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SAJMR

Spectrum: A Journal of Multidisciplinary Research


Vol. 3 Issue 12, December 2014, ISSN 2278-0637, pp. 94-103

MERE FATALE: WOMEN AND THE IEKIAN VOID OF


SUBJECTIVITY IN PHILIP ROTHS PORTNOYS COMPLAINT AND
SABBATHS THEATER

OMID DELBANDI
MA of English Literature, Department of Foreign Languages, Kharazmi University, Tehran, Iran.

ABSTRACT
The present study is an attempt to elaborate on the emergence of mere fatale in Philip
Roths Portnoys Complaint and Sabbaths Theater. In order to achieve this aim, Slavoj
ieks notions regarding women and femme fatale are employed. According to iek in
his book, The Metastases of Enjoyment, femme fatale is an inhuman partner or a
traumatic object with whom no relationship is possible. Akin to femme fatale, mere
fatale is a mother that no relationship is possible with her as well. In fact, mere fatale is
an over-caring mother, disturbing hersons life by her obsessive interferences. In
Portnoys Complaint, Alexander Portnoy suffers from his mothers bold presence in all
his recollections. On the other hand, Sabbath yearns for his mother to resolve all
predicaments in his life. Mere fatales bold presence and non-presence complicate her
subjectivization and impede self-identification for the son.

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KEYWORDS: Mere fatale, Subjectivity, Neurotic, Femme fatal, Mother

INTRODUCTION
The complexity of the position of women in different periods of the history has always been
controversial. Either the typical bad women in the mythology such as Medusa as the mortal
Gorgon and the sirens as the femme fatale or the fairy tale angels exasperated many feminists of
the 20th and 21st century. The question being probed here is not the why-ness of the existence of
such discrepancies between male and female genders, but the introduction of another ruinous
aspect of woman, functioning in the unconscious level, the depiction of the latent picture of a
mother too caring and affectionate with fatal influences on the life of the protagonists of such

SAJMR
Spectrum: A Journal of Multidisciplinary Research
Vol. 3 Issue 12, December 2014, ISSN 2278-0637, pp. 94-103

postmodern works as Philip Roths Portnoys Complaint. To put it another way, why do the male
protagonists scold these typical female characters, e.g. a mother, as a ruinous presence in their
lives and how is a mere fatale (the main concern of this paper) created in such postmodern work?
In the course of Portnoys Complaint, Roth has created a protagonist whose characterization is
deeply contingent on his relationship with his mother, a typical mwtr, whose over-caring link
with her son has changed him into an over-dependant and hypochondriac character. Even in his
copulations, Alexander is trying to explore his mother; the reason of this fascination and
obsession could be Alexs failure of entering the Symbolic order. Being under the eyes of the
phallic mother and deprived of a father as the agent of the big Other in order to guide him to the
Symbolic order suspends him in the oedipal period and never allows him to adore his mother or
despise her.
At the beginning of the novel, Alexander Portnoy is depicted as a person with a psychological
disorder in which strongly-felt ethical and altruistic impulses are perpetually warring with
extreme sexual longings, often of a perverse naturemany of the symptoms can be traced to the
bonds obtaining in the mother-child relationship(Roth, 1969:III). The emphasis on the motherchild relationship is apparent in the whole novel that there remains no doubt that Alexs
personality has been profoundly shaped and affected by this very link. Due to this relationship
neurosis is an initial symptom in Alexanders life. In the developmental stages of a childs life, a
child should acquire language to enter the symbolic stage and accept the symbolic castration.
However, a neurotic is a subject who has not fully accepted symbolic castration; a neurotic
(male or female) still tries to be the object of desire for the mother (Wood, 2012:21). Alex as a
neurotic subject still tries to win the affection of his mother, what he does or does not do, has two
significances; either he wants his mother to be satisfied with him, or he acts against her. In both
cases, mother is the central figure in his life, giving meaning to all his deeds.

