Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide PDF

RT19943_FM.qxd 6/22/06 10:44 AM Page 1 critical theory today RT19943.indb 2 6/29/06 7:10:24 PM RT19943_FM.qxd 6/22/06 10:44 AM Page 2 critical theory today A Us e r - F r i e n d l y G u i d e S E C O N D...

RT19943_FM.qxd 6/22/06 10:44 AM Page 1 critical theory today RT19943.indb 2 6/29/06 7:10:24 PM RT19943_FM.qxd 6/22/06 10:44 AM Page 2 critical theory today A Us e r - F r i e n d l y G u i d e S E C O N D E D I T I O N L O I S T Y S O N New York London Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Routledge Routledge Taylor & Francis Group Taylor & Francis Group 270 Madison Avenue 2 Park Square New York, NY 10016 Milton Park, Abingdon Oxon OX14 4RN © 2006 by Lois Tyson Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business Printed in the United States of America on acid‑free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 International Standard Book Number‑10: 0‑415‑97410‑0 (Softcover) 0‑415‑97409‑7 (Hardcover) International Standard Book Number‑13: 978‑0‑415‑97410‑3 (Softcover) 978‑0‑415‑97409‑7 (Hardcover) No part of this book may be reprinted, reproduced, transmitted, or utilized in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging‑in‑Publication Data Tyson, Lois, 1950‑ Critical theory today : a user‑friendly guide / Lois Tyson.‑‑ 2nd ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0‑415‑97409‑7 (hb) ‑‑ ISBN 0‑415‑97410‑0 (pb) 1. Criticism. I. Title. PN81.T97 2006 801’.95‑‑dc22 2006001722 Visit the Taylor & Francis Web site at http://www.taylorandfrancis.com and the Routledge Web site at http://www.routledge‑ny.com  I gratefully dedicate this book to my students and to my teachers. I hope I will always have difficulty telling you apart. RT19943.indb 5 6/29/06 7:10:24 PM RT19943.indb 6 6/29/06 7:10:24 PM  Contents Preface to the second edition xi Preface for instructors xiii Acknowledgments xv 1 Everything you wanted to know about critical theory but were afraid to ask 1 2 Psychoanalytic criticism 11 The origins of the unconscious 12 The defenses, anxiety, and core issues 15 Dreams and dream symbols 18 The meaning of death 21 The meaning of sexuality 24 Lacanian psychoanalysis 26 Classical psychoanalysis and literature 34 Some questions psychoanalytic critics ask about literary texts 37 “What’s Love Got to Do with It?”: a psychoanalytic reading of The Great Gatsby 39 Questions for further practice: psychoanalytic approaches to other literary works 49 For further reading 50 For advanced readers 50 3 Marxist criticism 53 The fundamental premises of Marxism 53 The class system in America 55 The role of ideology 56 Human behavior, the commodity, and the family 61 Marxism and literature 64 Some questions Marxist critics ask about literary texts 68 You are what you own: a Marxist reading of The Great Gatsby 69 Questions for further practice: Marxist approaches to other literary works 79 For further reading 79 For advanced readers 80 RT19943.indb 7 6/29/06 7:10:24 PM  viii Contents 4 Feminist criticism 83 Traditional gender roles 85 A summary of feminist premises 91 Getting beyond patriarchy 93 French feminism 95 Multicultural feminism 105 Gender studies and feminism 108 Feminism and literature 117 Some questions feminist critics ask about literary texts 119 “... next they’ll throw everything overboard...”: a feminist reading of The Great Gatsby 120 Questions for further practice: feminist approaches to other literary works 130 For further reading 131 For advanced readers 131 5 New Criticism 135 “The text itself” 136 Literary language and organic unity 138 A New Critical reading of “There Is a Girl Inside” 143 New Criticism as intrinsic, objective criticism 147 The single best interpretation 148 The question New Critics asked about literary texts 150 The “deathless song” of longing: a New Critical reading of The Great Gatsby 150 Questions for further practice: New Critical approaches to other literary works 164 For further reading 164 For advanced readers 165 6 Reader‑response criticism 169 Transactional reader‑response theory 173 Affective stylistics 175 Subjective reader‑response theory 178 Psychological reader‑response theory 182 Social reader‑response theory 185 Defining readers 187 Some questions reader‑response critics ask about literary texts 188 Projecting the reader: a reader‑response analysis of The Great Gatsby 190 Questions for further practice: reader‑response approaches to other literary works 202 For further reading 203 For advanced readers 204 RT19943.indb 8 6/29/06 7:10:25 PM  Contents ix 7 Structuralist criticism 209 Structural linguistics 212 Structural anthropology 215 Semiotics 216 Structuralism and literature 219 The structure of literary genres 221 The structure of narrative (narratology) 224 The structure of literary interpretation 230 Some questions structuralist critics ask about literary texts 233 “Seek and ye shall find”... and then lose: a structuralist reading of The Great Gatsby 234 Questions for further practice: structuralist approaches to other literary works 244 For further reading 245 For advanced readers 246 8 Deconstructive criticism 249 Deconstructing language 250 Deconstructing our world 255 Deconstructing human identity 257 Deconstructing literature 258 A deconstructive reading of Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall” 260 Some questions deconstructive critics ask about literary texts 265 “... the thrilling, returning trains of my youth...”: a deconstructive reading of The Great Gatsby 267 Questions for further practice: deconstructive approaches to other literary works 278 For further reading 280 For advanced readers 280 9 New historical and cultural criticism 281 New historicism 282 New historicism and literature 291 Cultural criticism 295 Cultural criticism and literature 297 Some questions new historical and cultural critics ask about literary texts 299 The discourse of the self‑made man: a new historical reading of The Great Gatsby 301 Questions for further practice: new historical and cultural criticism of other literary works 311 For further reading 312 For advanced readers 313 RT19943.indb 9 6/29/06 7:10:25 PM   Contents 10 Lesbian, gay, and queer criticism 317 The marginalization of lesbians and gay men 318 Lesbian criticism 322 Gay criticism 329 Queer criticism 334 Some shared features of lesbian, gay, and queer criticism 338 Some questions lesbian, gay, and queer critics ask about literary texts 341 Will the real Nick Carraway please come out?: a queer reading of The Great Gatsby 342 Questions for further practice: lesbian, gay, and queer approaches to other literary works 353 For further reading 355 For advanced readers 355 11 African American criticism 359 Racial issues and African American literary history 360 Recent developments: critical race theory 367 African American criticism and literature 385 Some questions African American critics ask about literary texts 394 But where’s Harlem?: an African American reading of The Great Gatsby 396 Questions for further practice: African American approaches to other literary works 409 For further reading 411 For advanced readers 411 12 Postcolonial criticism 417 Postcolonial identity 419 Postcolonial debates 424 Postcolonial criticism and literature 426 Some questions postcolonial critics ask about literary texts 431 The colony within: a postcolonial reading of The Great Gatsby 433 Questions for further practice: postcolonial approaches to other literary works 445 For further reading 446 For advanced readers 447 13 Gaining an overview 451 Index 457 RT19943.indb 10 6/29/06 7:10:25 PM  Preface to the second edition Since the 1999 publication of Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide, criti‑ cal theory has continued to grow in at least two ways: some critical theorists that students would have encountered only at the graduate level of literary studies have begun to appear in the undergraduate classroom, and some critical theories that students would have encountered primarily in other disciplines are becom‑ ing frequently used frameworks in literary studies. For these reasons, you will find in the second edition of Critical Theory Today a good deal of new material. A section on Lacanian psychoanalysis has been added to the chapter on psycho‑ analytic criticism. The chapter on feminist criticism now contains sections on gender studies and French feminism, the latter including discussions of both the very useful French materialist feminism and the more familiar psychoanalytic school of French feminism. And perhaps the biggest change of all, the chapter on postcolonial and African American criticism has been rewritten as two separate chapters. This last change allowed me to add to the chapter on African Ameri‑ can criticism a section on critical race theory and an African American reading of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925), which remains the novel used for the sample literary application in every chapter. Finally, the bibliographies for further reading that close each chapter have been expanded and updated. One thing that hasn’t changed, however, is the purpose of this book. It is still an introduction to critical theory written by a teacher of critical theory and lit‑ erature. And it is still intended for teachers and college-level students who want to learn about critical theory and its