MDMD8: The Gaze and ...

[Paul Nightingale]

>From Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, Penguin
ed, 1979.

"In our relation to things, insofar as this relation is constituted by the
way of vision, and ordered in the figures of representation, something
slips, passes, is transmitted, from stage to stage, and is always to some
degree eluded in it--that is what we call the gaze" (p73).

A couple of pages further on Lacan describes: "the phantasy ... of an
absolute being to whom is transferred the quality of being all-seeing. At
the very level of the phenomenal experience of contemplation, this
all-seeing aspect is to be found in the satisfaction of a woman who knows
that she is being looked at, on condition that one does not show her that
one knows that she knows" (p75).

Mason ("feeling shabby") is unable to take his place in the crowd ("the
entire world of Fashion") at Lord Ferrers' execution; he 'knows' he is being
looked at because he is looking at himself. He now regularly attends
hangings at Tyburn to chat up women. Does he seek to replace his dead wife,
or perhaps to replace (substitute for) the relationship? His attendance at
this particular hanging is a birthday present to himself; hence he has taken
on the role of the other; yet he "curses himself for not having worn a more
stylish outfit".

And then "he notes a young Woman observing him,-- when he meets her Gaze,
she immediately switches it away with a look of annoyance, not with Mason,
it pleases him to fancy, so much as with herself, for happening to be the
one caught staring".

What Florinda does here (look away) is inseparable from Mason's
interpretation; his reading of the situation establishes the primacy of the
(potent) male Gaze (she looks away, he doesn't) while rewriting the
preceding action (he no longer needs to curse himself since his appearance
has attracted her attention).

The action that follows is, therefore, framed by Mason's need to impose
himself as author; yet his authoring has been exposed as manipulation. What
"he might say" (were he sharp enough to think of it) dictates what she
"will" do (ie following his lead). And then, having established his
authority, Mason can continue ("goes rattling on morosely") in the present
tense (ie with no conditions imposed).

I think a Lacanian reading can also be used to illuminate the rest of the
passage. Briefly, Lacan's rereading of Freud makes of the phallus an
imaginary construct, which means it doesn't necessarily have to be the penis
(the hard-on that is either present or absent). Reading this passage,
imagining Mason's appearance, I'm reminded of the earlier London chapter.
Mason asks:"What are you looking at? It's my Wig, isn't it." Dixon points
out: "You're not wearing a Wig ... ?" To which Mason replies: "Just so! You
noted that,-- you have been observing me in a strange yet, I must conclude,
meaningful way" (p16).

>From Laura Mulvey's "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema", in Screen, 16:3,
1975 (reprinted in Visual and Other Pleasures but I haven't the page refs
for that - the following is from the first page to the essay).

"The paradox of phallocentrism in all its manifestations is that it depends
on the image of the castrated woman to give order and meaning to its world.
An idea of woman stands as lynch pin to the system: it is her lack that
produces the phallus as a symbolic presence, it is her desire to make good
the lack that the phallus signifies" (p6).

Consider, therefore, the way presence and absence - including Mason's
absence from the scene in question - inform the following exchange, which
follows the discussion of what a hard-on might signify. Mason suggests that
Fepp was "most likely not insane" and might or might not have been moved "by
any criminal Passion"; and then notes that his member "was remarkably
flaccid, at least according to the Jobbers who cut him down". Death by
hanging, of course, is followed by dismemberment: "'And subsequently up,'
chirps the Maiden" (pp111-12).