Jean Rhys’s attraction to the masochistic imaginary has been a controversial issue in the reception of her work, particularly among feminist critics. However, both those who have deplored and those who have justified her reliance on the aesthetics of pain agree that, in order to unravel Rhys’s exploration of the intricacies of masochistic desire, no straightforward approach will suffice. As sexual antagonisms in Rhys’s fiction need to be read tropologically, so her masochistic aesthetics has to be inserted into the double discourse of her day’s sexological and psychoanalytical theories and within contemporary theorisations, like Gilles Deleuze’s who has argued against the equation of masochism with submission. Figured as an oppositional fantasist, Deleuze’s masochist disavows the ‘paternal’ function, or the law/superego, by experiencing repression/punishment as pleasure. Importantly, Deleuze has established a fundamental connection between the creative staging of masochism as the exercise of an aesthetic ideal and literary creation as the crafting of alternative visions of law and power. Through its modernist experimentation with theme and narrative form, the “demonstrative” aesthetics of pain in Rhys’s first novel Quartet (1928) questions bourgeois assumptions about female masochism as inevitably victimising. Rather than staging the dominant-submissive dualism of the “sadomasochistic unit” Deleuze has declared to be a patriarchal fiction, the alleged ‘victim’ is shown actively to orchestrate her own degradation and pain. The peculiar inversion of the pleasure-pain nexus Rhys’s protagonist is ‘forced’ into is the means by which she secures for herself a positive masochistic “gain,” understood to be the narcissistic inflation of the ideal ego, pleasure-yielding guilt, and humoristic parody of authoritarian discourse. After briefly drafting a theoretical overview of masochism according to Deleuze, I will analyse how Rhys mobilises the masochistic aesthetics of pain in Quartet in the interest of a feminist critique of patriarchal gender oppression.
Masochism and the aesthetics of pain in Jean Rhys’s Quartet: A feminist reading through Deleuze
Maria Grazia Nicolosi
Primo
2022-01-01
Abstract
Jean Rhys’s attraction to the masochistic imaginary has been a controversial issue in the reception of her work, particularly among feminist critics. However, both those who have deplored and those who have justified her reliance on the aesthetics of pain agree that, in order to unravel Rhys’s exploration of the intricacies of masochistic desire, no straightforward approach will suffice. As sexual antagonisms in Rhys’s fiction need to be read tropologically, so her masochistic aesthetics has to be inserted into the double discourse of her day’s sexological and psychoanalytical theories and within contemporary theorisations, like Gilles Deleuze’s who has argued against the equation of masochism with submission. Figured as an oppositional fantasist, Deleuze’s masochist disavows the ‘paternal’ function, or the law/superego, by experiencing repression/punishment as pleasure. Importantly, Deleuze has established a fundamental connection between the creative staging of masochism as the exercise of an aesthetic ideal and literary creation as the crafting of alternative visions of law and power. Through its modernist experimentation with theme and narrative form, the “demonstrative” aesthetics of pain in Rhys’s first novel Quartet (1928) questions bourgeois assumptions about female masochism as inevitably victimising. Rather than staging the dominant-submissive dualism of the “sadomasochistic unit” Deleuze has declared to be a patriarchal fiction, the alleged ‘victim’ is shown actively to orchestrate her own degradation and pain. The peculiar inversion of the pleasure-pain nexus Rhys’s protagonist is ‘forced’ into is the means by which she secures for herself a positive masochistic “gain,” understood to be the narcissistic inflation of the ideal ego, pleasure-yielding guilt, and humoristic parody of authoritarian discourse. After briefly drafting a theoretical overview of masochism according to Deleuze, I will analyse how Rhys mobilises the masochistic aesthetics of pain in Quartet in the interest of a feminist critique of patriarchal gender oppression.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
