Jealousy, Femininity and Desire: A Lacanian Reading

Drawing on Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, this book intervenes into debates concerning the relation between jealousy and envy on the one hand, and sexual difference on the other. The author presents an original distinction between what is termed “feminine” and “phallic” forms of jealousy while mapping and theorizing other types of jealousy that she finds in the writings of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan. The discussion performs literary-critical readings of texts by Olivia Shakespear and Marguerite Duras as a means of shedding light on the topic and the distinction. Further, it discusses the challenge posed by jealousy’s particular mode of jouissance and its possible vicissitudes. Though the experience of jealousy can be ravaging, the author claims, it also provides the subject an opportunity to reorient its relation to jouissance and thereby experience significant psychical change. In doing so, it provides a new outlook on jealousy as being connected to both femininity and desire, unveiling its complex character, features, and vitality within a Lacanian psychoanalytic framework. It will appeal in particular to those with an interest in psychoanalysis, literary theory and critical theory.