THE ABJECT SUBJECT AND THE OTHER'S GAZE IN NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE'S THE HOLLOW OF THE THREE HILLS
Vol.12, Issue 1, 2026, pp. 47-60 Full text: PDF . HTML
DOI: https://doi.org/10.33919/esnbu.26.1.4
Web of Science: [WOS=]
Author:
Farzad Kolahjooei https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5781-5265
Affiliation: Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz, Ahvaz, Iran 01k3mbs15
Abstract
This paper reads Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story The Hollow of the Three Hills through key concepts from Jacques Lacan and Julia Kristeva. I employ Lacan's notion of the Other and Kristeva's notion of the abject to discuss the suffering that the female subject undergoes in the story. I argue that the young lady's obsession with an implicit sense of guilt places her in a deadlock and turns her into an abject subject who embraces death as an escape from the impossible demands of the Other. Within the same line of thought, I suggest that the text, as a sociocultural product, displays unconscious, conflicting forces that stand at opposite poles in their demands from individuals.
Keywords: the abject, the chora, the gaze, Hawthorne, Kristeva, Lacan, the Other
Article history:
Submitted: 25 February 2026
Reviewed: 29 March 2026
Accepted: 22 April 2026
Published: 20 June 2026
Citation (APA):
Kolahjooei, F. (2026). The abject subject and the other's gaze in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Hollow of the Three Hills. English Studies at NBU, 12(1), 47-60. https://doi.org/10.33919/esnbu.26.1.4
Copyright © 2026 Farzad Kolahjooei
This is an Open Access article published and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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