A Lacanian Reading of Laura's Subjectivity in The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams

A Lacanian Reading of Laura's Subjectivity in The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams displays great perceptive into the human condition, accurately portraying many psychological themes. This article focus on the relationship between Selfhood and Lacanian Other (society and family) and Lauraʹs recourse to Imaginary world in The Glass Menagerie. It tries to show how society and family have an effect on Laura and how Others desire create her subjectivity in Tennessee Williamsʹs The Glass Menagerie. Inspired by Lacanian theory of Selfhood, Other and Desire and Castration, Imaginary and Symbolic order, it tries to show that female characters subjectivity is given to them from the outside world in American society of 20th century. The essence of Laura is that she has been simultaneously drawn in two different directions: out into the public world of relationship, of time, of process, and back into a private world where time is suspended and self must substitute its own imaginings for the causalities and pain of an engagement with the other. The society, Amanda, Tom, Jim and Lauraʹs father contribute in creation of her subjectivity or selfhood. Amanda, a phallic woman, is castrating Laura by forcing her to enter the Symbolic and accepting its rules and values. Although Lauraʹs recourse to the Imaginary Order is a rejection of the Symbolic Order, Unconsciously she is pushed to the Symbolic order and became a subject in it. Laura is incapable of functioning as a subject in society so she recourses into her Imaginary Order and misrecognizes her identity and finally become psychotic.