usefulness in helping us to achieve a bet‑ ter understanding of literature. Because I am a teacher writing for teachers and students, the second edition of Critical Theory Today also contains clarifications wherever my own students have had repeated difficulty, over the years, in under‑ standing a particular concept addressed in the book. Thus you’ll find, to cite just a few representative examples, an expanded explanation of rugged individualism in the chapter on Marxist criticism; a clarification of the concept of mimicry in the chapter on postcolonial criticism; and, in the chapter on African American criticism, an added example of the encoding of certain racial themes by African American writers. Indeed, my own copy of the first edition, which I’ve used in my classes, contains innumerable little page markers where a clarification, word RT19943.indb 11 6/29/06 7:10:25 PM  xii Critical Theory Preface to the second Today:edition A User-Friendly Guide, Second Edition change, or concrete example was deemed helpful, and all of those small changes also have been made. A better understanding of the world in which we live, it seems to me, automati‑ cally comes along for the ride when we study literature, and the study of critical theory makes that enterprise even more productive. I believed that proposition when I wrote the first edition of the book you now hold in your hands, and I come to believe it more with every critical theory class I teach. I hope that your experience of the second edition of Critical Theory Today also leads you to find that small truth to be self-evident. RT19943.indb 12 6/29/06 7:10:25 PM  Preface for instructors The writing of this textbook was the product of a sense of pedagogical frustra‑ tion that I suspect many of you may share. In the last decade, critical theory has become a dominant force in higher education. It is now considered an essen‑ tial part of graduate education, and it plays an increasingly visible role in the undergraduate classroom as well. Yet many college students at all levels, as well as some of their professors, remain confused by much of this jargon-ridden dis‑ cipline, which seems to defy their understanding. As one colleague said to his students, “Critical theory is a bus, and you’re not going to get on it.” Anthologies of essays often used in critical theory courses—which generally include pieces by such frequently arcane theorists as Lacan, Derrida, Spivak, Benjamin, and the like—and books that offer high-tech summaries of these the‑ orists’ views don’t help the majority of students who are unfamiliar with the basic principles one must understand in order to understand these texts. Conversely, the very few theory textbooks that are written in accessible language are much too limited in scope to offer an adequate introduction to this complex field. Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide attempts to fill this gap by offering an accessible, unusually thorough introduction to this difficult field that will (1) enable readers to grasp heretofore obscure theoretical concepts by relating them to our everyday experience; (2) show them how to apply theoretical perspectives to literary works; and (3) reveal the relationships among theories—their differ‑ ences, similarities, strengths, and weaknesses—by applying them all to a single literary work: F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925). I’ve chosen The Great Gatsby for this purpose for several reasons. In addition to lending itself readily to the eleven theoretical readings I offer, the novel is fairly short, quite readable, and familiar, both in terms of its treatment of common American themes and in terms of readers’ prior exposure to the work. In fact, many of my colleagues who teach critical theory have indicated that they would prefer a textbook that uses The Great Gatsby for its literary applications because of their own familiarity with the novel. Aimed primarily at newcomers to the field, each chapter explains the basic prin‑ ciples of the theory it addresses, including the basic principles of literary applica‑ tion, in order to enable students to write their own theoretical interpretations of literature and read with insight what the theorists themselves have written. Thus, RT19943.indb 13 6/29/06 7:10:25 PM  xiv Critical Theory Preface for instructors Today: A User-Friendly Guide, Second Edition this book can be used as the only text in a course or as a precursor to (or in tan‑ dem with) critical theory anthologies. Each chapter has grown out of classroom practice, has been thoroughly field tested, and has demonstrated its capacity to motivate students by showing them what critical theory can offer, not only in terms of their practical understanding of literary texts, but also in terms of their personal understanding of themselves and the world in which they live. In a very real sense, this textbook is a “how-to” manual for readers who will probably come to their study of theory with some anxiety, whether they are first-year theory students or college professors who wish to familiarize themselves with theoretical perspectives with which they have not yet become thoroughly acquainted. Chapters are sequenced for a specific pedagogical purpose: to demonstrate how critical theories both argue and overlap with one another, sometimes overturn‑ ing, sometimes building on the insights of competing theories. Nevertheless, each chapter is self-explanatory and was written to stand on its own. Therefore, this textbook can be customized to fit your own instructional needs by assign‑ ing the chapters in any order you choose; by eliminating some chapters entirely; or by assigning only certain sections of particular chapters, for which purpose chapter subtitles should prove helpful. Similarly, the “Questions for Further Practice” (which follow each reading of The Great Gatsby and can serve as paper topics) encourage students to apply each theory to other well-known, frequently anthologized literary works, but you can have your students apply these ques‑ tions to any works you select. However you choose to use Critical Theory Today, I hope you will agree that critical theory is a bus our students have every reason to climb aboard. And if this book does its job, they will even enjoy the ride. RT19943.indb 14 6/29/06 7:10:26 PM  Acknowledgments My most sincere thanks go to the following friends and colleagues for their help‑ ful suggestions and moral support: Hannah Berkowitz, Bertrand Bickersteth, Pat Bloem, Kathleen Blumreich, Linda Chown, Gretchen Cline, Diane Grif‑ fin Crowder, Michelle DeRose, Milt Ford, David Greetham, Chance Guyette, Michael Hartnett, Alan Hausman, Roseanne Hoefel, Bill Hoffman, Jay Hul‑ lett, Howard Kahane, Stephen Lacey, James Lindesay, Rosalind Srb Mayberry, Corinne McLeod, Scott Minar, Joanie Pearlman, James Phelan, Rob Rozema, Sue William Silverman, Veta Smith Tucker, Jill Van Antwerp, Megan Ward, Brian White, and Sharon Whitehill. Special thanks also go to Grand Valley State University for its generous finan‑ cial support of this project—especially to Dean Fred Antczak; the late Dean Forrest Armstrong; Jo Miller; and Nancy Raymond of the GVSU Interlibrary Loan Department. At Routledge Press, I am gratefully indebted to Matthew Byrnie for his invaluable advice and support throughout this project, to Fred Veith for his prompt and gracious assistance, and to Robert Sims for his patient guidance through the labyrinth of production. Fond gratitude is still offered to Phyllis Korper, formerly of Garland Press, for her unflagging enthusiasm for the first edition. Finally, the deepest gratitude is expressed to Mac Davis, the only braveheart who read every word of every draft of every chapter of the first edition as well as all the new material added to the second edition. Your unflagging support will never be forgotten. RT19943.indb 15 6/29/06 7:10:26 PM RT19943.indb 16 6/29/06 7:10:26 PM  1 Ever ything you wanted to know about critical theor y but were afraid to ask Why should we bother to learn about critical theories? Is it really worth the trouble? Won’t all those abstract concepts (if I can even understand any of them) interfere with my natural, personal interpretations of literature? These ques‑ tions, or ones like them, are probably the questions most frequently asked by new students of critical theory, regardless of their age or educational status, and such questions reveal the two-fold nature of our reluctance to study theory: (1) fear of failure and (2) fear of losing the intimate, exciting, magical connection with literature that is our reason for reading it in the first place. I think both these fears are well founded. With notable exceptions, most theoretical writing—by the big names in the field and by those who attempt to explain their ideas to novices—is filled with technical terms and theoretical concepts that assume a level of familiarity new‑ comers simply don’t have. And because such writing doesn’t seem to connect with our love of literature, let alone with the everyday world we live in, it seems that theory’s purpose must be to take us into some abstract, intellectual realm in which we try to impress one another by using the latest theoretical jargon (which we hope our peers haven’t heard yet) and dropping the names of obscure theorists (whom we hope our peers haven’t