Title: Subject, Self and Identity: A Lacanian Psychoanalytic Interpretation of Alice Munro’s “The Albanian Virgin”

Abstract: In Alice Munro’s short story “The Albanian Virgin”, the female protagonists Claire and Charlotte/Lottar took different approaches to cope with their identity crises. From the perspective of Lacanian psychoanalysis, this essay conducts an analysis of the heroines’ recognition and reconstruction of their subjectivity, pointing out that Claire found her ideal ego in imaginative and symbolic identification, while Charlotte/Lottar failed to integrate herself into different societies and different molding effects on the subject in the Symbolic, where language, culture, and law play dominant roles. Through exhibiting the heroines’ efforts to pursue their subjectivity under the disguises of multiple identities, Munro conveys her concerns and rethinking about whether patriarchal society is capable of fully understanding the female living experience and deeply-buried secrets.

Keywords: Munro, “The Albanian Virgin”, subject, self, identity

Authors: Chuan Huang, Lecturer, Postdoctoral Research Station of Foreign Languages and Literatures at Shanghai International Studies University, Shanghai, China; Lan Wang, Professor, School of English Studies, Shanghai International Studies University, Shanghai, China.