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{{BSZ}}
A year or so ago, while waiting in line to pay at a [[London ]] Waterstone bookstore, I overheard a young man asking one of the staff: 'I just finished <i>Mrs de Winter</i>. Is it [[true ]] that this is the sequel to [[another ]] book?' This was for me a depressing [[encounter ]] with the illiteracy of the younger generation-how can anyone not [[know ]] [[about ]] <i>Rebecca</i>?<br><br>
Or is this oblivion perhaps deserved? There is something radically untimely about
Daphne du Maurier: her prose seems marked by a melodramatic [[excess ]] that often comes dangerously close to the ridiculous-after [[reading ]] one of her books, it is difficult to avoid the vague sentiment that it is no longer possible to write like that today. <a [[name]]="1"></a><a href="#1x">1</a> She tells stories without truly [[being ]] a writer; in what, then, resides the [[secret ]] of the undisputed tremendous [[power ]] of [[fascination ]] exerted by her stories? What if these two features are somehow connected? What if her [[lack ]] of style, her pathetic directness, is the [[formal ]] effect of the fact that du Maurier's narratives directly, all too directly, [[stage ]] the [[fantasies ]] that sustain our lives? The [[notion ]] of [[fantasy ]] has to be taken here in all its fundamental ambiguity: far from being opposed to [[reality]], fantasy is that which provides the basic coordinates of what we [[experience ]] as 'reality' (as [[Lacan ]] puts it, 'everything we are allowed to approach by way of reality remains rooted in fantasy' <a name="2"></a><a href="#2x">2</a>) - however, in [[order ]] to fulfil this function, it has to remain hidden, it must exert its efficiency in the background: 'If what [neurotics] long for the most intensely in their phantasies is presented [[them ]] in
reality, they none the less flee from it'. <a name="3"></a><a href="#3x">3</a> And it is this properly shameless, often
embarrassing, direct staging of fantasies that makes du Maurier's [[writing ]] so compelling-especially when compared with aseptic 'politically correct' [[feminism]]. <a name="4"></a><a href="#4x">4</a><br><br>
According to the [[Jewish ]] [[tradition]], Lilith is the [[woman ]] a man makes [[love ]] to while he masturbates alone in his bed during the night - far from standing for the [[feminine ]] [[identity ]] liberated from the patriarchal hold, her status is purely [[phallic]]: she is what Lacan calls <i>La [[femme]]</i>, the Woman, the [[fantasmatic ]] [[supplement ]] of the [[male ]] masturbatory phallic <i>[[jouissance]]</i>. Significantly, while there is only one man (Adam), [[femininity ]] is from the very beginning [[split ]] between Eve and Lilith, between the 'ordinary' [[hysterical ]] feminine [[subject ]] and the fantasmatic [[spectre ]] of Woman: when a man is having sex with a '[[real]]'
woman, he is using her as a masturbatory prop to support his fantasizing about the non-
existent Woman... And in <i>Rebecca</i>, her most famous novel, du Maurier adds another
twist to the Lilith [[myth]]: the fantasy of Woman is (re)appropriated by a woman - what if Lilith is not so much a male fantasy as the fantasy of a woman, the [[model ]] of her
fantasmatic competitor?<br><br>
So where does du Maurier belong? Properly speaking, she is flanked, on one side, by
Romanticism, with its notion of radical [[Evil ]] ('[[pleasure ]] in [[pain]]'), and, on the [[other ]] side, by [[Freud]], and the direct impact of [[psychoanalysis ]] on [[arts ]] - why? It is interesting to note that Lacan [[identified ]] the beginning of the movement of [[ideas ]] that finally gave [[birth ]] to psychoanalysis as being that of Kantian [[ethics ]] (particularly his <i>Critique of [[Practical ]] [[Reason]]</i>) and the Romantic notion of 'pleasure in pain'. <a name="5"></a><a href="#5x">5</a> It is this epoch that provides the only proper ground for what is deceitfully called 'applied psychoanalysis'. Prior to this [[moment]], the [[universe ]] was one in which the [[Unconscious ]] was not yet operative, in which
the 'subject' was identified with the Light of Reason as opposed to the impersonal Night
