For the Love of a Fish: A Lacanian Reading of Margaret Atwood'sSurfacing

What is it about?

This article analyses Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing (1972), from a Lacanian perspective, as a myth of the origins of desire. Emotionally deadened, the vital question which comes into focus for the protagonist is not whether or not she did the right thing but why she doesn’t feel anything; vaguely aware of something ‘missing’ in herself, she attempts to regain a lost ‘wholeness’. What she recovers, I will argue, is not a mythical missing ‘half,’ but the signifier of desire, in the form of a fish.

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Why is it important?

Lacanian concepts have entered current theoretical discourse, but are often subsumed within other debates which do not locate these concepts within the larger framework of Lacan's work. Similarly, the quest motif in Surfacing has often been dealt with, but the object of the quest is generally situated outside the protagonist. Here, I revisit the quest motif in Surfacing by addressing the question of subjectivity and the emergence of desire through a detailed Lacanian reading.