BAKIŞ VE EGO: D.H. LAWRENCE’IN TAHTA ATLA KAZANAN ÇOCUK ADLI ESERININ LACANCI ANALİZİ

Öz

Bu makale, Lacancı psikanaliz çerçevesinde yorumlanan anne bakışının, D. H. Lawrence’ın “Tahta Atla Kazanan Çocuk” adlı hikayesinde benlik oluşumunu ve arzuyu nasıl şekillendirdiğini incelemektedir. Çocuğun Büyük Öteki’nin arzusunu tatmin etme çabasına odaklanan çalışma, bu yönelimin kompulsif davranışlara ve öz-yıkıma yol açtığını savunur. Yakın okuma tekniğiyle, anne Hester’da nesneleşen bakış analiz edilir; annenin duygusal tutarsızlığı ve zenginliğe olan saplantısı, simgesel onayın eksikliğini üretir. Paul bu eksikliği keskin biçimde hisseder ve para ve şansa sahip olmanın annesinin sevgisini kazanacağına inanır. Hissettiği eksikliği bu fantezi yoluyla telafi etmeye çalışır. Onun takıntılı bahis davranışı, benliğini Büyük Öteki’nin arzusuyla hizalama ve duygusal yoksunluğu maddi başarıyla onarma girişimi olarak işlev görür. Ancak analiz, bu tür bir uyumun yapısal olarak imkânsız olduğunu gösterir; çünkü Büyük Öteki’nin arzusu simgesel düzende her zaman erişilemezdir. Paul’un tekrar eden çabaları onu yineleme, kayıp ve yabancılaşma döngüsüne hapseder ve sonunda öz-yıkıma sürükler. Makale, anne arzusunun bakış aracılığıyla yıkıcı bir ruhsal ekonomi ürettiğini göstererek Lawrence çalışmalarına katkıda bulunur. Bakışı merkezi bir Lacancı mekanizma olarak öne çıkararak, modern edebiyatta çocukluk öznelliği, arzu ve travmanın anlaşılmasında psikanalitik kuramın önemini vurgular.

Anahtar Kelimeler

• Arzu
• ego
• bakış
• fantezi
• Tahta Atla Kazanan Çocuk

THE GAZE AND EGO: A LACANIAN ANALYSIS OF D.H. LAWRENCE’S THE ROCKING-HORSE WINNER

Öz

This article examines how the maternal gaze, interpreted through Lacanian psychoanalysis, shapes ego formation and desire in D. H. Lawrence’s The Rocking-Horse Winner. Focusing on the child’s attempt to satisfy the desire of the Other, it argues that this pursuit produces compulsive behavior and self-destruction. Through close reading, the study analyzes the gaze embodied by Hester, whose emotional inconsistency and fixation on wealth deny symbolic affirmation. Paul becomes acutely aware of this lack and attempts to compensate through phantasy, believing that money and luck will secure maternal love. His obsessive betting functions as an effort to align his ego with the desire of the Other and to repair emotional absence through material success. The analysis shows, however, that such alignment is structurally impossible, since the desire of the Other remains unattainable within the symbolic order. Paul’s repeated efforts therefore trap him in a cycle of repetition, loss, and alienation that culminates in self-destruction. The article contributes to Lawrence scholarship by demonstrating how maternal desire, mediated through the gaze, produces a destructive psychic economy. By foregrounding the gaze as a central Lacanian mechanism, it highlights the value of psychoanalytic theory for understanding childhood subjectivity, desire, and trauma in modernist literature studies.

