SOURCE: "Mirror Images in 'La Maison du berger,'" in The French Review, Vol. LVI, No. 3, February, 1983, pp. 393-99.

In the following essay, Evans cites recent psychoanalytic theories about the self and examines the mirror imagery in "La Maison du berger" as metaphors of human consciousness.

That homely object the mirror has played over the centuries an extraordinarily rich metaphoric role. At various times a figure of human vanity, an image of the mimetic function of art, or a mythic emblem of self-consciousness, it has lately been elaborated and enriched as a metaphor of human consciousness by psychoanalysts like Jacques Lacan and Luce Irigaray. In his essay "Le Stade du miroir"¹ Lacan brilliantly condenses Hegel's description of selfconsciousness and Freud's formulation of narcissism into a new mythic figure: the child before the mirror. In Lacan's view the process by which the child reaches self-consciousness always includes the splitting...