of [[drives]], and not, in the very kernel of its being, this Night itself; afterwards, the very impact of psychoanalysis transformed artistic [[literary ]] [[practice ]] (Eugene O'Neill's plays, for example, already presuppose psychoanalysis, whereas Henry [[James]], Katherine Mansfield and even [[Kafka ]] do not). It is also within this horizon that du Maurier moves- this [[space ]] of the heroic innocence of the Unconscious in which irresistible passions freely
roam around.<br><br>
There is one term that encapsulates everything that renders this space-and du Maurier's
writing itself-so problematic for contemporary feminism: feminine [[masochism]]. What du Maurier [[stages ]] again and again in a shamelessly direct way is the different [[figure ]] of 'feminine masochism', of a woman enjoying her own ruin, finding a tortured [[satisfaction ]] in her subjection and [[humiliation]], etc. So how are we to redeem this feature? The ultimate point of irreconciliable [[difference ]] between psychoanalysis and feminism is that of rape (and/or the [[masochist ]] fantasies that sustain it). For standard feminism, at least, it is an a priori axiom that rape is a [[violence ]] imposed from without: even if a woman fantasizes about being raped, this only bears [[witness ]] to the deplorable fact that she has internalized the male attitude. The reaction is here one of pure [[panic]]: the moment
one mentions that a woman may fantasize about being raped or at least brutally
mishandled, one hears the objections: 'This is like saying that [[Jews ]] fantasize about being
gassed in the camps, or African-Americans fantasize about being lynched!' From this
perspective, the split hysterical [[position ]] (that of complaining about being sexually misused and exploited, while simultaneously [[desiring ]] it and provoking a man to [[seduce ]] her) is secondary, while for Freud, it is primary, constitutive of [[subjectivity]]. Consequently, the problem with rape for Freud is that it has such a [[traumatic ]] impact not simply because it is a [[case ]] of such brutal [[external ]] violence, but because it also touches on something disavowed in the [[victim ]] herself. So when Freud writes, 'If what [neurotics]
long for the most intensely in their phantasies is presented them in reality, they none the
less flee from it', his point is not merely that this aversion occurs because of [[censorship]],
but, rather, that the core of our fantasy is unbearable to us. (Of course, this insight in no
way justifies rape along the infamous lines 'she just got what she fantasized about...' - if
What this means is that, paradoxically, the staging of what appears to be a masochist
scenario is the first act of liberation: by means of it, the servant's masochistic [[libidinal ]] attachment to his [[master ]] is brought into the light of day, and the servant thus achieves a minimal distance towards it. In his essay on Sacher-Masoch, <a name="6"></a><a href="#6x">6</a> Gilles [[Deleuze ]] elaborated this aspect in detail: far from bringing any satisfaction to the [[sadistic ]] witness, the masochist's [[self]]-[[torture ]] [[frustrates ]] the [[sadist]], depriving him of his power over the masochist. [[Sadism ]] involves a [[relationship ]] of domination, while masochism is necessarily the first step towards liberation. <a name="7"></a><a href="#7x">7</a> When we are subjected to a power [[mechanism]], this subjection is always and by definition sustained by some libidinal investment: the subjection itself generates a [[surplus]]-[[enjoyment ]] of its own. This subjection is embodied in a network of '[[material]]' [[bodily ]] practices, and, for this reason, we cannot get rid of our subjection through a merely [[intellectual ]] [[reflection]]-our liberation has to be staged in
some kind of bodily performance, and, furthermore, this performance has to be of an
apparently 'masochistic' [[nature]], it has to stage the painful [[process ]] of hitting back at oneself. Did [[Sylvia ]] Plath not adopt the same strategy in her famous [[poem ]] 'Daddy'?</font></p>
<font size="3">
</font><blockquote>
against herself so as to show that she can equal her oppressors with her self-
inflicted oppression. And this is the strategy of the concentration camps. When
[[suffering ]] is there whatever you do, by inflicting it upon yourself you achieve your
identity, you set yourself free. <a name="8"></a><a href="#8x">8</a></font></p><font size="3">
