「나사의 회전」에 나타난 ‘아버지’의 부재와 여성 주체의 형성

Abstract

Henry James’s “The Turn of the Screw” tells the story of a governess who encounters supernatural phenomena at an old mansion. The presence of the ghosts is, however, never clearly identified, and its opaque imagery provides not much credibility on the governess’s narrative. This textual ambiguity has become a locus for the psychoanalytic critical debate, and the question that focuses on whether there is a ghost or not, has been a central issue among the modern critics. It is, however, necessary to analyze the manifestation of the supernatural phenomena in the governess’s consciousness, and the cause of her fear, rather than delving into the authenticity of the ghost. This essay argues that her traumatic experience of the ghosts, and her sense of confusion and fear is caused by the absence of her master, who stands as a Lacanian symbolic ‘father’, and whose approval and judgement is supposed to guarantee the governess’s social position. This Name of the Father that functions as the social order and prohibitive law constitutes the symbolic order, and its absence causes her fear-driven visualization of ghosts. Her repetitive experience of traumatic encounter implies the menacing patriarchal social order toward female subject, and her record of it is her way to overcome the traumatic process of her subjectivization.