read yet). In other words, because knowledge of critical theory has become, over the last decade or so, a mark of status, an educational “property” for which students and professors compete, it has also become a costly commodity that is difficult to acquire and to maintain at the state of the art. Indeed, I think the anxiety that most of us bring to our study of critical theory is due largely to our initial encounters with theoretical jargon or, more accurately, with people who use theoretical jargon to inflate their own status. To cite just one example, a student recently asked me what “the death of the author” means. RT19943.indb 1 6/29/06 7:10:26 PM   Everything you wanted to know about critical theory but were afraid to ask He’d heard the phrase bandied about, but no one explained it to him, so he felt excluded from the conversation. Because the meaning of the phrase wasn’t evident in the context in which he’d heard it used, the student felt that it must be a complex concept. Because those who used the phrase acted as though they belonged to an elite club, at the same time as they pretended that everyone knew what it meant, he felt stupid for not knowing the term and, therefore, afraid to ask about it, afraid to reveal his stupidity. In fact, “the death of the author” is a simple concept, but unless someone explains it to you the phrase makes little sense. “The death of the author” merely refers to the change in attitude toward the role of the author in our interpretation of literary works. In the early decades of the twentieth century, students of literature were taught that the author was our primary concern in reading a literary work: our task was to examine the author’s life in order to discover what the author meant to communicate—his or her message, theme, or moral—which is called authorial intention. Our focus has changed over the years to the point that, now, among many contemporary critical theorists at least, the author is no longer considered a meaningful object of analysis. We focus, instead, on the reader; on the ideological, rhetorical, or aesthetic structure of the text; or on the culture in which the text was produced, usually without reference to the author. So, for all intents and purposes, the author is “dead.” It’s a simple idea, really, yet, like many ideas that belong to a particular academic discipline, it can be used to exclude people rather than to communicate with them. This situation is especially objectionable because it results in the exclusion of those of us who might stand to benefit from critical theory in the most concrete ways: current and future teachers at the elementary and secondary levels; faculty and students at community colleges; and faculty and students in all departments at the thousands of liberal arts colleges respon‑ sible for the bulk of American education but whose members may not be on the “fast track” to academic stardom. What are the concrete ways in which we can benefit from an understanding of critical theory? As I hope the following chapters will illustrate, theory can help us learn to see ourselves and our world in valuable new ways, ways that can influence how we educate our children, both as parents and teachers; how we view television, from the nightly news to situation comedies; how we behave as voters and consumers; how we react to others with whom we do not agree on social, religious, and political issues; and how we recognize and deal with our own motives, fears, and desires. And if we believe that human productions—not just literature but also, for example, film, music, art, science, technology, and architecture—are outgrowths of human experience and therefore reflect human desire, conflict, and potential, then we can learn to interpret those productions in order to learn something important about ourselves as a species. Critical the‑ ory, I think you will find, provides excellent tools for that endeavor, tools that RT19943.indb 2 6/29/06 7:10:26 PM  Everything you wanted to know about critical theory but were afraid to ask  not only can show us our world and ourselves through new and valuable lenses but also can strengthen our ability to think logically, creatively, and with a good deal of insight. To that end, each chapter will explain the basic principles of the theory it addresses in order to enable you to read what the theorists themselves have written. Each chapter will focus on a critical theory that has had a significant impact on the practice of literary criticism today and will attempt to show the world through the lens of that theory. Think of each theory as a new pair of eye‑ glasses through which certain elements of our world are brought into focus while others, of course, fade into the background. Did that last idea give you pause, I hope? Why should some ideas have to fade into the background in order to focus on others? Doesn’t this suggest that each theory can offer only an incomplete picture of the world? It seems unavoidable, and part of the paradox of seeing and learning is that in order to understand some things clearly we must restrict our focus in a way that highlights certain elements and ignores others, just as the close-up camera crys‑ tallizes whatever it frames and renders the rest a blurred background. Perhaps this is why, for example, science and religion often seem so at odds, not just because they often offer conflicting explanations of the same phenomena but because they focus our vision on different dimensions of our own experience. This is why it seems to me so important that we study a number of theories in succession, not just to remind ourselves that multiple viewpoints are important if we are to see the whole picture but to grasp the very process of understanding that underlies human experience and to thereby increase our ability to see both the value and the limitations of every method of viewing the world. In fact, one of the most important things theory can show us is that methodologies are ways of seeing the world, whether we’re talking about physics or sociology, literature, or medicine. Indeed, because they are ways of seeing the world, critical theories compete with one another for dominance in educational and cultural communities. Each theory offers itself as the most (or the only) accurate means of under‑ standing human experience. Thus, competition among theories has always had a strong political dimension in at least two senses of the word political: (1) differ‑ ent theories offer very different interpretations of history and of current events, including interpretations of government policies, and (2) advocates of the most popular theories of the day usually receive the best jobs and the most funding for their projects. Even within the ranks of any given critical theory there are countless disagree‑ ments among practitioners that result in the emergence of different schools of thought within a single theory. In fact, the history of every critical theory is, in RT19943.indb 3 6/29/06 7:10:26 PM   Everything you wanted to know about critical theory but were afraid to ask effect, the history of an ongoing debate among its own advocates as well as an ongoing debate with the advocates of other theories. However, before you can understand an argument, you have to understand the language or languages in which the opponents express their ideas. By familiarizing you with the language each theory speaks—that is, with the key concepts on which each theory is grounded—this book will prepare you to understand the ongoing debates both within and among critical theories. Learning to use the different languages of theory offered here will also accustom you to “thinking theoretically,” that is, to seeing the assumptions, whether stated or not, that underlie every viewpoint. For example, as you read the following chapters, I hope it will become clear to you that even our “personal,” “natural” interpretations of literature and of the world we live in—interpretations “unsullied” by theory—are based on assump‑ tions, on ways of seeing the world, that are themselves theoretical and that we don’t realize we’ve internalized. In other words, there is no such thing as a nontheoretical interpretation. We may not be aware of the theoretical assump‑ tions that guide our thinking, but those assumptions are there nevertheless. For example, why do we assume that the proper way to interpret a story for an English class is to show how images and metaphors convey ideas and feelings or how the story illustrates a theme or reflects some aspect of history or com‑ municates the author’s viewpoint? Why isn’t the proper response, instead, to do volunteer work at a shelter for the homeless, sculpt a statue, or throw a party? In other words, the interpretations of literature we produce before we study critical theory may seem completely personal or natural, but they are based on beliefs— beliefs about literature, about education, about language, about selfhood—that permeate our culture and that we therefore take for granted. I hope you will also find, once you’ve become better acquainted with critical theory, that it increases rather than decreases your appreciation of literature. Think back to your junior high or high school experiences as a reader. Can you remember a story or two, or a novel or play, that you just loved or just hated, yet when you