</font></blockquote>
</font><p align="justify">
<font size="3">This also resolves the problem of Plath's reference to the [[holocaust]], i.e., the reproach of some of her critics that her implicit equation of her oppression by her [[father ]] to what the [[Nazis ]] did to the Jews is an inadmissible exaggeration: what matters is not the (obviously
incomparable) magnitude of the crime, but the fact that Plath felt compelled to adopt the
strategy of turning violence against herself as the only means of [[psychic ]] liberation. For
this reason, it is also far too simplistic to dismiss her thoroughly ambiguous hysterical
attitude towards her father ([[horror ]] at his oppressive [[presence ]] and, simultaneously, her
obvious libidinal fascination by him - 'Every woman adores a Fascist, the boot in the
face...' <a name="9"></a><a href="#9x">9</a>): this hysterical [[knot ]] of the libidinal investment of one's own [[victimization ]] can never be undone. That is to say, one cannot oppose the 'redemptive' [[awareness ]] of being
oppressed to the 'pathological' enjoyment the hysterical subject gains from this very
oppression, [[interpreting ]] their conjunction as the result of the 'liberation from patriarchal domination as an unfinished [[project]]' (to paraphrase [[Habermas]]), i.e., as the [[index ]] of a split between the '[[good]]' [[feminist ]] awareness of subjection and the persisting patriarchal libidinal [[economy ]] which chains the [[hysteric ]] to [[patriarchy]], making her subordination into
a <i>servitude volontaire</i>. If this were the case, then the solution would be simple: one would
enact what, apropos of Proudhon, [[Marx ]] characterized as the exemplary petty bourgeois
procedure of distinguishing in every phenomenon a 'good' and a 'bad' aspect, and then
affirming the good and getting rid of the bad-in our case, struggling to keep the 'good'
aspect (awareness of oppression) and discard the 'bad' one (finding pleasure in
oppression). The reason this 'untying of the knot' doesn't [[work ]] is that the only true awareness of our subjection is the awareness of the [[obscene ]] excessive pleasure (surplus-
enjoyment) we gain from it-which is why the first gesture of liberation is not to get rid
of this excessive pleasure, but actively to assume it. If, following Franz [[Fanon]], we define [[political ]] violence not as opposed to work, but, precisely, as the ultimate political version of the 'work of the [[negative]]', of the educational self-[[formation]], then violence should
primarily be conceived as self-violence, as a violent re-formation of the very substance of
subject's being.<br><br>
Consequently, the first thing to do in every case of masochism is to look for the
'collateral damage' that generates the accidental side-profit. In one of the anti-Soviet
[[jokes ]] popular after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in [[1968]], a fairy-queen approaches a Czech and tells him that she is ready to grant him [[three ]] wishes; the Czech immediately offers his first [[wish]]: 'The Chinese [[army ]] should occupy my country for a
month and then withdraw!' After the fairy-queen asks him for the other two wishes, he
says: 'The same again! The Chinese should occupy us again and again!' When the
bewildered queen asks him why he [[chose ]] such a strange wish, the Czech answers with a malicious grin: 'Because each [[time ]] the Chinese were to occupy us, they would have to [[pass ]] through the [[Soviet Union ]] on their way here and back!' The same holds often for
'feminine masochism', and especially for du Maurier's stories whose heroines enjoying
their painful passions: they follow the [[logic ]] of [[displacement]], i.e., to [[interpret ]] them properly, one should focus attention on the [[third ]] (male) subject who is targeted when a
woman is repeatedly 'occupied by the Chinese army'.<br><br>
narratives, and, perhaps, nowhere is this clearer than in six of her short stories: 'The
Birds', 'Monte Verità', 'The Apple Tree', 'The Little Photographer', 'Kiss Me Again,
Stranger' and 'The Old Man'. <a name="10"></a><a href="#10x">10</a> They are to be read in the same way that Claude Lévi- [[Strauss ]] [[interpreted ]] [[myths]]: instead of directly searching for a hidden [[meaning ]] within each
