Abstract
Lacan approach to identity and language represents a most critical revision of Western metaphysics and Cartesian certainties. His works have also ignited a number of heated responses from feminist critics. Lacan controversial theories offer much to consider for the analysis proposed in this paper, which is a reading of Céspedes Quaderno proibito and Maraini Donna in guerra using Lacan theoretical frame as the critical tool. Valeria and Vanna, the female characters in de Céspedes and Maraini novels, exemplify problems that arise from holding on to a sense of security that reasonableness and social propriety promise at the expense of one own desire. For both, the awareness of such conflict emerges through the process of writing a diary. Their diary entries reflect a gradual realization of the distance between what they discover about themselves and what the outside order tells them to be. Lacan explanation of reality through the orders of the Imaginary, Symbolic and Real, and his understanding of truth, lack and desire, clarify the areas of concerns that these authors raise regarding identity and gender difference.
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