Renata Salecl

I will try to answer these questions by taking the example, first, of two novels, Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day and Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence, and, second, of a short story by Edith Wharton, "The Muse's Tragedy". While the latter deals with a woman using the love of a man to organize the symbolic space that would provide her with an identity and confirm her as an object of love, the two novels are about the opposite problem of love supposedly thwarted by society's symbolic power structure. Let me first focus on the novels, which offer an aesthetic presentation of what Louis Althusser called Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs): "a certain number of realities which present themselves to the immediate observer in the form of distinct and specialist institutions" and are primarily part of the private domain, like families, schools, churches,parties or cultural ventures. In the two novels, it is precisely one of the most important ISAs, the family and "society", in the sense of codified social norms and the hierarchy of social relations, that dominates the private life of the protagonists: their love affairs are supposedly constrained by the influence of the oppressive ISAs that organize their lives.

The Age of Innocence is set in the extremely hierarchical high society of nineteenth－century New York, where every social act or movement is codified, and where it can be a constant struggle for an individual not to misinterpret the unwritten rules and become an outcast. The extent of codification in this society is visible in the way people organize their public and private lives: from the type of china they use at dinner parties, to the way they dress, the location of their houses, the respect they pay to people higher up the social ladder, etc. The Remains of the Day is set in the equally hierarchical aristocratic society of England just before and after the Second World War, with the central role played by the highest of servants－the butler. This is also a society of unwritten codes, in which every part of life is fully organized. And the butler is the one upon whom the perfection and maintenance of this order depends. As the butler Stevens in The Remains of the Day points out, by doing his service in the most dignified and perfectionist manner, he contributes significantly to the major historical events his master is involved in. The butler Stevens is the prototype of an "ideological servant": he never questions his role in the machinery, he never opposes his boss even when he makes obvious mistakes, i.e. he does not think but obeys.

Both novels imply there is something suppressed or hidden behind this ideological machinery－the passions of the individuals engaged in these rituals their secret "true" loves. The film versions of the two novels especially stress this hidden terrain "beneath" the institution, the "real" emotions behind the fake, public ones. The main trauma of The Age of Innocence is thus the impossibility of love between Newland Archer, the young aristocrat, and Countess Ellen Olenska, the eccentric woman whose behavior is under the close scrutiny of New York society. Newland, who is engaged to be married to one of the "proper" women of this society, tacitly, because of its rules, gives up his hopes of fulfilling his desire for Ellen and becomes a devoted husband. In The Remains of the Day we have the unspoken passion between butler Stevens and housekeeper Miss Kenton, both of whom are also too obedient to the social codes to let their feelings out and to find personal happiness. In short, both novels reveal the oppressiveness of the institutions in which their protagonists live, and which prevent them from finding love. The question is, however, whether it is really the institution that prevents love. Is it not actually the institution that, in a paradoxical way, produces love?

At first sight, The Age of Innocence is a novel of unfulfilled romantic love, of the desperate longing of two people deeply in love (Newland and Ellen) who are unable to pursue their happiness because of the rigid society in which they live. Newland is a conformist, a decent member of New York high society, engaged to be married to May, one of the most eligible girls of this same society. When he encounters the eccentric Ellen and falls in love with her, Newland discovers that there might be something "outside" the societal codes which he so dutifully fulfills. This outside is presumably the world of pure passions, a world where love reigns unconditionally.

The external constraints of the society's codes and the fact that both lovers are married produce the conditions for romantic love to develop. Newland himself admits that the image of Ellen in his memory is stronger than the "real" Ellen. Ellen thus has a special value precisely as absent, inaccessible object of Newland's constant longings. That is why he does not even intend to realize his relationship with her in any sexual form.

During one of their emotional encounters, he thus says: "Don't be afraid: you needn't squeeze yourself back into your corner like that. A stolen kiss isn't what I want. Look: I'm not even trying to touch the sleeve of your jacket. Don't suppose that I don't understand your reasons for not wanting to let this feeling between us dwindle into an ordinary hole－and－corner love－affair. I couldn't have spoken like this yesterday, because when we've been apart, and I'm looking forward to seeing you, every thought is burnt up in a great flame. But then you come; and you're so much more than I remembered, and what I want of you is so much more than an hour or two every now and then, with wastes of thirsty waiting between, that I can sit perfectly still beside you, like this, with that other vision in my mind, just quietly trusting to it to come true." For romantic love to emerge,the real person not be present; what is necessary is the existence of the image. Lacan first defines love in terms of a narcissistic relationship of the subject: what is at work in falling in love is the recognition of the narcissistic image that forms the substance of the ideal ego. When we fall in love, we position the person who is the object of our love in the place of the ideal ego. We love this object because of the perfection we have striven to reach for our own ego. However, it is not only that the subject loves in the other the image he or she would like to inhabit him－or herself. The subject simultaneously posits the object of his or her love in the place of the Ego Ideal, from which the subject would like to see him－or herself in a likeable way. When we are in love, the love object placed in the Ego Ideal enables us to perceive ourselves in a new way－compassionate, lovable, beautiful, decent, etc. Because of the Ideal invested in the person we love, we feel shame in front of her or him or we try to fascinate this person.