of them, they should be interpreted through each other, read side by side-the moment
one does it, one perceives that they [[form ]] a precise [[structure]]. The central four stories [[present ]] four versions of why [[sexual ]] relationship fails. In 'Monte Verità', a beautiful young Anna abandons her husband and potential lover for the '[[Truth ]] Mountain', a remote resort in the Swiss Alps, the seat of an initiatic group who lead there a secluded [[life ]] of
immortality, a life of eternal ecstatic satisfaction exempted from the traumas of our
'[[world ]] of men and [[women]]'-in short, she chooses what Lacan called the Other
<i>Jouissance</i> over ordinary phallic <i>jouissance</i>. In 'The Apple Tree', an older husband
whose neglected wife died a while ago suddenly notices how a malformed apple tree
close to his house bears an [[uncanny ]] resemblance to her; the tree starts to haunt him and
he dies, entangled in its fallen wings in a winter storm. In 'The Little Photographer', a
lone, bored beautiful wife who [[married ]] into rich nobility becomes involved in a weird
and humiliating love affair with a poor crippled local photographer while on holiday at a
seaside resort. In 'Kiss Me Again, Stranger', a young mechanic spends a long evening
with a mysterious [[girl ]] who is the following day revealed to be the serial murderer of several RAF pilots. In all four stories, the intrusion of an unexpected [[dimension ]] disturbs the 'normal' run of things and ruins the prospect of a [[satisfied]], calm life of a couple: the fantasmatic Other [[Place ]] of non-phallic <i>jouissance</i>; the [[return ]] of the [[dead ]] wife in the guise of the tree as a conversion-[[symptom ]] that haunts the husband; the strange [[lure ]] of the low- [[class]], doggishly faithful, repulsive lover; the unexpected lethal dimension of an ordinary
girl. The first and the last stories are, in clear contrast, the ones with a 'happy' couple.
'[[The Birds]]' (on which, of course, [[Hitchcock]]'s [[film ]] is based) tells the story of a countryside [[family ]] of tenants on the Cornwall coast who had to deal with attacking birds. In 'The Old Man', the [[observer ]] witnesses how a strange couple [[living ]] in a cottage near the sea maintains their secluded [[happiness ]] by killing their intrusive son whose presence
started to disturb their idyll. The two 'happy' families are thus more than weird: the one
lives under siege by the attacking birds; the other has to secure its happiness by killing
Especially instructive here is 'The Birds', especially if we compare du Maurier's original
story with Hitchcock's film: while both share the same fantasmatic cataclysmic [[event]],
this event is in each case included in a different context that confers upon it an entirely
different meaning. In order to unravel Hitchcock's <i>The Birds</i>, one should first imagine
the film without the birds, simply depicting the proverbial middle-class family in the
midst of an [[Oedipal ]] crisis-the attacks of the birds can only be accounted for as an outlet
of the tension underlying this Oedipal constellation, i.e., they clearly materialize the
destructive [[outburst ]] of the [[maternal ]] [[superego]], one [[mother]]'s [[jealousy ]] toward the young
woman who tries to snatch her son from her. The same procedure should also be applied
to du Maurier's 'The Birds': her 'Birds without birds' would have been a [[sketch ]] of hard [[English ]] peasant life, of tough characters who are aware that, ultimately, they can only rely on themselves, and are able to keep their [[mind ]] and provide for their survival even in
the most disturbing circumstances. The attacking birds here are thus to bring out the best
of the tough [[character ]] of the 'ordinary' English peasant-against what? Hints scattered throughout the story make it clear that the true target of the story is the post-[[World War II ]] Labour [[Welfare ]] [[State]]: the state fails to react properly to the [[threat ]] of the birds and,
towards the end of the story, simply ceases to function.<br><br>
nonetheless not fully satisfied, haunted by visions of and longing for a different, more
emancipated, life. 'The Apple Tree' would have been a depressing story about an old