read it again a few years later your reaction had significantly changed? The more we experience in life, the more we are capable of experiencing in literature. So as you grow in your capacity to understand theory, to think more broadly and more deeply about human experience and the world of ideas, the more you will be capable of appreciating the rich density, the varied texture and shades of meaning, available in literary works. It’s possible that an old favorite might fall by the wayside, but you’ll have new favorites, and you’ll have the capacity to see more and therefore appreciate more in everything you read. In order to illustrate the various ways in which different critical theories inter‑ pret literature, each chapter will include, in addition to short examples drawn from different literary texts, a fully developed reading of the same work: F. Scott RT19943.indb 4 6/29/06 7:10:26 PM  Everything you wanted to know about critical theory but were afraid to ask  Fitzgerald’s well-known novel The Great Gatsby, published in 1925.1 The focus of the following chapters is primarily literary for two reasons: (1) I assume that most readers will approach critical theory as students or teachers of literature, and (2) literature, conceived as a “1aboratory” of human life, provides examples of human experience presumably common to all readers. Why The Great Gatsby and not some other literary work? I did not choose Fitzgerald’s novel because I think you will find it necessarily a great work or even an enjoyable work, although many readers consider it both. I chose it because it lends itself well to the critical theories we are studying. Although, hypotheti‑ cally at least, every literary work can be interpreted using every critical frame‑ work, most works lend themselves more readily to some frameworks than to others, and the attempt to read a text using an incompatible framework can be a relatively fruitless endeavor that risks distorting elements of the text, the theory, or both, as we try to make them fit each other. It’s a judgment call, of course, and readers will differ as to which theories they are able to fruitfully apply to which literary works. Our task, then, is to know our own strengths and limitations as well as those of the theories we employ, even as we work to increase our ability to use theories. Another fact to keep in mind as we apply critical theories to The Great Gatsby and as you begin to use them to read other literary works is that different theo‑ retical interpretations of the same literary work can bring forth very different views of the work, focusing on different characters and different parts of the plot or generating opposing views of the same characters and events. Theories can also overlap a good deal with one another, producing very compatible, even similar, readings of the same work. Critical theories are not isolated entities, completely different from one another, separable into tidy bins, like the tubs of tulips, daffodils, and carnations we see at the florist. It would be more useful to think of theories, to continue the metaphor, as mixed bouquets, each of which can contain a few of the flowers that predominate in or that serve different pur‑ poses in other bouquets. Thus, for example, while Marxism focuses on the socioeconomic considerations that underlie human behavior, it doesn’t exclude the psychological domain of human experience; rather, when it addresses human psychology, it does so in order to demonstrate how psychological experience is produced by socioeco‑ nomic factors rather than by the causes usually posited by psychoanalysis. Similarly, while feminist analysis often draws on psychoanalytic and Marxist concepts, it uses them to illuminate feminist concerns: for example, to examine the ways in which women are psychologically and socioeconomically oppressed. And even when critics use the same theoretical tools to read the same literary work, they might produce very different interpretations of that work. Using the RT19943.indb 5 6/29/06 7:10:27 PM   Everything you wanted to know about critical theory but were afraid to ask same theory doesn’t necessarily mean reading the literary work in the same way. If you read other critics’ interpretations of The Great Gatsby, you will probably find that they agree with my interpretations on some points and disagree on others even when we seem to be using the same critical tools. At this point, a brief explanation of a few important concepts might be useful. I refer above to other “critics,” and it’s important to remind ourselves that the terms critic and literary criticism don’t necessarily imply finding fault with liter‑ ary works. Literary criticism, by and large, tries to explain the literary work to us: its production, its meaning, its design, its beauty. Critics tend to find flaws in one another’s interpretations more than in literary works. Unlike movie crit‑ ics and book reviewers, who tell us whether or not we should see the films or read the books they review, literary critics spend much more time explaining than evaluating, even when their official purpose, like that of the New Critics described in chapter 5, is to assess the aesthetic quality of the literary work. Of course, when we apply critical theories that involve a desire to change the world for the better—such as feminism, Marxism, African American criticism, lesbian/gay/queer criticism, and postcolonial criticism—we will sometimes find a literary work flawed in terms of its deliberate or inadvertent promotion of, for example, sexist, classist, racist, heterosexist, or colonialist values. But even in these cases, the flawed work has value because we can use it to understand how these repressive ideologies operate. Critical theory (or literary theory), on the other hand, tries to explain the assump‑ tions and values upon which various forms of literary criticism rest. Strictly speaking, when we interpret a literary text, we are doing literary criticism; when we examine the criteria upon which our interpretation rests, we are doing criti‑ cal theory. Simply put, literary criticism is the application of critical theory to a literary text, whether or not a given critic is aware of the theoretical assumptions informing her or his interpretation. In fact, the widespread recognition that lit‑ erary criticism cannot be separated from the theoretical assumptions on which it is based is one reason why the word criticism is often used as if it included the word theory. Examples of critical theory include Jacques Derrida’s essays on his deconstruc‑ tive theory of language; Louise Rosenblatt’s definitions of text, reader, and poem; and even my attempts in the following chapters to explain the operations of and relationships among theoretical concepts from various critical schools. Exam‑ ples of literary criticism would include a deconstructive interpretation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), a Marxist analysis of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye (1970), a gay reading of the imagery in Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” (1855), and the various interpretations of The Great Gatsby offered in the fol‑ lowing chapters. RT19943.indb 6 6/29/06 7:10:27 PM  Everything you wanted to know about critical theory but were afraid to ask  Despite their tendency to interpret rather than to evaluate literature, literary critics have an enormous effect on the literary marketplace, not in terms of what they say about particular works but in terms of which works they choose to interpret and which works they ignore. And of course, critics tend to interpret works that lend themselves readily to the critical theory they employ. Thus, whenever a single critical theory dominates literary studies, those works that lend themselves well to that theory will be considered “great works” and will be taught in the college classroom, while other works will be ignored. Because most of us who become teachers tend to teach the works we were taught, a popular critical theory can result in the institutionalization, or canonization, of certain literary works: those works then are taught to successive generations of students as “great works” with “timeless” appeal. The last concept I want to discuss with you, before explaining how this book is organized, might be called reading “with the grain” or “against the grain” of a liter‑ ary work. When we read with the grain of a literary work, we interpret the work the way it seems to invite us to interpret it. For example, the Marxist interpreta‑ tion of The Great Gatsby in chapter 3 reads with the grain of the story to the extent that it clarifies the ways in which the text itself explicitly condemns the superficial values that put social status above every other concern. In contrast, that same interpretation reads against the grain of the story when it seeks to show the ways in which the novel, apparently unwittingly, actually promotes the values it clearly wants to condemn. Thus, when we read against the grain, we analyze elements in the text of which the text itself seems unaware. To give another example, because The Great Gatsby explicitly shows that Tom, Daisy, and Myrtle are hardly ideal spouses, our psychoanalytic interpretation of the novel in chapter 2 reads with the grain—interprets the novel the way it seems to invite