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95

MOTHER: THE PHALLIC PRESENCE


Alexs two-folded behavior toward his mother is remarkably depicted in Portnoys Complaint.
At times she was his angel, capable of doing magic tricks; she was so deeply imbedded in my
consciousness that for the first year of school I seem to have believed that each of my teachers
was my mother in disguise. As soon as the last bell had sounded, I would rush off for home,
wondering as I ran if I could possibly make it to our apartment before she had succeeded in
transforming herself, (1) and sometimes he detested her so much that he could not even express
his anger to his psychiatrist; Doctor, why, why oh why oh why oh why does a mother pull a
knife on her own son? I am six, seven years old, how do I know she really wouldn't use it? What
am I supposed to do, try bluffing her out, at seven? (Roth, 1969:16)
The obvious point here is the phallic role of Portnoys mother; the phallic symbolism of knife
with which she threatened him once accredits this claim. Among all the former occurrences in
Alexanders life, knife is exceedingly striking, as sharp it is by its nature, it bears the
symbolization of castration. Alex has been symbolically castrated by the same knife his mother
used to threaten him. The word knife was used twenty-two times in this novel, most of them
representing the symbolic nature of it, acting as the mediator primarily between mother and son,
and subsequently between Alex as a teenager and the society he would enter in the near future.

SAJMR
Spectrum: A Journal of Multidisciplinary Research
Vol. 3 Issue 12, December 2014, ISSN 2278-0637, pp. 94-103

Portnoys Complaint emphasizes Alexs need for a paternal protection against the maternal
phallic aggressiveness. This fact in the process of the formation of Alexander's identity is
peculiar, since instead of the fear and hatred toward a father, he becomes Alexs only savior.
Beside the omnipresence of the threatening knife in Alexs life, he could be called a neurotic
in any case, since he cannot stop being the object of her mothers desire. Portnoys very desire
isnt wiped out until the end of the novel, or perhaps until his death, since at the end of the novel
when he was in Jerusalem, he encountered a girl who bears so much resemblance to his mother
and what he wanted to do was having sexual intercourse with her. Once more, before his first
session with his psychiatrist he yearned for being his mothers object of desire.
Alexs vexation is about the most significant dichotomy in his life, which cannot be resolved,
since both of them are fundamental. This dichotomy, keeping Alexs each and every action under
its control is that of strongly-felt ethical and altruistic impulses perpetually warring with
extreme sexual longings. The other side of Portnoys character craves being good, both morally
and ethically. However he had his first doubts about religion when he was a teenager and had a
severe argument with his father about the existence of God, and this was coincident with his
mothers sickness:

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[Alex:] Look, I don't believe in God and I don't believe in the Jewish religion-or
in any religion. They're all lies.
Then who created the world, Alex? he asks contemptuously. It just happened, I
suppose, according to you Who created the world and the people in it?
Nobody?
Right! Nobody!...
he sobs without protection of the newspaper, and with such pitiful fury-is because
my mother is in a hospital bed recovering from surgery.(Ibid 67-70)
The significance of Alexs argument with his father in the celebration of Rosh Hashanah, the
Jewish New Year, is its coincidence with his mothers surgery. Alexs statements both indicate
his one-sided hatred toward his mother and also the absence of the phallic authority, his mother.
In other words, this is the phallic authority which reserves the stability of any religion in any
society. The absence of the mother-phallic figure becomes favorable for Alexanders premature
communistic ideology, though detrimental for the familys union and the religions stability.
Contrary to what the reader might have experienced in his personal life, Alexs father is a
castrated man, and its symbolism lies in his constipation, which always keeps him in the toilet.
Alexander stands on the opposite pole comparing to his father, [a]s a child, he masturbated,
preferably on the toilet, in line with the fathers constipation which emerges ever more as a
central experience leading to a negative identification. The father cannot let go. The son cannot
hold anything in, or hold onto anyone (Bettelheim, 2003:16). Alexs autoeroticism is also a
reactionary function whose control is out of his mothers hands; although she attempts to keep
this under control as well, since she wanted to persuade him not to flush the toilet in order to
inspect what is going on in the toilet. The similarity between the father and the son occurs at this
stage. As a matter of fact, the toilet has transformed into the most mysterious and recondite site
for the conspiracy against the mother-authority.

SAJMR
Spectrum: A Journal of Multidisciplinary Research
Vol. 3 Issue 12, December 2014, ISSN 2278-0637, pp. 94-103

