The Recess Does Not Exist: Absorption, Literality, and Feminine Subjectivity in Sophia Lee's The Recess

The structure of feminine subjectivity in Sophia Lee's The Recess; Or, A Tale of Other Times (1783) is frequently reduced to a discursive construction or a maternal substance. When critical attention is focused on Lee's unique handling of visual and textual "absorption"—a concept I borrow from Michael Fried—it is clear that historicist and Gothic logics of subjectivity fall short of describing what the novel actually achieves. I link Lee's textual innovations to Jacques Lacan's theories of the gaze and of feminine desire. Just as Lacan emphasized the literal aspect of the signifier, Lee attempts to literalize the historical and subjective dramas with which she engages in the novel. Her literalizations exceed the standard alignment of the feminine with non-meaning or nature (an alignment that supports the assumption of masculine meaningfulness) as Lee's literality pertains to the letter itself. To be absorbed by the literal: it is this unique scenario that necessitates a rethinking of the basic problematic of sentimental reading practices in the eighteenth century.