us to interpret it—when our interpretation suggests that these charac‑ ters are not really in love with their mates. However, because the novel presents Gatsby’s love for Daisy in such a traditional romantic manner—Nick says that Gatsby “committed himself” to Daisy as “to the following of a grail” (156; ch. 8), and Gatsby ends up sacrificing his life for her—our psychoanalytic interpreta‑ tion may be said to read against the grain when it argues that his feelings for Daisy are as far from real love as those of the other characters. This latter inter‑ pretation of Gatsby is one of which the novel seems unaware, given the ways in which the work portrays Gatsby’s devotion to Daisy in contrast to the shallow relationships of the other characters. Reading with the grain thus implies seeing what the author intended us to see, while reading against the grain implies seeing something the author didn’t intend, something of which he or she was unaware. However, we generally talk about what the text intends, rather than about what the author intended. As the New Critics observed, we can’t always know what the author intended, and even RT19943.indb 7 6/29/06 7:10:27 PM   Everything you wanted to know about critical theory but were afraid to ask if authors say what they intended, the literary work might fail to live up to that intention or might go beyond it. Of course, some critics do choose to talk about the author’s intention, and they shoulder the burden of providing biographical arguments to try to convince us that they’re right. By the same token, talking about what the text intends doesn’t guarantee that our analysis is correct; we still must provide evidence from the text to support our view. In any event, any given theory can read with or against the grain of any literary work at any given point in the text. It’s usually important to know whether we’re reading with or against the grain so that we don’t, for example, condemn a literary work for its portrayal of sexist behavior when that very portrayal is given in order to condemn sexism. Like many elements of literary interpretation, this is a sticky one, and readers often disagree about what a work invites us to see and what it does not. While such issues are important, at this point in time they shouldn’t concern you too much. For now, just let them float around in the back of your mind as you read through the chapters that follow. Indeed, I think this book will do its job best if you read it for interest and enjoyment rather than in hopes of becom‑ ing a master theoretician who understands everything. For one thing, reading this book won’t make you a master theoretician who understands everything. Of course, there’s no such creature. And the book you have in your hands is only an introduction to critical theory, a first step into what I hope will be a long and enriching process. While this book will acquaint you with what many of us consider the most well-known and useful theories, there are many other theories not offered here. Having read this book, however, you should be ready to read about additional theories on your own if you’re interested, and you should also be ready to read more about the theories covered here if you find you have a particular interest in some of them. To help you attain that readiness, each chapter begins with an explanation of the theory in question in plain English, drawing on examples from everyday experience and well-known literary works to clarify key points. To help you look at literature the way a theorist might, each chapter also contains a list of general questions such theorists ask about literary works. Then, as a specific illustration, an interpretation of Fitzgerald’s novel through the lens of the theory at hand follows. Next, you will find questions for further practice, which serve as guides to applying the theory under consideration to other literature. These questions (which also can function as paper topics) attempt to focus your attention on specific theoretical concepts illustrated in specific literary works. Most of these works are frequently anthologized and appear often on college syllabi, but you or your instructor might want to apply the questions to different pieces of litera‑ ture. Finally, in case you would like to learn more about a particular theory, each chapter closes with a bibliography of theoretical works, “For Further Reading” and “For Advanced Readers,” that will serve as a useful follow-up to what you RT19943.indb 8 6/29/06 7:10:27 PM  Everything you wanted to know about critical theory but were afraid to ask  have just learned. Chapter 13, “Gaining an Overview,” offers you a way to clarify and organize your thoughts about the critical theories discussed in this textbook by providing questions—one for each theory—that each represent the general focus, a kind of bird’s-eye view, of each school of criticism. In addition, chapter 13 attempts to explain how theories reflect the history and politics of the culture that produces them and how different theories can be used in conjunction to produce a single interpretation of a literary work. It might also be helpful to know that the theories we will examine are presented in logical sequence rather than in strict chronological order.2 We will begin with those theories I think you will find most accessible and most clearly related to our everyday world and then move to others in terms of some logical connection among them, so that you can see theories as overlapping, competing, quarrel‑ ling visions of the world rather than as tidy categories. Thus, we will begin with a chapter on psychoanalytic criticism because most of us have been exposed to some psychoanalytic concepts in our daily lives, albeit as clichéd common‑ places, and because psychoanalysis draws on personal experiences to which most of us can very readily relate. A chapter on Marxist criticism immediately follows because Marxism both overlaps and argues with psychoanalysis. Feminism fol‑ lows these theories because it both draws on and argues with psychoanalytic and Marxist concepts. And so on. Although historical categories will not provide our main organizing principle, historical relationships among theories (for example, how New Criticism was a reaction against traditional historicism or how decon‑ struction was a reaction against structuralism) will be explained because such relationships can clarify some of the theoretical concepts we’re using and some of the ways in which, as noted earlier, the struggle for intellectual dominance is also a struggle for economic, social, and political dominance. Let me close with a personal anecdote that you might find relevant to your initial encounter with critical theory. When I first read Jacques Derrida’s “Structure, Sign and Play”—possibly the most widely reprinted introduction to his theory of deconstruction—I was sitting in my ’64 Chevy, stuck in a parking lot dur‑ ing a violent thunderstorm. I was just beginning to learn about critical theory, and my reaction to the essay was a burst of tears, not because I was moved by the essay or by the sublime nature of the thunderstorm but because I couldn’t understand what I’d just read. I’d thought, until then, that I was very intelligent: I’d studied philosophy diligently in college, and I was a great “decoder” of dense, difficult writing. “So why can’t I understand this essay?” I wondered. “Am I a good deal less intelligent than I’d thought?” (Sound familiar?) I finally learned that my problem was not with the complexity of Derrida’s ideas, though they are complex, but with their unfamiliarity. There seemed to be nothing in my experi‑ ence up to that point to enable me to relate his ideas to anything I already knew. I had no road map. I was lost. I think this experience is common for students RT19943.indb 9 6/29/06 7:10:27 PM  10 Everything you wanted to know about critical theory but were afraid to ask approaching any new theory (not just deconstruction). We simply don’t know how to get there from here. In a very real sense, then, what I’m offering you in the following chapters is a road map. And I think the journey metaphor is appropriate for our endeavor here. For knowledge isn’t something we acquire: it’s something we are or some‑ thing we hope to become. Knowledge is what constitutes our relationship to ourselves and to our world, for it is the lens through which we view ourselves and our world. Change the lens and you change both the view and the viewer. This principle is what makes knowledge at once so frightening and so liberating, so painful and so utterly, utterly joyful. If this book can help you discover that the joy is worth the pain and that the pain itself is honorable—if it can help you value your initial fear and confusion as signs that you’ve taken your first big step into an unfamiliar territory worthy of the work required to explore it—then it will have accomplished something important. Notes 1. References to The Great Gatsby are cited parenthetically throughout this textbook and refer to the 1992 edition of the novel published by Macmillan (with notes and preface by Matthew J. Bruccoli). Parenthetical references include page numbers as well as chapter to aid those readers using a different edition of the novel. 