strained desperately, a falling man, but whatever he was trying to reach or grasp was not there.” (pg 5). Miles Green, after falling unconscious for a period of time, is able to recognize that there is no relationship between the signified and the signifier.

So what is John Fowles trying to tell us? Is it a commentary arguing for or against structuralism? We see many theories such as psychoanalytic theory being introduced into the novel in the following passages. However, one cannot miss the structuralist ideas being illustrated in the opening passages of the novel. It seems as if Miles Green may be designed to be a hero; the absurd practices of the medical world (of course a metaphor for a literary idea) seems to be something Fowles is arguing against. Perhaps later in the novel this uncertainty will be explained.