According to iek in The Plague of Fantasies, the neurotic-hysteric wants to be the object of
the [m]Other's desire, not the object of [his/her] enjoyment (iek, 1997:44). Although, there
has been always a red line, even for a neurotic, when he suspects that her mother is enjoying his
sacrificed jouissance illicitly, that he is reduced to an instrument of the [m]Other, exploited,
manipulated by her (Ibid 44). Thus Alexs response to his mothers betrayal is counter-betrayal,
having sexual intercourse with the shikses, the non-Jewish girls whom every good Jewish
mother fears her son would marry and have child. The love of shikse is in fact the
climax/anticlimax of a moral Jewish family. Alexs cousin, Harold was the victim of the love of
shikse as well. This profanity in the Jewish family however becomes the loophole for Alex to
steer clear of the familial boundaries on one hand and to hysterically accuse himself for his antimoralistic attitude towards life on the other.
[A] neurotic has made the sacrifice of jouissance(which is why she is not a
psychotic), which enables her to enter the symbolic order, but she is obsessed
with the notion that the sacrificed jouissance, the jouissance taken from her, is
stored somewhere in the Other who is profiting from it 'illegitimately', enjoying in
her place - so her strategy consists in getting at least part of it back by
transgressing the Other's norms (from masturbating and cheating, up to speeding
without getting a ticket)( iek, 1994:144).
Alexanders two-folded feeling toward his mother and his mothers intricate characterization
(consistent with what is narrated by Alexander) open up a further argument consistent with
Jacques Lacans dichotomy of man and woman in his renowned formulae of sexuation.

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THE FORMULAE OF SEXUATION

FIGURE 1: THE FORMULAE OF SEXUATION, PUT FORWARD BY JACQUES


LACAN
Considering the intricacy of the these formulae and the multi-folded significances of them and
consistent with the subject matter of this study, it suffices to mention that after deciphering the

SAJMR
Spectrum: A Journal of Multidisciplinary Research
Vol. 3 Issue 12, December 2014, ISSN 2278-0637, pp. 94-103

female side of the formulae, the following notions could be concluded, [w]oman is the symptom
of man, [t]he woman does not exist, and consequently [t]here is no such thing as sexual
relationship (Ibid 144). It is necessary however to state that in these formulae woman and man
are not the biological distinction of subjects. The distinction here is absolutely through the
experience of Jouissance, whether phallic Jouissanceor Other Jouissance. According to this
definition, even a biological man could experience both Jouissances, thus he enters the domain
of femininity. The other point not to be missed in these formulae is that nonexistence does not
have a negative connotation, since iek in The Metastases of Enjoyment avers Woman does
not exist does not in any way refer to an ineffable feminine Essence beyond the domain of
discursive existence: what does not exist is this very unattainable Beyond a Hegelian reflexive
reversal of recognizing in this nothing the very negativity that defines the notion of the subject
(Ibid).

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The original influence for the formulae of sexuation is put forward by Otto Weininger in his
book Sex and Character. Controversially enough this philosopher is known as the worst
misogynist in the history of philosophy, but Lacan and mostly iek attempt to prove
Weiningers ideas even as pro-feminism, certainly contrary to his wish. Woman does not exist
is for iek a credit for Lacans offerings in the formulae of sexuation where woman is
acknowledged as the pure void or the pure subjectivity. In line with ieks notion, woman is the
ultimate subject, the subject par excellence, that side of subject that man cannot resist evading it;
nonetheless it haunts him like the Hegelian [n]ight of the World. iek believes that what
Weininger never paid attention to was the very subjectivity, thus in response to Otto Weiningers
antifeminist assertions to view a woman as object iek accredits in The Metastases of
Enjoyment womans full subjectivity:
[I]n so far as the subject is a, 'being-of-language' , Weininger fails to recognize in
this striving the constitutive motion of the subject qua void, lack of the signifier that is, the striving of a hole, a missing link in the signifying chain, ($) for a
signifying representative (SI). In other words, far from expressing the subject's
fear of a 'pathological' stain, of the positivity of an inert object, Weininger's
aversion to woman bears witness to the fear of the most radical dimension of
subjectivity itself: of the Void which 'is' the subject. (145)
At this stage, consistent with Lacans formulae of sexuation, iek affirms that woman is the
void of the subject, something which cannot be interpreted by the Symbolic order, a
manifestation of the Real. This is why the act is associated with woman, not a man. Although,
according to the non-biological distinction between masculinity and femininity, Hamlet in
Shakespeares play is a feminine figure, as far as hysteria a permanent part of his personality.
Antigone is a feminine figure as well, not because her biology affirms the fact, but she commits
the act(iek, 2012:84).
For Alexander as well, mother is the void of the subject, which cannot be deciphered by him
throughout his adventures in the course of the novel. The inability of the interpretation affirms
that Alexs mother is a piece of the Real. How hard Alex attempts to explore and discover his
mothers role in his life, he is more distracted from the real answer. This could be the rationale