2. In studying critical theory, adherence to a strict chronological order would pose problems even if we wanted to achieve it. Perhaps the most pressing problem is that the chronological order in which theories appeared in academia differs from their chronological order if looked at from a broader historical perspective. For example, if we wanted to use academic history as our principle of organization, this book probably would begin with New Criticism (chapter 5), the academic ori‑ gins of which can be found in the 1920s, although New Criticism’s domination of academia didn’t begin until after World War II. If we wanted to use history in the broader sense of the word as our principle of organization, then this book prob‑ ably would begin with feminism (chapter 4), which one could argue began with Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) or perhaps even earlier. While I do adhere to what I believe is a logical order in the presentation of chapters, please note that chronology is not abandoned, merely reconsidered. In addition to being foundational in nature, the first three theories presented—psy‑ choanalysis, Marxism, and feminism—historically precede New Criticism, which is the next chapter offered. Chapters on the remaining theories follow in a chron‑ ological order based, for the most part, on the period during which each theory achieved an important, widespread presence in academia. Works cited Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. 1925. New York: Macmillan, 1992. RT19943.indb 10 6/29/06 7:10:28 PM  2 Psychoanaly tic criticism We’re starting our study of critical theory with psychoanalytic criticism because, whether we realize it or not, psychoanalytic concepts have become part of our everyday lives, and therefore psychoanalytic thinking should have the advantage of familiarity. If you’ve ever told an angry friend “Don’t take it out on me!” you were accusing that friend of displacement, which is the psychoanalytic name for transferring our anger with one person onto another person (usually one who won’t fight back or can’t hurt us as badly as the person with whom we are really angry). Psychoanalytic concepts such as sibling rivalry, inferiority complexes, and defense mechanisms are in such common use that most of us feel we know what they mean without ever having heard them defined. The disadvantage of such common usage, however, is that most of us have acquired a very simplistic idea of what these concepts mean, and in their clichéd form they seem rather superficial if not altogether meaningless. Couple this unfortunate fact with our fear that psychoanalysis wants to invade our most private being and reveal us to ourselves and to the world as somehow inadequate, even sick, and the result is very often a deep-seated mistrust of “psychobabble.” Indeed, our common use of the word psychobabble illustrates our belief that psychoanalysis is both impos‑ sible to understand and meaningless. Thus, in a culture that uses psychoanalytic concepts in its everyday language we frequently see the wholesale rejection of psychoanalysis as a useful way of understanding human behavior. I hope this chapter will show you that seeing the world psychoanalytically can be simple without being simplistic. If we take the time to understand some key concepts about human experience offered by psychoanalysis, we can begin to see the ways in which these concepts operate in our daily lives in profound rather than superficial ways, and we’ll begin to understand human behaviors that until now may have seemed utterly baffling. And, of course, if psychoanalysis can help us better understand human behavior, then it must certainly be able to help us understand literary texts, which are about human behavior. The concepts we’ll discuss below are based on the psychoanalytic principles established by Sigmund RT19943.indb 11 6/29/06 7:10:28 PM  12 Psychoanalytic criticism Freud (1856–1939), whose theory of the psyche often is referred to today as clas- sical psychoanalysis. We must remember that Freud evolved his ideas over a long period of time, and many of his ideas changed as he developed them. In addi‑ tion, much of his thinking was, as he pointed out, speculative, and he hoped that others would continue to develop and even correct certain of his ideas over time. So the attempt in this chapter is to outline those areas of classical psycho‑ analytic theory that are particularly useful to literary criticism and to show how this view of human behavior is relevant to our experience of literature. Later in the chapter, we’ll also take a brief look at the more recent work of nontraditional psychoanalytic theorist Jacques Lacan.1 The origins of the unconscious When we look at the world through a psychoanalytic lens, we see that it is com‑ prised of individual human beings, each with a psychological history that begins in childhood experiences in the family and each with patterns of adolescent and adult behavior that are the direct result of that early experience. Because the goal of psychoanalysis is to help us resolve our psychological problems, often called disorders or dysfunctions (and none of us is completely free of psychologi‑ cal problems), the focus is on patterns of behavior that are destructive in some way. I say patterns of behavior because our repetition of destructive behavior reveals the existence of some significant psychological difficulty that has prob‑ ably been influencing us for some time without our knowing it. In fact, it is our not knowing about a problem—or, if we do know we have a problem, not real‑ izing when it is influencing our behavior—that gives it so much control over us. For this reason, we must begin our discussion with the concept central to all psychoanalytic thinking: the existence of the unconscious. Do you remember the song “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” by the Rolling Stones? The idea expressed is “You can’t always get what you want, but you get what you need.” This formulation, with the addition of two words, gives us the key to thinking psychoanalytically: “You can’t always get what you con- sciously want, but you get what you unconsciously need.” The notion that human beings are motivated, even driven, by desires, fears, needs, and conflicts of which they are unaware—that is, unconscious—was one of Sigmund Freud’s most radi‑ cal insights, and it still governs classical psychoanalysis today. The unconscious is the storehouse of those painful experiences and emotions, those wounds, fears, guilty desires, and unresolved conflicts we do not want to know about because we feel we will be overwhelmed by them. The unconscious comes into being when we are very young through the repression, the expunging from consciousness, of these unhappy psychological events. However, repression RT19943.indb 12 6/29/06 7:10:28 PM  Psychoanalytic criticism 13 doesn’t eliminate our painful experiences and emotions. Rather, it gives them force by making them the organizers of our current experience: we unconsciously behave in ways that will allow us to “play out,” without admitting it to ourselves, our conflicted feelings about the painful experiences and emotions we repress. Thus, for psychoanalysis, the unconscious isn’t a passive reservoir of neutral data, though the word is sometimes used this way in other disciplines and in common parlance; rather, the unconscious is a dynamic entity that engages us at the deepest level of our being. Until we find a way to know and acknowledge to ourselves the true cause(s) of our repressed wounds, fears, guilty desires, and unresolved conflicts, we hang onto them in disguised, distorted, and self-defeating ways. For example, if I don’t realize that I still long for the love I never received from my long-dead, alcoholic father, I am very liable to select an alcoholic, aloof mate so that I can reenact my relationship with my father and “this time” make him love me. In fact, even when I do realize that I have this kind of psychological issue with my father, it is difficult to recognize when I am “acting it out” with another person. Indeed, I probably won’t see the profound similarity between my father and my beloved: I’ll focus instead on superficial differences (my father has dark hair and my beloved is blond). In other words, I will experience my longing for my neglectful father as longing for my current heartthrob. I will feel that I am in love with my current sweetheart, perhaps even desperately in love, and I will believe that what I really want is for my sweetheart to love me back. I will not necessarily realize that what I really want in wanting this man is some‑ thing I never received from my father. The evidence will lie in the similarities between his treatment of me and my father’s treatment of me and in the fact that, should I succeed in gaining the kind of attention I want from my current “crush,” either it will not be enough (he will never be able to convince me that he really loves me; I will think that my insecurity is proof of his indifference), or if he does convince me that he really loves me, I will lose interest in him because the attentive lover does not fulfill my need to reexperience the abandonment I suffered at the hands of my father. The point is that I want something I don’t know I want and can’t have: the love of my neglectful father. In fact, even if my father were still alive and had the kind of psychological rebirth