Anahtar Kelimeler

• Desire
• ego
• gaze
• phantasy
• The Rocking-Horse Winner

Kaynakça

1. Asquith, H. (1938). Moments of memory. Charles Scribner's Sons.
2. Ayvaz, Ö. (2016). D. H. Lawrence and patricide. COMU International Journal of Social Sciences, 1(2), 37–45. https://doi.org/10.31454/usb.378115
3. Bailly, L. (2023). Lacan: A beginner's guide. Oneworld Publications.
4. Banerjee, U. (2021). The voice and the gaze as "objet petit a." Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 13(4). https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.67
5. Ben Moussa, M. (2016). Connecting with the other: Empathy in Tom's Midnight Garden. Arab World English Journal, (4), 33–42. DOI:10.2139/ssrn.2872974
6. Davies, R. R. (1983). Lawrence, Lady Cynthia Asquith, and the rocking-horse winner. Studies in Short Fiction, 20(2), 121–126. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3831106
7. DeLia, D. (2016). Bridled rage: Preoedipal theory and the rocking-horse winner. The D. H. Lawrence Review, 41(2), 128–144. https://doi.org/10.2307/e26475524
8. Fierens, C. (2025). A reading of anxiety: Lacan’s Seminar X (P. McCarthy, Trans.). Routledge.

9. Fink, B. (1999). A clinical introduction to Lacanian psychoanalysis: Theory and technique. Harvard University Press.
10. Fink, B. (2007). Fundamentals of psychoanalytic technique: A Lacanian approach for practitioners. W. W. Norton.
11. Fink, B. (2016). Lacan on love: An exploration of Lacan’s Seminar VIII, Transference. Polity Press.
12. Grice, A. (2024). The Bloomsbury handbook to D. H. Lawrence. Bloomsbury Publishing.
13. Harris, J. H. (1984). The short fiction of D. H. Lawrence. Rutgers University Press.
14. Homer, S. (2005). Jacques Lacan. Routledge.
15. Horsley, E. M. (Ed.). (1969). Diaries: 1915–1918. Alfred A. Knopf.
16. Hughes, L. (1993). I wonder as I wander. Hill and Wang.
17. Jewinski, E. (1989). The phallus in D. H. Lawrence and Jacques Lacan. The D. H. Lawrence Review, 1, 7–24. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44233925
18. Koban, C. (1978). Allegory and the death of the heart in The Rocking-Horse Winner. Studies in Short Fiction, 15(4), 391–396. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3831333
19. Lacan, J. (1998). The four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis (J.-A. Miller, Ed.; A. Sheridan, Trans.). W. W. Norton & Company.
20. Lacan, J. (2006). The mirror stage as formative of the I function as revealed in psychoanalytic experience (B. Fink, Trans.). In Écrits: The first complete edition in English (pp. 75–81). W. W. Norton & Company. (Original work published 1949).
21. Lawrence, D. H. (1993). The rocking-horse winner. In A. Collins (Ed.), The rocking-horse winner and other British short stories (pp. 103–122). Metro.
22. Owens, C., & Almqvist, N. (Eds.). (2019). Studying Lacan’s seminars IV and V: From lack to desire. Routledge.
23. Quinet, A. (1995). The gaze as an object. In R. Feldstein, B. Fink, & M. Jaanus (Eds.), Reading Seminar XI: Lacan's four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis. State University of New York Press.
24. Schwartzman, G. (2011). D. H. Lawrence's the daughter-in-law: Transforming a family system. International Forum of Psychoanalysis, 20(3), 176–182. https://doi.org/10.1080/0803706X.2011.560395
25. Shehzad, U. (2020). Poetics of the uncanny: A post-phenomenological critique of D. H. Lawrence and Somerset Maugham's short fiction. NUML Journal of Critical Inquiry, 18(II), 25–27. https://doi.org/10.52015/numljci.v18iii.129
26. Snodgrass, W. D. (1963). A rocking-horse: The symbol, the pattern, the way to live. In M. Spilka (Ed.), D. H. Lawrence: A collection of critical essays (pp. 391–396). Prentice Hall. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3848293
27. Stoltzfus, B. (1996). Lacan and literature: Purloined pretexts. State University of New York Press.
28. Vanheule, S., Hook, D., & Neill, C. (Eds.). (2019). Reading Lacan’s Écrits: From “Signification of the phallus” to “Metaphor of the subject”. Routledge.
29. Watkins, D. P. (1987). Labor and religion in D. H. Lawrence's The Rocking-Horse Winner. Studies in Short Fiction, 24(3), 295-301. https://scholar.google.com/scholar? q=Labor+and+Religion+in+D.H.+Lawrence%E2%80%99s+The+Rocking-Horse+Winner+Watkins
30. Worthen, J. (1991). D. H. Lawrence: The early years, 1885–1912. Cambridge University Press.