SAJMR
Spectrum: A Journal of Multidisciplinary Research
Vol. 3 Issue 12, December 2014, ISSN 2278-0637, pp. 94-103

for the creation of the mere fatale, the alleged mother with no stable personality in her sons life,
at times endearing and sometimes despicable and devastating. The reader of these kinds of
novels, especially with first-person point of view, should bear in mind that these
characterizations could possibly be unsound, since the narrator is not reliable enough to be
trusted. However, the fabrication of these characters in the unconscious level of the protagonists
mind, though unreal, could be of much help in the development of the notion of mere fatale in
the world of fiction.
MOTHER IN THE PROCESS OF BECOMING MERE FATALE

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Bearing in mind the complexities of woman in Lacans formulae as the piece of the real that all
men try to evade, Alexanders mothers intricacies become more palpable. The presence of
mother as a decisive and effective woman in this novel is another significant factor in molding
Alexs characterization. The ubiquity of the mother in Roths novel becomes conspicuous, as far
as Alexanders whole personality is created out of the dominant struggle between a mother as the
phallic figure and a son being excessively obsessed with her that everything he does is a reaction
to her (in contradiction of her wish). Contrary to symbolic-order standards, that of paternal
dominancy in the childs life during and after the acquisition of language, and the resulting
hatred toward the father which is entitled by Freud as the Oedipus complex, Alexs father was a
castrated figure in Portnoy family (Constipation is akin to castration which kept him most of the
time in the toilet) whom Alexander remembers by reverence. He was on the contrary
subordinated to his mother, so that he remembers her by all the phallic symbols with which she
threatened him, such as the knife which has left a deep mark in his unconscious. The
convergence of love and hatred toward mother is the recurrent issue in Alexanders
conversations with his psychiatrist. The other contrast which extremely bothers him is the
dichotomy of appearance and reserved feelings toward his parents and religion on the one side
and sexuality on the other:
Doctor Spielvogel, this is my life, my only life, and Im living it in the middle of a
Jewish joke! I am the son in the Jewish joke only it aint no joke! Please, who
crippled us like this? Who made us so morbid and hysterical and weak? ... Is this
the Jewish suffering I used to hear so much about? Is this what has come down to
me from the pogroms and the persecutions? Oh my secrets, my shame, my
palpitations, my flushes, my sweats! ... Bless me with manhood! Make me brave,
make me strong! Make me whole! Enough being a nice Jewish boy, publicly
pleasing my parents while privately pulling my putz! Enough! (Roth, 1969:39)
Alexs resentment for his mother is convergent with religion and sexuality, this convergence is
too immense that the presence of one leads to the presence of the others. This is the reason why
Alexander can never recall the memories of his mother without mentioning a point about religion
or sexuality as well.
The maternal influences on Mickey Sabbath in Sabbaths Theater, Roths other novel which
bears so much resemblance to Portnoys Complaint are more convoluted than the straightforward

SAJMR
Spectrum: A Journal of Multidisciplinary Research
Vol. 3 Issue 12, December 2014, ISSN 2278-0637, pp. 94-103

effects on Alexander. In most of Sabbaths recollections of his life story his mother acts as an
apparition hovering just above his shoulder, or else she turned into a walking-dead after the
death of his brother, Morty. Sabbath generally gets hurt from the absence of mother as a maternal
figure that he can fully and unquestionably trust; however, Alexander in Portnoys Complaint is
spoiled by the excessive presence of his mother in his life. Sabbaths father was apparently a
castrated figure as well, since Sabbath remembers that his father had always been the least
talkative one in the family (Roth, 1995:16). What he is searching in Drenka, his mistress, is the
mother he had lost since his brother, Mortys death; that is why most of the time when he is with
Drenka, the apparition of his mother is present too. The apparition could be entitled as Mickeys
all repressed desires and unfulfilled wishes in one whole, and that is mother. All his cravings,
actions and desolateness are a reaction to his mothers insufficient care. If there are three main
reasons which caused the breakdown for Sabbath, one of them is the loss of his mother, now
hovering above his head perhaps to make up for the past:

