Reconstructing Desire: The Role of the Unconscious in Women's Reading and Writing - Softcover

Wyatt, Jean

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0807842850 ISBN 13: 9780807842850

Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press, 1990

Synopsis

This provocative study explores the function of the unconscious in reading and creative processes. The book asks if reading can change the reader and if women, through reading, can change the unconscious fantasy structures that govern desire. Using models of the unconscious developed by Freud, Lacan, Kristeva, Cixous, Nay, and Chodorow, Wyatt explores the complex interactions between a text and a reader's unconscious. She theorizes specific processes whereby young readers can assimilate dynamic images of female autonomy in Heidi, The Wizard of Oz, and Little Women.

By tracing the imprint of father-daughter relations on women's unconscious fantasy life, Wyatt seeks to explain the hold of romantic love fantasies like Jane Eyre over many female readers. She looks to contemporary novels for alternative fantasies: to female artist novels by Lessing, Drabble, and Walker for fantasies of sexuality nurturing creativity; and to the flexible family circles of Beloved and The Color Purple for alternatives to patriarchal family arrangements. Wyatt argues that novels like The Awakening and Housekeeping that reflect and transform readers preoedipal fantasies offer women radical alternatives to dominant cognitive and social structures.

About this title

Book Description:

"This challenging and beautifully written book will be useful to readers interested in issues of female creativity and in the family. It will be of particular interest to scholars who are seeking a way to reconcile their feminist desire for social change with psychoanalytic theory, which can seem intractable on the issue of changing our minds."-- Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature

About the Author:

Jean Wyatt is professor of English and comparative literary studies at Occidental College.

About this edition

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0807842850
• ISBN 13: 9780807842850
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 284