『블리크 하우스』(Bleak House)에 나타난 불안

Anxiety in Bleak House: From Lacanian Perspective

This article explores some characters’ anxiety in Dickens’s Bleak House with Lacan’s anxiety theory. According to Lacan, human beings do not pursue their own desire, but the desire of the Other. However, humans do not know exactly what the Other wants from them. So, even though he or she tries to be satisfied with the object a, replacing a lack, there is a time to sense the rest of the Other’s desire, that is ‘lack of lack’, which causes anxiety. This anxiety is not from the absence, but from ‘without not having it’. In this novel, Sir Leicester Dedlock’s anxiety is that of castration that he might lose his authority and fame. Lady Dedlock feels guilty and anxious about her past behavior inconsistent with an asexual woman required of women in British society at that time. And Esther Summerson desires to be recognized for her existence and to be a necessary person as the desire of the Other. However, she feels anxiety by experiencing the cycle of desire. Anxiety is an ontological reason because it opens the way to the real world, allows us to capture reality for a moment, and drives us closer to the truth. The goal of human desire is not anxiety, but jouissance. The subject with anxiety will have a chance to be aware of the inconsistency between the Other’s desire and the object a and reach toward jouissance.