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There was something too natural about his perceiving her for the perception to
evaporate before his mocking resistance. She didnt just show up when he was in
despair, it didnt happen only in the middle of the night when he awoke in dire
need of a substitute for everything disappearinghis mother was up in the woods,
up at the Grotto with him and Drenka, hovering above their half-clad bodies like
that helicopter. Maybe the helicopter had been his mother. His dead mother was
with him, watching him, everywhere encircling him. His mother had been loosed
on him. She had returned to take him to his death. (Ibid 17)
The question raised here is why the presence of mother is so much associated with the idea of
death. The death wish is a recurrent wish with which Sabbath soothes the pain of life, in fact, the
pain of approaching impotency a few years later. For Alex, on the other hand the fear of death
and the hypochondria is the inheritance he received from his mother. Another question is why
Sabbath does not commit suicide, now that he does not have anything to lose on one hand and he
is fascinated with the idea of death on the other. The notion of suicide pops into his mind now
and then, but he is so much hesitant similar to Shakespeares Hamlet for the last strike, for the
act:
Homeless, wifeless, mistressless, penniless . . . jump in the cold river and drown.
Climb up into the woods and go to sleep, and tomorrow morning, should you even
awaken, keep climbing until you are lost. Check into a motel, borrow the night
clerks razor to shave, and slit your throat from ear to ear. It could be done.
Lincoln Gelman did it. Roseannas father did it. Probably Nikki herself had done
it, and with a razor, a straight razor very like the one with which she had exited
each night to kill herself in Miss Julie. . (109)
According to iek one of the reasons of the excessive death wish is the emergence of modern
and postmodern subjects who are controlling subjectivity. Consistent to ieks notion of death
wish, Brockelman in his book The Frame and the Mirror maintains:

SAJMR
Spectrum: A Journal of Multidisciplinary Research
Vol. 3 Issue 12, December 2014, ISSN 2278-0637, pp. 94-103

In ieks hands, representation namesin a Heideggerian fashion the


technological and political will-to-mastery evident throughout modern societies.
The Western death wish is evidenced in the ever expanding sphere of
subjectivist, symbolic control of nature and human social apparatus: or, to put
this more precisely, it is in the effects of this mastery upon subjectivitydriven
into an ever tighter corner by the advances in its own powerthat we see the
workings of death on modern and postmodern societies. In other words, iek
puts us in the world of the cyborg, of the human being in the process of
replacement by the machine that she herself has produced.for him, the death
drive is the symptom of a subject that necessarily resists representationa
modern subject. What psychoanalytic theory from Freud to Lacan calls the death
drive emerges with special force within the modern world precisely to the extent
that the world both insists upon and represses this hidden truth of subjectivity
(2001:124).

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The notion of postmodernism and the void of subjectivity get the subjects to the death wish,
when the covert secret is uncovered and there remains no ground under the subjects feet, death
is the only wish which he can pursue. Thus on the one hand iek believes in the postmodern
subject and the visibility of the subject void, and on the other hand he avers that according to the
formulae of sexuation woman is the pure subject, the pure void that no one wants to interfere or
be confronted with. To put it precisely, for Sabbath as well the apparition of mother is the pure
void of subjectivity that whenever he is confronted with (this means always, since he could not
drive her away) as if he comes across death. It is interesting to note that the pure subject in this
novel is an apparition, something which is first of all a Real purity, and secondly a pure void,
similar to death, both pure and void.
All in all the over-restrictive presence of the mother or the mother figures and their phallic
domineering powers on the sons and the association of the pure subjectivity, or the pure void
with the death wish or death fear, or hypochondria in both works is reminiscent of the notion of
femme fatale which was more or less conferred about. Femme fatale as a very attractive woman
who seduces her lovers and this seduction changes into a spell from which the lover cannot come
out could be entitled as the central conflict of most of Roths works. The presence of femme
fatale prevails in romantic poems, especially John Keats La Belle Dame sans Merci and
Lamia, as well as the film noirs of the twentieth century. Compared to the Lady of the courtly
love as an abstraction, an idealized figure that the knight is flattered to love her, the lover of a
femme fatale is ashamed of loving her, since according to iek, by loving a femme fatale one
betrays his true self. However, iek states in The Metastases of Enjoyment that similar to the
Lady the femme fatale is an inhuman partner, a traumatic Object with whom no relationship is
possible, an apathetic void imposing senseless, arbitrary ordeals (102). Nevertheless, the
researcher does not refer to the notion of femme fatale to study the characters relationship with
their beloveds and mistresses.
It was stated previously that the reader of Roths works, such as Portnoys Complaint and
Sabbaths Theater, confronts the bold and eccentric presence of mothers, one as an overattentive and the other as an apparition. The notion of Mere fatale is put forward at this stage, the
fatality brings about by mother in her sons life. Up to this stage, every point was elaborated