However, to understand the mechanisms of love, one has to look beyond the Ideal. Lacan's famous definition of love is that the subject gives to the other what he or she does not have. This object is the traumatic objet petita, the object cause of desire. Behind the narcissistic relationship toward the love－object we encounter the real, the traumatic object in ourselves, as well as in the other: "Analysis demonstrates that love, in its essence, is narcissistic, and reveals that the substance of what is supposedly object－like (objectal)－what a bunch of bull－is in fact that which constitutes a remainder in desire, namely, its cause, and sustains desire through its lack of satisfaction (insatisfaction), and even its impossibility."

How does the subject relate to the object of his or her desire in romantic love? Newland wants to escape with Ellen to a place where they would be able to freely enjoy their love, where they would be "simply two human beings who love each other; and nothing else on earth will matter". Significantly, it is Newland－the conformist－who believes in the possibility of this place of fulfillment outside institutions, and it is Ellen, the nonconformist half－outcast, who dispels his illusions when she answers him by saying:

"Oh, my dear－where is that country? Have you ever been there? ... I know of so many who've tried to find it; and, believe me, they all got out by mistake at wayside stations; at places like Boulogne, or Pisa, or Monte－Carlo－and it wasn't at all different from the old world they'd left, but only rather smaller and dingier and more promiscuous ... Ah, believe me, it's a miserable little country!" ...

"Then what, exactly, is your plan for us?" he asked.

"For us? But there is no us in that sense! We're near each other only if we stay far from each other. Then we can be ourselves. Otherwise we're only Newland Archer, the husband of Ellen Olenska's cousin, and Ellen Olenska, the cousin of Newland Archer's wife, trying to be happy behind the backs of the people who trust them."

"Ah, I'm beyond that," he groaned.

"No, you're not! You've never been beyond. And I have, and I know what it looks like there."

It is only at the very end of the novel that this message－and thereby the truth of Newland's desire－is brought home to him. Lacan points out that "desire is formed as something ... the demand means beyond whatever it is able to formulate". On the level of demand, Newland's passion could be perceived as his wish to unite with Ellen; however, his desire is to renounce this unification: Newland submits himself to the social code to maintain Ellen as the inaccessible object that sets his desire in motion. This logic enables us to understand the ending of the novel when Newland, now widowed, decides during his trip to Paris not to see Ellen and thus finally gives up the consummation of his great love. Newland, sitting in front of Ellen's house, tries to imagine what goes on in the apartment:

"It's more real to me here than if I went up," he suddenly heard himself say; and the fear lest that last shadow of reality should lose its edge kept him rooted to his seat as the minutes succeeded each other. He sat for a long time on the bench in the thickening dusk, his eyes never turning from the balcony. At length a light shone through the windows, and a moment later a man－servant came out on the balcony, drew up the awnings, and closed the shutters. At that, as if it had been the signal he waited for, Newland Archer got up slowly and walked back alone to his hotel.

This last act is an ethical one in the Lacanian sense of "not giving up on one's desire". All previous renunciations of the love affair between Newland and Ellen depended on an "ethics with the excuse". Thus we can read Ellen's statement, "I can't love you unless I give you up", as a declaration of romantic love and not as an ethical act: the love becomes romantic because of the suffering it involves. Similarly, Newland's giving up on Ellen in his youth is still linked to the expectation of a "future" when he will stop lying to his wife and when the reality (of his love) will take a true form. Only the last renunciation has the meaning of an ethical act because there is no utilitarian demand any more. From a pragmatic point of view, this renunciation is stupid: Newland is celibate, as is Ellen; he still loves her; presumably she is also far from indifferent to him; even Newland's son wants his father to rediscover his great love. Not only are there no social obstacles to their relationship, it is even Newland's society's expectation that a young widower find a new life companion.

Why did Newland decide not to see Ellen? The answer could be traced in "the fear lest that last shadow of reality should lose its edge". Our perception of reality is linked to the fact that something has to be precluded from it: the object as the point of the gaze. Every screen of reality includes a constructive "stain", the trace of what had to be precluded from the field of reality in order that this field can acquire its consistency; this stain appears in the guise of, a void Lacan names object a. It is the point that I  the subject, cannot see: it eludes me insofar as it is the point from which the screen itself "returns the gaze", or watches me, that is, the point where the gaze itself is inscribed into the visual field of reality. For Newland's reality to retain consistency, this object has to stay dosed in the room in Paris. That is why he can leave the scene when the man－servant closes the window. This gesture of closing the window is a sign for Newland: a sign that the object is securely precluded so that his reality may remain intact.

Throughout his life, Newland perceived his married life with Mayas a necessity to which he must submit because society expected it of him, and because of the "innocence" and "purity" of his lovely wife. At the very end of the novel, however, he encounters another duty: the recognition that there is no "other country", that there is no "beyond" the codes and rituals that have suppressed him throughout his life. The other person who is aware of the lack of any "beyond" is May. After May's death, Newland learns that she knew about his great love for Ellen. However, May responded to this fact in her "innocent" way: she never revealed her knowledge or reproached Newland, but manipulated the situation with the help of the social rules and codes. This recognition of the non－existence of anything "beyond" the institutions is what May paradoxically has in common with Ellen.