THE LAW OF LANGUAGE AND THE LAW OF STRUCTURE IN THE DOMINANT MASCULINE DISCOURSE OF JEAN RHYS’S WIDE SARGASSO SEA
THE LAW OF LANGUAGE AND THE LAW OF STRUCTURE IN THE DOMINANT MASCULINE DISCOURSE OF JEAN RHYS’S WIDE SARGASSO SEA

Summary/Abstract: This paper attempts to show that the Law of Language is simply the entry into the symbolic order of language in which the subject-to-be, given the choice of “your meaning or your life”, undergoes the castration which cannot be avoided by any subject upon entry into language, because in order to be a “subject”, one must accept the subordination of the subject to the symbolic order which creates it, and one must accept the lack of any subjectivity outside the Law of the symbolic order. The Law of Structure, on the other hand, conceptualizes the Name-of-the- Father and the Incest Taboo. Though, both represent the dominant modes in which sexual identification occurs. If the Law of Language and the Law of Structure cannot be avoided, the subject can, nonetheless, attempt to rearticulate his or her relation to them, and to the semblance of ‘the truth’ which they would create. Upon confronting such ‘refashioned’ subjects in the West Indies, who mock as many elements of proper English subjectivity as they affirm, Jean Rhys’s Rochester enters into a world which not only refuses to recognize him on his terms, but presents a number of subjects whose rearticulation to the dominant Colonial order resists incorporation into it. The result is Rochester’s own psychic disordering.

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