SAJMR
Spectrum: A Journal of Multidisciplinary Research
Vol. 3 Issue 12, December 2014, ISSN 2278-0637, pp. 94-103

regarding the femme fatale and her presence in Roths novels, although, the presence of femme
fatale is not so fatal as the presence or absence of mother on the formation of the protagonists
character. Alexanders Mere Fatales ubiquity is excessively prominent in his life that
everything done by Alex has a direct or an indirect reference to his mother. On the other hand,
Sabbaths mothers nonexistence and inconsiderate inattention to Sabbath after the death of his
brother, turned him into a paranoic subject who sees his mother as an apparition after her death.
In accordance with Kafkas assertion in his essay, The Silence of the Sirens, the silence of the
femme fatale (Sirens were the femme fatales in Homers Odysseus) is more fatal than their
music, he states Now the Sirens have a still more fatal weapon than their song, namely their
silence. And though admittedly such a thing has never happened, still it is conceivable that
someone might possibly have escaped from their singing; but from their silence certainly never
(Kafka, 1971). Parallel to femme fatales enticing power of silence comparing to her music, the
power of Mere fatale lies in the non-presence than presence, similar to what happens in both
novels, Alexander is devoid of his mother now that he is narrating his story to his psychiatrist,
and Sabbaths mother is dead already, but her apparition is the manifestation of the nonexistence.

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The presence of mere fatale in most of Roths works such as Goodbye, Columbus beside these
two works novels intensifies the necessity of the elaboration of this newly introduced
phenomenon. The accordance of woman does not exist with the (non-)presence of mere fatale
extends Alexanders bewilderment in the search of his mothers real identity. On the other hand,
the more adjacent the protagonist gets to the Real (the feminine subjectivity), the more perplexed
he becomes. This will result in numerous psychological disorders such as the psychosis,
paranoia, or obsession. Nevertheless, the search goes on and the protagonist cannot evade the
vicious cycle of proximity and revulsion. Thus, the major character goes deep and deeper into
the quagmire of identification.
The predicament of identification (the process in which a character identifies him/herself
consistent with the effective characters around him, such as mother) lies in the necessity of it.
The protagonists, such as Alex cannot go without it, while on the other hand they cannot achieve
it. However, the operation of the mere fatales fatality in the lives of their sons is totally
unacknowledged, since the mother is unaware of what she is about to do or what she has carried
out for their sons. Similar to femme fatales as the pure subjects, completely unaware of their
potentiality, mere fatales are being made up at the time of being received as subjects,
nonetheless, they do not exist.
Consequently, it could be inferred that considering the ubiquity of the fatal mothers or the
mother figures dominating a large proportion of Philip Roths oeuvre, this omnipresence
necessitates a full attention by the readers or the critics of his works. The new coinage, i.e. Merefatale, deriving from the phenomenon of femme fatale in the world of fiction could be an
elaboration on the feminine-fatal side of the mother, especially in the Jewish families, flawlessly
depicted by Roth in most of his works. Although, the catastrophe brought about by mothers in
most literary works has been neglected, since from an emotional point of view mothers could not
cause fatality in the lives of their own sons. However, this destruction is mostly unacknowledged
by the mothers. As a matter of fact, numerous conditions could cooperate to transform a loving
and caring mother into a woman who devastates the sons lives, never leaving them alone even
until the end of their lives.

SAJMR
Spectrum: A Journal of Multidisciplinary Research
Vol. 3 Issue 12, December 2014, ISSN 2278-0637, pp. 94-103

REFERENCES
Brockelman, Thomas P. (2001). The Frame and the Mirror: on Collage and the Postmodern.
Illinois: Northwestern University Press.
Doane, Mary Ann (1992). Femme Fatale. New York: Routledge.
Kafka, Franz (1971). The Complete Stories. New York: Schocken Books.
Kakutani, Michiko (1995). BOOKS OF THE TIMES; Mickey Sabbath, You're No Portnoy.
The New York Times, August. www.nytimes.com
Roth, Philip (1969). Portnoys Complaint. London: Corgi Books.
Roth, Philip (1995). Sabbaths Theater. London: Vintage Classics.
Wood, Kelsey (2012). iek: A Readers Guide. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell.
iek, Slavoj (2012).Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism.
London: Verso.
iek, Slavoj (1994).The Metastases of Enjoyment: Six Essays on Woman and Causality.
London: Verso.

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iek, Slavoj (1997).The Plagues of Fantasies. London: Verso.

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