| Summary: | 碩士 === 淡江大學 === 英文學系碩士班 === 99 === Abstract:
This thesis centers on the studies on the semiotic and the symbolic. In Kristeva’s point of view, subject is a process and through it, one can get a complete subjectivity.
The first chapter will emphasize Clarissa’s construction of her subjectivity by applying Julia Kristeva’s semiotic discourse. Julia Kristeva’s theory on the subject-in-process is clearly shown by Clarissa to represent how Clarissa develops her oscillated self and this is to show that her oscillation between the semiotic and the symbolic is a state of signifying process. To Kristeva, the semiotic is the onset of meaning and this revises Lacan’s views on subjectivity.
In the second chapter, I turn to a discussion of Clarissa’s abjection and sublimation. Although repressed by the paternal society, the symbolic world, Clarissa still has the physical symptoms in the process of abjection to protect herself from the object within the semiotic space. In Kristeva’s discourse, the abject, excluded by the symbolic, exists in the semiotic space. However, the abject within the semiotic never stops its invasion into Clarissa’s symbolic identity and this is also the experience of the abjection. In the process of the abjection, Clarissa has some physical symptoms; therefore, in order to control these emotional effects caused by the abjection, Clarissa identifies with “the object” reflecting in the imaginary space and with the help of this identification with the object reflecting in the imaginary space, Clarissa receives the semiotic power from the imaginary space and she again enters the symbolic so as to control her emotional effects.
In the third chapter, I further use the idea of Kristeva’s “herethics” to analyze
the relationship between Clarissa and three characters: Sally, Septimus, and Richard Dalloway. Using the three characters as representative is to reverse the dualism of the symbolic in this chapter.
We can understand Kristeva’s perspective on identity by analyzing the novel Mrs. Dalloway. Subject-in-process is her ideas of identity; however, she doesn’t deject the function of the symbolic but supports the correlation of the semiotic and the symbolic.
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