Women, Love, and Commodity Culture in British Romanticism by Garofalo Daniela;

Author:Garofalo, Daniela;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2009-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

“Voluptuous Bulk”

In the poem, the encounter with objects of desire, which seems to be merely the repetition of the same experience, leads to something new. For psychoanalysis, repetition is not repetition of the same but can lead towards a crucial difference. In the Fitz-Fulke episode, the repetition of Juan’s seduction leads to an alteration of patterns that have already begun to alter in the affair with Catherine. 25 Don Juan insistently repeats the encounter with the father. A story fundamentally about repetition, the narrative takes us to a point where repetition leads to difference. Alenka Zupančič argues that “repetition exists because there is no linear genesis of the subject” (169). Repetition is thus “clearly opposed to fantasy, which consists in filling in the gap” and offering “a linear story” to account for the subject (169). Fantasy is “about the origins (of the subject)” (169) and about a narrative that is supposed to take the subject to the end that will realize him. Instead, in Don Juan we get repetition that does not lead to a final plot resolution. Repetition essentially interrupts linear narrative in which the subject hopes to find himself and instead offers a disruption of this fantasy. The poem confronts us not with psychological depth, self-development, increasing insight into the Don and his motives, but rather with the repetition of a traumatic encounter with the father. 26 For much of the poem, the Don’s affairs have functioned as a provocation of the father’s regime. This repetition occurs until Juan seems poised to come into contact with the ultimate disembodied force of the father in all its supernatural power.

The ghost that haunts the abbey is said to have refused to leave the abbey when the lords of Amundeville “expelled the friars” (XVI. Song st. 1) during the reign of Henry VIII. The ghost remains as a testament to the violent transfer of property from the church to King Henry’s loyal servants. As Juan learns from Lord Henry (his name recalls the sovereign who empowered his family and also his own comparative inadequacy) and Lady Adeline, the ghost appears with every subsequent transfer of property: “By the marriage bed of their lords, ’tis said/He flits on the bridal eve” (XVI. Song st. 3), “to their bed of death/He comes” and “When an heir is born” (XVI. Song st. 4). He recalls usurpation and violence, the deviation from the true right of possession, from the biggest father of all, a divine one, who has been dispossessed. The friar, as, Adeline sings, “still retains his sway,/For he is yet the church’s heir/Whoever may be the lay” (XVI. Song st. 5). The friar suggests a supernatural link between owner and property, a mystical, divine connection that makes property legitimately ownable. He also recalls that the current owners are not legitimate, that their enjoyment of property is a dispossession of the father. 27 The owners of the Abbey stand in relation to objects of enjoyment as the Don does throughout the poem. They too enjoy what does not belong to them, what has been stolen.

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