According to Freud, it was not merely women who suffer from penis envy, jealousy becoming a permanent character trait to mask over the lack of having. They share this trait with the mystical father of the primal horde.
This is the chronos-like figure who possessed "all the women" before he was killed by his sons. Professor Morel brings to our notice another congruence between the rich father and the forever deprived daughter - united in the sense of their having, posited differently yet united in their sense of their having, posited differently yet united in the valence of their call. One, is the ultimate possessor the other the fairy tale in waiting.
Jealousy we are shown is linked to desire, or as Paul Benichou called it, the proprietory mentality. We are also alerted to the similarity between jealousy and envy. And, most tellingly, he who possesses is not immune from wanting. The author, Genevieve Morel provides us a rather fascinating analogy. In Achilies' race with the tortoise something eludes him each time, this not all as it were, half the distance is the not all the woman takes from the contract of her bond, reserving this infinity for the Other, who may here even be a position occupied by God. A position that is concealed from the woman's partner.
As you may imagine, in any case where the deferral of a satisfaction is in place - we have a case where this deferral itself may be satisfying. Regarding the author's reading of jealousy in question, Freud does provide us with a name for such a phenomenon - Jalouissance.
This is patented to be the confrontation of the subject with the ideal image who does possess what the subject desires. This confrontation is described as a torturous pain that maintains itself through contemplation and imaginary confrontation. The author points out that this is not merely a sexual jealousy, but a rivalry that entails a constant castration of the virile partner, and a refusal of everything that comes from him, often making daily life harder.
This jealousy however may also permit for a degree of commonality which arises out of a desire for the loved object. Narcissism may indeed take a self-protective form, and a woman may posit an object of her jealousy as her own idealized self-image. Here, being mistaken for someone else, especially in an amorous encounter brings with it the appeal of an infedelity. And this allows us to see why Lacan insists that an access to the feminine as absolute alterity requires the mediation of a man.
The structure of this relay can entail a woman taking the place of a man in the mediatory moment, yet this may also change the structure. In assuming the man's position in the prior relation, she may pose to the man her question regarding his desire for another woman. As this interrogation entails another woman who our interrogator may or may not know the man's relation to as it were, or his non-relation, the assumption of a form of jealousy is noticed. To quote the author Genevieve Morel "the woman who is jealous of herself, like the jealous hysteric, aims at the woman through the man."
We are left with a question here, however. What if the specificity of feminine jouissance is considered to be the mediatory operator when the not-all that enables sexuation is considered? Freud himself, the author notes, would see the demand for fidelity to be arising from jouissance, and not from penis envy. However, it is precisely the basis of this demand which creates the repetition, the fidelity as it were that drives jealousy. A few interesting double binds, which also seem to be changing the terms in question.
Indeed the force of the fidelity a woman has for a man is not as much in her desire to move his penis, as to the castrated Other. "This is the true motive for the demand for the fidelity of the Other on the part of the woman." The author however characterizes this fidelity on the basis of right, and hence the statement is formulated as '...not so much to the partners penis which is demanded as to the castrated Other, who is loved by the woman and is the condition of her jouissance."
This does lead us to consider why the author states that betrayal in love is much more brutally felt than betrayal in desire... the subject does not usually know that the love of the castrated partner is the basis of her jouissance, even in the sexual act.
The man here, the partner of the woman allows her to reach that other jouissance, yet where she herself is not all to him.
We seem to have a reading or perhaps a re-reading of the basis of fidelity in women from a fear of castration in Freud, to that of jouissance in Lacan. As with tragic jouissance however, we can have tragic jealousy. This new jouissance, or women at least, no longer being regulated by the fear of castration as in men, becomes in the author's words, a supplement to male jouissance, 'the relation framed by the phallic function of the Other. The female, for this to take place, occupies the place of objet a in the man's fantasy, This interpellative frame of course is sustained only by fidelity.
We are in fact alerted to a conjugate function in jealousy, if this is still the right word - as Levi Strauss notes, (jealousy) tends to support or create a state of conjunction whenever there is a threat of disjunction. And here I may be tempted to read the proposition in question in a political if not merely amorous sense. In the amorous case however, conjunction is maintained by the fantasy, which serves as a condition as well as a product of the contingency which establishes the phallic relation.
There may however be a fantasy that is characterized by hatred and not of love, and Morel does note that such fixation, may grant the subject a degree of lucidity, even as it permits acts that were previously considered impossible.
To be sure, Meda is not the only example of the jealous woman in literature even if she be the most archetypical, and the author does provide us with a few more examples. The most citeable here being from Goldoni's Le Donne Gelose (The Jealous Ladies) where, one of the characters is said "she wants all the men for herself", perhaps not unlike the mirror stage of the primal father.
The discourse of the analysand has neglected the rivalries of men or hysterical protests against the master, or of the castrated father yet if these remains dimensions of a man's love, even if envisioned by women then perhaps the discourse of the analysand has neglected the propensities of a jealous woman.
They tend, Morel informs us - not to reveal or express this, as if it were a symptom that does not disturb them.
Analyses does reveal, however, that this remains a symptomal point in the structure of the subject. To conclude with a quote from the author '...masculine jealousy is an expression of man's inability to have or possess woman as not-all. Feminine jealousy is a result of her being not all in relation to her jouissance.
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