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.