| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立彰化師範大學 === 英語學系 === 95 === This thesis aims to interpret Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Macbeth drawing on Lacanian theory of subjectivity. I intend to analyze how Ophelia and Lady Macbeth are oppressed in the patriarchal society, how they act under the gaze and the reasons why both of them are mad and dead. I propose that they cannot construct their subjectivity because of the gaze.
In the introduction, I first discuss “patriarchy” and “gender politics” in the early modern England. The critical reviews about Ophelia’s and Lady Macbeth’s madness will be presented. Chapter One illuminates Lacanian theory of subjectivity. The concepts of lack, desire, gaze, the Other and the-Name-of-the-Father are elaborated in this chapter.
Chapter Two explores the lack and desire of Ophelia and Lady Macbeth. Both of them have lacks, trying to pursue the objet a to fill in their lacks. Besides, the relationship between the Other and themselves is not well-mediated, which becomes the main hindrance to the construction of their subjectivity.
In the third chapter, the oppressed women’s fantasy and their foreclosure of the symbolic father are analyzed. Ophelia has the fantasy that her chastity—a substitute for the objet a—enables her to be loved by the male characters, while Lady Macbeth depends on her fantasy that the queenship helps her fulfill her lack to sustain the consistency of life. Both of them cannot traverse fantasy. Instead, they give up the symbolic father.
In the conclusion, I argue that Shakespeare reveals the great anguish experienced by the female characters. Both Ophelia and Lady Macbeth are destroyed because the symbolic father cannot be challenged either through regicide or through madness. This thesis probes into the psychic structure of the female characters in Hamlet and Macbeth and provides a psychoanalytic perspective to explore the issues of madness and subjectivity.
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