couple whose superficially calm life conceals silent despair and cruel [[ignorance]]. 'The
Little Photographer' would have been a vignette on a beautiful girl who married for
[[money ]] but is now condemned to lead a suffocating, aseptic [[existence ]] of empty family [[rituals]], cut off from the bustle of real life. 'Kiss Me Again, Stranger' would have been a story of the everyday emotional misery of a young mechanic unable to find a [[stable ]] love
relationship. Finally, 'The Old Man' would have been a portrait of utter immobility: a
couple isolated from [[society]], living in a state of [[psychotic ]] seclusion... The intrusive
Event (birds attacking, the twisted apple tree, the strangely attractive crippled
photographer, etc.) is then [[nothing ]] but a fantasized escape from this misery, a figure that
renders all the more palpable the misery of its everyday background - can one imagine a
more devastating picture of the choices life is offering us today?<br><br>
whose clarity is obfuscated by scratches as more 'realistic' than the most faithful Dolby-
stereo or THX recording - as if the very imperfection of the rendering is a proof that the
'real [[voice]]' was there, while, in the second case, the very perfection derealizes what we
hear, turning it into an experience of a perfect fake. And, perhaps, this is how one should
read du Maurier's [[texts]]: their very scratches - what makes them old-fashioned, often
ridiculous-are also what keeps them alive.<br><br>
<a name="1x"></a><a href="#1">1</a> However, does the same not hold for many a great classic? Is it still possible
today to listen to the first movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony with the
naïve [[recognition ]] of the persistent knocking of fate, or is this movement forever
lost on account of its later 'commodification'?<br><br>
<a name="2x"></a><a href="#2">2</a> [[Jacques Lacan]], <i>The [[Seminar ]] of [[Jacques lacan|Jacques Lacan ]] XX: On Feminine [[Sexuality]], the Limits of Love and [[Knowledge]], 1972-73 ([[Encore]])</i>, ed. Jacques-[[Alain ]] [[Miller]], trans. [[Bruce Fink ]] (New York: W.W. Norton, 1998), 95.<br><br>
<a name="3x"></a><a href="#3">3</a> [[Sigmund Freud]], 'Fragment of an [[Analysis ]] of a Case of [[Hysteria ]] ("[[Dora]]")', in <i>The Penguin Freud [[Library]], 8: [[Case Histories ]] I</i>, ed. and trans. James Strachey
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977), 151.<br><br>
<a name="4x"></a><a href="#4">4</a> Another more contemporary work that, although worthless in strict artistic [[terms]],
provides a similar powerful staging of fantasies would be Colleen McCullough's <i>Thornbirds</i>.<br><br>
<a name="5x"></a><a href="#5">5</a> See Jacques Lacan, <i>[[The Seminar ]] of Jacques Lacan VII: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 1959-60</i>, ed. [[Jacques-Alain Miller]], trans. Dennis Porter
(London: Routledge, 1992), 24-25.<br><br>
<a name="6x"></a><a href="#6">6</a> See [[Gilles Deleuze]], 'Coldness and [[Cruelty]]', in <i>Masochism</i> (New York: Zone
Books 1989), especially 123-34.<br><br>
<a name="7x"></a><a href="#7">7</a> [[Zizek ]] develops this notion of 'liberating violence' at some length with [[particular ]] reference to David Fincher's 'Fight Club in '[[Lenin]]'s [[Choice]]', in <i>[[Revolution ]] at the Gates: A Selection of Writings from February to October 1917</i>, ed. [[Slavoj Zizek ]]
(London and New York: Verso, 2002), 250-63.<br><br>
<a name="8x"></a><a href="#8">8</a> Claire Brennan, <i>The [[Poetry ]] of Sylvia Plath</i> (Cambridge: [[Icon ]] Books 2000), 22.<br><br>
<a name="9x"></a><a href="#9">9</a> Sylvia Plath, 'Daddy', in <i>The Collected Poems</i>, ed. Ted Hughes (New York:
<a name="10x"></a><a href="#10">10</a> This paper was originally written as an introduction to the Virago Modern
Classics edition of <i>The Birds and Other Stories</i> (London: Virago, 2004), but was
rejected 'for being too [[theoretical ]] and disrespectful of du Maurier' (Zizek, private [[communication]]). The six stories listed here were collected in this volume.
==Source==
* [[Are We Allowed To Enjoy Daphnée du Maurier?]]. ''Centre for [[Theology ]] and [[Politics]]''. <http://www.theologyandpolitics.com/Files/Zizek%20CTP%20Daphne%20du%20Maurier.pdf>. Also listed on ''[[Lacan.com]]''. <http://www.lacan.com/zizdaphmaur.htm>.
