Staging M/Othering in Susan Glaspell’s The Verge: A Semiotic Reading

Abstract

This paper studies the links between psychoanalytic approach, language, and the construction of gender in Susan Glaspell’s play The Verge (1921), with specific reference to the French feminist psychologist Julia Kristeva’s theory of 'semiotics', which examines the female subject’s confusing relation to the Symbolic Order from a feminist perspective. Kristeva suggests that semiotics signifies otherness; and through rhythms and a play of language, the connection to the pre-Oedipal is evoked. This language, which is linked to the mother’s body, breaks through and disrupts ordered symbolic discourse. The very nature of semiotic language is juxtaposed with the abstract Law, which orders the symbolic, yet both exist in the signification of language. This paper shows that a return to the semiotic (as a feature of both subject and text) in The Verge could be an approach to challenge traditional literary representations and overturn prevailing social constructs of femininity.

Keywords: Susan Glaspell, Julia Kristeva, French Feminism, American Theatre, Semiotics, Motherhood.