The Bright Forms Shining in the Dark: Juliet Mitchell's Theory of Sibling Dynamics as Illuminated in A. S. Byatt's “The Chinese Lobster”

Abstract

Through a reading of A. S. Byatt's “The Chinese Lobster,” this paper illustrates some implications of Juliet Mitchell's theory of the role of siblings in mental life. Mitchell's recent work elucidates a complex web of fantasies, desires, and conflicts centered on sibling-figures. The paper begins by outlining several of Mitchell's concepts: the sibling crisis; lateral fantasy; laterally based narcissistic identifications; and the role of lateral relatedness in object love, self-esteem, thirdness, and hysteria. Byatt's story provides a springboard for exploring the profound relational significance of these ideas.

Notes

Thanks to Susan Boxer, Ph.D., Laurie Case, Ph.D., and Lorelei Sontag, Ph.D., who offered valuable guidance and support. And thanks, especially, to Stephen Seligman, D.M.H., whose editing and encouragement made this paper a reality.

¹Mitchell has argued that all children, not just those with a younger sibling, have their unique experience of this crisis. All youngsters encounter the reality or possibility of siblings. (Consider Klein's analyses of attacks on the mother's babies—what are these other than real and imagined siblings?) The child's actual circumstances matter, of course. Schematically, older siblings may become preoccupied with issues of displacement and personal murderousness, younger with their identifications with and fears of the older, and youngest and only children with concerns about what happened to the siblings who were never born.

² Mitchell (2000) believes that irritability often signals an upsurge in lateral fantasy.

³Meant as a position and a role, not necessarily as a specifically gendered parent.

⁴This vertical aspect of the “law of the mother” is intriguing but difficult, at least for me. The mother's prohibition is clear—you can't have babies as a child—but the incentive for compliance, or punishment for noncompliance, is not. Still, I can see why Mitchell theorizes it. First, both boys and girls—and male and female adult hysterics—routinely have fantasies of having babies “from themselves,” without involvement of any other, much less a sexually different other (Mitchell, 2000). Then, if loss and mourning are necessary prerequisites to symbolization, you need a “lost” baby in order to have one that's symbolized as different. The childhood fantasy becomes this lost baby. Mitchell's “law of the mother” thus attempts to lay out one path toward symbolizing the difference between oneself and one's child; one's mother's babies and one's own, real or fantasized; and one's siblings and oneself.

⁵Although they tend to miss hysteria's “masculine” manifestations, such as Don Juanism (Mitchell, 2000, pp. 246–279) and psychopathy (Mitchell, 2003, pp. 184–192). Mitchell offers a wide-reaching critique of how “hysteria” gets collapsed into femininity, and vice versa.

⁶ Mitchell (2003) quoted Winnicott's (1978) case of the Piggle, who, on the birth of her sister, “was not herself. In fact she refused to be herself and said so: ‘I'm the mommy. I'm the baby.’” (pp. 204–205).

⁷Here she firmly regains her first name, “Gerda,” and is no longer “Dr. Himmelblau.” The “Dr.” implies her position at the university, and the last name also reflects the vertical order (whose child is she?). Her first name, however, places her in a lateral world, where it both conveys familiarity and, historically, distinguishes her from siblings, who would share her family name.