that permitted him to give me his love, I would still have to heal the psychological wounds he inflicted over the course of my childhood—my feelings of inadequacy and aban‑ donment, for example—before I could benefit from his love. As you can see in the above example, the family is very important in psycho‑ analytic theory because we are each a product of the role we are given in the family-complex. In one sense, the “birth” of the unconscious lies in the way we perceive our place in the family and how we react to this self-definition: RT19943.indb 13 6/29/06 7:10:28 PM  14 Psychoanalytic criticism for example, “I’m the failure”; “I’m the perfect child”; “I must always ‘come in second’ to my brother”; “I’m unlovable”; or “I’m responsible for my parents’ prob‑ lems.” The oedipal conflict (competition with the parent of the same gender for the attention and affection of the parent of the opposite gender) and all the commonplace ideas of old-style Freudian theory (for example, sibling rivalry, penis envy, castration anxiety) are merely descriptions of the dominant ways in which family conflicts can be lived. They give us merely starting points for understanding differences among individuals. For example, in some families, sib- ling rivalry (competition with siblings for the attention and affection of parents) can occur, in an important sense, between a parent and child. If I feel jealous of my mate’s affection for our child, what may be going on is a reenactment of my unresolved childhood rivalry with a sibling I believed was more loved by my parents than I. That is, seeing my mate’s affection for our child reawakens some or all of the hurt I felt when I saw my parents’ affection for the sibling I believed they preferred. And so I now find myself competing with my child for the atten‑ tion of my mate. It is important to note that oedipal attachments, sibling rivalry, and the like are considered developmental stages. In other words, we all go through these experi‑ ences, and they are a natural and healthy part of maturing and establishing our own identities. It is when we fail to outgrow these conflicts that we have trouble. Here’s an example common to many women. If I remain in competition with my mother for my father’s love (a competition that can go on in my unconscious long after one or both parents are dead), I will probably be most attracted to men who already have girlfriends or wives because their attachment to another woman will allow me to replay my competition with my mother and “this time” win. Of course, I might not win the man this time, and even if I do, once I’ve won him I’ll lose interest in him. Although I probably don’t realize it con‑ sciously, his desirability lies in his attachment to someone else. Once he’s mine, he’s not so exciting anymore. On the other hand, if as a child I felt that I won my father’s affection from my mother (which he may have given me as a way of punishing or avoiding my mother), then I may be attracted to men who already have girlfriends or wives (and who don’t seem likely to leave them) because I feel I need to be punished for “stealing” Dad from my mother. Of course, another way to punish myself for stealing Dad from my mother (or for wanting to steal him or, if he sexually molested me, for feeling that it was somehow my fault) is to be unable to respond sexually to my mate. A common way in which men replay unresolved oedipal attachments involves what is often called the “good-girl/bad-girl” attitude toward women. If I remain in competition (usually unconscious) with my father for my mother’s love, I am very liable to deal with my guilt by categorizing women as either “like Mom” (“good girls”) or “not like Mom” (“bad girls”) and then by being able to enjoy RT19943.indb 14 6/29/06 7:10:28 PM  Psychoanalytic criticism 15 sex only with women who are “not like Mom.” In other words, because I uncon‑ sciously associate sexual desire with desire for my mother, sexual desire makes me feel guilty and dirty, and for this reason I can enjoy it only with “bad girls,” who are themselves guilty and dirty and whom I don’t associate with Mom. This view often creates a seduce-and-abandon pattern of behavior toward women. When I seduce a “bad girl,” I must abandon her (sooner or later) because I cannot allow myself to be permanently attached to someone so unworthy of marriage, that is, unworthy of being classified with my mother. When I seduce a “good girl,” two things happen: (1) she becomes a “bad girl” and, like other “bad girls,” unworthy of my permanent commitment, and (2) I feel so guilty for “soiling” her (which is like “soiling” Mom) that I must abandon her to avoid my guilt. The point is that, for both women and men, only by recognizing the psychological motivations for our destructive behavior can we hope to begin to change that behavior. The defenses, anxiety, and core issues Our unconscious desires not to recognize or change our destructive behaviors— because we have formed our identities around them and because we are afraid of what we will find if we examine them too closely—are served by our defenses. Defenses are the processes by which the contents of our unconscious are kept in the unconscious. In other words, they are the processes by which we keep the repressed repressed in order to avoid knowing what we feel we can’t handle knowing. Defenses include selective perception (hearing and seeing only what we feel we can handle), selective memory (modifying our memories so that we don’t feel overwhelmed by them or forgetting painful events entirely), denial (believ‑ ing that the problem doesn’t exist or the unpleasant incident never happened), avoidance (staying away from people or situations that are liable to make us anx‑ ious by stirring up some unconscious—i.e., repressed—experience or emotion), displacement (“taking it out” on someone or something less threatening than the person who caused our fear, hurt, frustration, or anger), and projection (ascribing our fear, problem, or guilty desire to someone else and then condemning him or her for it, in order to deny that we have it ourselves). Perhaps one of the most complex defenses is regression, the temporary return to a former psychological state, which is not just imagined but relived. Regression can involve a return either to a painful or a pleasant experience. It is a defense because it carries our thoughts away from some present difficulty (as when Death of a Salesman’s Willy Loman flashes back to his past in order to avoid the unpleasant realities of his present life). However, it differs from other defenses in that it carries with it the opportunity for active reversal, the acknowledgment and working through of repressed experiences and emotions, because we can RT19943.indb 15 6/29/06 7:10:29 PM  16 Psychoanalytic criticism alter the effects of a wound only when we relive the wounding experience. This is why regression is such a useful therapeutic tool. Many psychological experiences can function as defenses, even when not for‑ mally defined as such. For example, fear of intimacy—fear of emotional involve‑ ment with another human being—is often an effective defense against learning about our own psychological wounds because it keeps us at an emotional distance in relationships most likely to bring those wounds to the surface: relationships with lovers, spouses, offspring, and best friends. By not permitting ourselves to get too close to significant others, we “protect” ourselves from the painful past experiences that intimate relationships inevitably dredge up. Having more than one romantic or sexual partner at a time, breaking off romances when they start to evolve past the infatuation stage, and keeping oneself too busy to spend much time with family and friends are just a few of the many ways we can maintain an emotional distance from loved ones without admitting to ourselves what we are doing. Of course, sometimes our defenses momentarily break down, and this is when we experience anxiety. Anxiety can be an important experience because it can reveal our core issues. Let’s begin our discussion of core issues and their relation‑ ship to anxiety with some examples of the more common core issues. Fear of intimacy—the chronic and overpowering feeling that emotional close‑ ness will seriously hurt or destroy us and that we can remain emotionally safe only by remaining at an emotional distance from others at all times. As we saw above, fear of intimacy can also function as a defense. If this particular defense occurs frequently or continually, then fear of intimacy is probably a core issue. Fear of abandonment—the unshakable belief that our friends and loved ones are going to desert us (physical abandonment) or don’t really care about us (emotional abandonment). Fear of betrayal—the nagging feeling that our friends and loved ones can’t be trusted, for example, can’t be trusted not to lie to us, not to laugh at us behind our backs, or in the case of romantic partners, not to cheat on us by dating others. Low self-esteem—the belief that we are less worthy than other people and, therefore, don’t deserve attention, love, or any other of life’s rewards. Indeed, we often believe that we deserve to be punished by life in some way. Insecure or unstable sense of self—the inability to sustain a feeling of personal identity, to sustain a