University/Organization
Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea
Title
“What Then on Earth Was I?”: the Hysteric’s Desire and the Question of Identity in The Turn of the Screw
Synopsis
Reading Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw from a Lacanian perspective, this essay examines the governess’s symbolic identity as fundamentally sustained by her desire to be the object a of her master in her hysterical fantasy.