Fetishistic Liminality in Mrs. Dalloway

Abstract

The essay explores the female fetishism in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and Marleen Gorris’s same name film version by challenging Freudian penis-envy and tracing the reconstruction of a mother-child dyad in the pre-oedipal phase. Both the novel and the film encourage the formation of female subjectivity and facilitate a new kind of development to make reparation with the lost mother. The exploration of Clarissa’s fetishistic symbols such as flowers, hats, gloves, dresses, cars is crucial to retain the mental illustration of female subjectivity interweaving a liminal maternal space on the borders that resonates with cognitive mapping of a fragmented self torn by the war and the patriarchal society in the 1920s London. The study not only examines Woolf’s film-fiction affinities in terms with a psychological probing on the issue of fetishism relating to Freudian and Kleinian psychoanalytic theories but also details the collusion of maternality and visuality and their fluid nature which disturbs the boundaries of framing of the maternal body.

Key words

pre-oedipal, female fetishism, maternality, visuality

《達洛威夫人》戀物中介點

二十世紀英國現代小說家維吉妮亞．吳爾芙擅於運用意識流的書寫技巧，細膩且微妙地刻劃筆下人物心理癥候，突破以往以情節為主要敘事結構的寫實小說風格，開創現代主義小說的書寫特色。在其知名著作《達洛威夫人》以「陰性書寫」方式深刻描述置身於陽剛社會中女性的內心世界及母性精神，堪稱現代女性主義先驅。九十年代，電影蛻變為另類藝術傳媒，此時適值「後女性主義」時期，在緬懷女性主義巨擘之際亦興起以影像重現吳爾芙的原著小說，藉影像與聲音呈現文字敘述的另一面向，將讀者轉換成觀眾，賦予吳爾芙原著嶄新的視覺魅力，一反嚴肅的男女平權論述，展現嬉戲嘲諷的後現代性別論述。這「視覺轉述」不僅開拓文字表述的層次，也促進了吳爾芙式文學與藝術之間良性互動的辨證美學。

本論文以吳爾芙的小說《達洛威夫人》和對照原著改編的電影為探討文本，進行跨藝術互文的研究及解讀。在方法論上則結合佛洛依德及其門徒克萊恩的精神分析論點，希冀建立吳爾芙式「母性」文學與視覺對話的美學。荷蘭女導演高貴絲的《達洛威夫人》以當代的同性戀觀點呈現出吳爾芙書中的女性戀物情結。並置現在與過去的倒敘手法及畫龍點睛的旁白，貼切地將吳爾芙意識流的文字書寫特質，巧妙地由視覺影像轉述。筆者援用前伊底帕斯的「戀物情結」精神分析理論，來探索達洛威夫人對於花、帽子、手套、衣服、車等的戀物癖，凸顯陰性「她者」的潛意識層面，鬆動陽性象徵界所標榜的理性、穩定、與邏輯的世界。

關鍵詞：前伊底帕斯、女性戀物、母性精神、視覺文化

To: Fiction and Drama,Call for Papers: Vol. 19 Issue No.1 (2008)