The Family as Fantasy System in Mauriac's Le Noeud de vipères

The Family as Fantasy System in Mauriac's Le Noeud de vipères LAURENCE MORRISSETTE In The Politics of the Family, R.D. Laing oudines die processes which transform the family from a cluster of static objects to a continuous movement of patterns of relationship. Laing defines this family as "die family of origin transformed by internalization, partitioning, and odier operations, into die 'family' and mapped back onto die family and elsewhere."1 Basically, such an operation presents die individual, first, as the assimilator of already given, generationally transmitted, sets of relations, widi his reactions to diem and his mapping of diem on die family; secondly, as die "internalizor" of die odier family members' internalization of dieir own set of relations; and finally, as die guarantor of diis whole operation, responsible for the maintenance of diis transformed , internalized family, known as die "family." The purpose of diis study is to ferret out, from the manifold relationships in die family of Le Noeud de vipères, die unconscious operations which exemplify die "family." In die process, die novel's mimetic qualities will emerge and die symbolic representation of die knot of vipers will acquire its deeper meaning. Laing's approach in die study of die family is firmly grounded in die wider context of the phenomenological mediod of reality apprehension . Husserl had isolated die role of conscience in the formation of a world : ". . . an Ego-community, which includes me, becomes constituted (in my sphere of ownness, naturally) as a community of Egos existing with each odier and for each other — ultimately a community of Laurence Morrissette (Assistant Professor of French at the University of California, Los Angeles) is presently writing a book on existential psychiatry and the French literary heroine. 1R. D. Laing, The Politics of the Family (New York: Vintage Books, 1971), p. 3. Hereafter referred to as PF. 84THE FAMILY AS FANTASY SYSTEM monads, which, moreover, (in its communalized intentionality) constitutes die one identical world."2 This particular process of die constitution of a world is applied by Laing widiin die closest part of an individual 's "sphere of immediacy," die family. What results is a tighdywoven analysis of die deeper structure of present-day families. Perhaps die best way to explain die sequence of events which form die body of die "family" is to reproduce die history, as presented by Laing, of a man who continually felt destroyed by women and saw in diis a repetition of his own modier's rejection when he was diree years old: Prototypical sequence 1.He is with the woman he loves (his nanny). 2.His mother returns, sends nanny away, 3.and then sends him away to boarding school, 4.while father does not intervene. 5.Mother vacillates between him and affairs with men. 6.He runs away from boarding school and is returned by the police. Repeating scenario as an adult 1.He falls in love with A, 2.leaves A for B, 3.and breaks up with B. 4.C does not intervene. 5.He and B vacillate between each other and affairs with others. 6.He tries to escape but can't (PF, p. 10). Laing notes diat in die reenactment of die original pattern of relationship , the individual does not realize diat die "victim" has changed. By assimilating die earlier sequence and dien mapping it out on die later sequence, he sees himself quite clearly as die "destroyed" radier dian die "destroyer." The individual transfers a set of relations from 'Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations (The Hague: Martinus Nijhofi, 1960), p. 107. Husserl's italics and parentheses. ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW85 die modality of perception to diose of imagination, fantasy, and especially memory. From dien on, he needs only a certain number of "family objects" on whom to dirust a sequence of events. What is presented in die above example, however, is a mere twogeneration , single-individual interiorization.3 The internalizations of a multi-generational family of several members, as in Le Noeud de vipères, form a complex, mind-boggling set of relations which practically exclude die family members and all but die most impartial and perceptive outside observer from arriving at even a partial knowledge of die...