The problem of subjectivity and hysteric discourse in Thomas hardy’s far from the madding crowd

Abstract EN

This study explores Hardy’s novel Far From the Madding Crowd in the light of Lacan’s theory of psychoanalysis, particularly the problem of subjectivity and the hysteric discourse.

This essay offers a Lacanian reading of Hardy’s presentation of the divided ‘subject’ in relation to the Other and explores some elements of Lacan’s theory on hysteria, desire, need, demand, and enjoyment as embodied in all those linguistic, narratological and discursive elements attempted by Bathsheba to gain independence, freedom and psychological health.

Hardy’s characters are in an endless effort to unite their own split selves, are divided within and without and try to formulate and re-formulate their own divided subjectivities.

This article tries to show that Hardy’s characters are best understood and appreciated when seen through a psychoanalytical analysis.

Focusing on the linguistic and discursive side of this analysis we can see the main character Bathsheba trying all the time to foreground and emphasise her “I” as a subject of her own actions and speech, and challenging all those patriarchal Victorian subjugations and objectifications linguistically, politically and socially.

Indeed her castration is embodied in the irony which persists in the novel: when she was able to say “I” it was too late and she had to sacrifice her independence and power as a female and accept subjugation at the hands of Gabriel Oak, her symbolical psychoanalyst and virtual, primordial healer spiritually and physically.

This study, finally, tries to link between these disciplines of linguistics, psychoanalysis and novelistic narration and to see how much Hardy illustrates in Far from the Madding Crowd Lacan’s and even Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis, the problems of subjectivity, femininity, and the discourse of the hysterics, which drives the reader into the deep structures of language and its society.