艾菲·格蕾

A man with strong artistic authenticity who seeks the truth in his paintings married a girl whom he had met in a Scottish house and fell in love with. The marriage turns out to be a failure. The anullment is because of the failure of cosummation.

This dismatch of love and marriage perfectly explains Lacan's theory of sexual relationship. If Ruskin's reason of his abstain from sex that he wants to preserve the virginity of the girl is right, then this is a case of imaginary displacement of sexual relationship. It is the participation and further complex of the imaginary sacrifice between a mind seeking for truth and a socialable soul that is regualted under the symbolic rules.

It is a courtly love relationship that Ruskin is imagin and will give him jouissance. What he wants to maintain is the image of the first sight that puts him on the toil of hard working. In this way Ruskin turns himself into a sadistic that obtaine pleasure in his artistic world. The real contact with the physical girl in her nakedness put him in schock as when confronted with the Lacanian Real, which is too much for him. This is further proved when Ruskin encourage the girl to pursue her socialbe life alone in Venice, and when he allows the intimate coexistence of the girl with the Evelete who becomes her second husband. In Ruskin's unconscious, she is equal to some alien core that provides him with sexual jouissance simply with her maintaing in her place. Staying in her place will give him enough pleasure, while a close relationship will jeopardize his imagination.

Besides, the difference between a mind seeking truth and a sociable soul is another reason that stand in the way of the marriage. Ruskin seeks to represent truth in the paintings rather than the mechinsation of skills, while Effie craves for lively social life.