‘Les mo(r)ts ne nous lâchent pas’: Death and the Paternal/Amorous Body in Linda Lê’s Lettre morte

• Published in: Romanic review 2009-05, Vol.100 (3), p.373-387
• Main Author: McIlvanney, Siobhán
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Linguistics; Literature and Literary Studies
• ISSN: 0035-8118; 2688-5220
• DOI: 10.1215/26885220-100.3.373

Adopting a broadly psychoanalytical approach, it seeks to demonstrate that literary representation of the symbolic death of childhood as incarnated in the figure of the father appears to result in a more 'adult' assumption of responsibility in heterosexual relations, in a 'healthier' model of (self)perception: the narrator's revision of the paternal past through language following her father's demise - both in the sense of examining afresh her father's life story and the father/daughter relationship and, as this article argues, rewriting them in the form of a narrative text - leads to a re-vision of the amorous future, and of her ability to function successfully within it. Despite the fact that, in several respects, Lettre morte appears to provide a form of resolution, numerous textual similarities bridge all three works, similarities which include the portrayal of women indulging in selfharm and being oppressed by parasitical men; the protagonists' feelings of self-loathing and sense of being pursued or haunted - frequently by madness; and the omnipresence of death - what Le refers to elsewhere as Ie sentiment de la mort avant la mort, le sentiment de la corruption, de la décomposition.