Absent mothers and orphaned fathers

About this book

Gustafson provides a comprehensive overview of Lessing's comments on the structure and purpose of the domestic tragedy within the context of his Laokoon essay, demonstrating that the fundamental psychic-deep structures informing his aesthetic and dramatic production are male narcissism and the abjection of the woman/the mother. As opposed to earlier studies of gender/generic questions in Lessing's dramas, this analysis explicates the theoretical basis for the rigid codification of gender which informs Lessing's fictional symbolic order. In analyzing Lessing's plays, Miss Sara Sampson, Emilia Galotti, and Nathan der Weise, Gustafson identifies the central concerns in each as the mother's threat to the father, his loss, and the dramatic strategies employed to reaffirm his ideal self-image. To battle the mother's perceived threat to the patriarchal order, the father demands an exclusive relationship with his daughter, one in which he alone dominates her development. This tragic and narcissistic enterprise on behalf of the father only highlights the mother's presence and Lessing's inability to exclude her from his works.