sense of knowing ourselves. This core issue makes us very vulnerable to the influence of other people, and we may find ourselves RT19943.indb 16 6/29/06 7:10:29 PM  Psychoanalytic criticism 17 continually changing the way we look or behave as we become involved with different individuals or groups. Oedipal fixation (or oedipal complex)—a dysfunctional bond with a parent of the opposite sex that we don’t outgrow in adulthood and that doesn’t allow us to develop mature relationships with our peers. (Tyson 26–27) You may notice that some of the core issues listed above seem related. Just as fear of intimacy can function as both a defense and a core issue, a given core issue can result from another core issue or can cause the emergence of another core issue. For example, if fear of abandonment is my core issue, I am liable to develop fear of intimacy as a core issue as well. My conviction that I will eventually be abandoned by anyone for whom I care might lead me to chronically avoid emo‑ tional intimacy in the belief that, if I don’t get too close to a loved one, I won’t be hurt when that loved one inevitably abandons me. To use another example, if low self-esteem is my core issue, I might develop fear of abandonment as a core issue as well. My belief that I am unworthy of love might lead me to expect that I will be abandoned eventually by anyone I love. Or my low self-esteem might lead me to develop fear of intimacy. My belief that I am less worthy than other people might lead me to keep others at an emotional distance in the hope that they won’t find out that I am unworthy of them. Of course, these are just some of the ways that core issues are connected to one another. I’m sure you can think of others. The most important fact to remember is that core issues define our being in fundamental ways. They do not consist of occasional negative feelings, such as passing episodes of insecurity or low self-image. Having an occasional “bad-hair day,” for instance, does not indicate the presence of a core issue. Rather, core issues stay with us throughout life and, unless effectively addressed, they deter‑ mine our behavior in destructive ways of which we are usually unaware. In other words, anxiety can tell us a good deal about ourselves because we are anxious in situations in which our core issues are in play. For example, I become anxious when one of my friends goes to the movies with another friend because it makes me relive the abandonment I felt from a neglectful parent whether or not I see the connection between the two events. That is, I feel abandoned now because I was wounded by feeling abandoned as a child, and I am anxious because I don’t want to admit to myself that, in some important way, I was abandoned by my parent. So I become hurt and angry with my friend without consciously knowing why. My unconscious knowledge of the reason why is what makes me anxious. In this way, anxiety always involves the return of the repressed: I am anxious because something I repressed—some painful or frightening or guilty experi‑ ence—is resurfacing, and I want to keep it repressed. Psychoanalysis, as a form of therapy, is the controlled working in and with anxiety. Its goal (unlike that RT19943.indb 17 6/29/06 7:10:29 PM  18 Psychoanalytic criticism of ego psychology, which is a popular form of therapy today) isn’t to strengthen our defenses or restore us to social adaptation but to break down our defenses in order to effect basic changes in the structures of our personality and the ways we act. Under ordinary circumstances, however, our defenses keep us unaware of our unconscious experience, and our anxiety, even if it is somewhat prolonged or recurrent, doesn’t succeed in breaking through our repression. How then, with‑ out the aid of psychotherapy, can we learn about the operations of our own unconscious? As I noted earlier, patterns in our behavior, if we can recognize them, provide clues, especially in the area of interpersonal relations and, within that domain, especially in our romantic or sexual relationships, because it is here that our initial unresolved conflicts within the family are reenacted. In addition, we have access to our unconscious, if we know how to use it, through our dreams and through any creative activities we engage in because both our dreams and our creativity, independent of our conscious will or desire, draw directly on the unconscious. Dreams and dream symbols When we sleep, it is believed that our defenses do not operate in the same manner they do when we are awake. During sleep, the unconscious is free to express itself, and it does so in our dreams. However, even in our dreams there is some censorship, some protection against frightening insights into our repressed experiences and emotions, and that protection takes the form of dream dis‑ tortion. The “message” our unconscious expresses in our dreams, which is the dream’s underlying meaning, or latent content, is altered so that we don’t readily recognize it through processes called displacement and condensation. Dream ­displacement occurs whenever we use a “safe” person, event, or object as a “stand- in” to represent a more threatening person, event, or object. For example, I may dream that an elementary school teacher is sexually molesting me in order to express (and at the same time avoid) my unconscious knowledge that one of my parents sexually molested me. Condensation occurs during a dream when‑ ever we use a single dream image or event to represent more than one uncon‑ scious wound or conflict. For example, my dream that I’m battling a ferocious bear might represent psychological “battles” or conflicts both at home and at work. Or, to expand on the above example, my dream that I am being sexu‑ ally molested by an elementary school teacher might represent my unconscious feeling that my self-esteem is under attack by any number of family members, friends, and colleagues. (A single dream event may thus be a product of both displacement and condensation.) RT19943.indb 18 6/29/06 7:10:29 PM  Psychoanalytic criticism 19 Because displacement and condensation occur while we dream, these processes are referred to collectively as primary revision. What we actually dream, once primary revision has disguised the unconscious message, or the dream’s latent content, is the dream’s manifest content. The dream images described above— images of an elementary school teacher molesting me and of myself battling a ferocious bear—are examples of manifest content. What these images actually mean is the dreams’ latent content, and that is a matter of interpretation. Is the elementary school teacher a stand-in for one of my parents, or are the images of sexual molestation a stand-in for verbal attacks on my self-esteem? Does the bear represent a psychological conflict, and if so, what is that conflict? In interpreting our dreams then, our goal is to recall the manifest content and try to uncover the latent content. However, we must remember that, at this conscious stage as well, we’re very liable to unconsciously change the dream in order to further pro‑ tect ourselves from knowing what is too painful to know. For example, we might forget certain parts of the dream or remember those parts somewhat differently from how they actually occurred. This process, which takes place when we are awake, is called secondary revision. It may be helpful to think of the dream’s manifest content as a kind of dream symbolism that can be interpreted much the way we interpret symbols of any kind, if we keep in mind that there is no one-to-one correspondence between a given symbol and its meaning. That is, while there are some images that tend to have the same symbolic meaning from dreamer to dreamer, at least if those dreamers are members of the same culture, there are also important individual differences in the ways we represent our unconscious experience in our dreams. So to increase our chances of interpreting our dreams accurately, we must learn over time how we tend to represent certain ideas, feelings, and people in our dreams, and we must know the context in which a particular dream image occurred: what happened in the dream before, during, and after a particular dream image appeared? Certain general principles of dream interpretation tend to apply in most cases, and they are as follows. Because dreamers create all the “characters” in their dreams, there is a real sense in which each person we dream about is really a part of our own psychological experience that we project during the dream onto a stand-in. If I dream that my sister gives birth to a stillborn child, for example, I might be dreaming either that I have given birth to a stillborn child (a failed relationship? a failed career? a failed artistic endeavor?) or that I am a stillborn child (am I feeling abandoned? helpless? depressed?). As this example makes evi‑ dent, dreams about children almost always reveal something about our feelings toward ourselves or toward the child that is still within us and that is probably still wounded in some way. RT19943.indb 19 6/29/06 7:10:29 PM  20 Psychoanalytic criticism Given that our sexuality is such an important reflection of our psychological being, our dreams about our gender roles or about our attitudes toward our‑ selves and others as sexual beings are also revealing. In order to interpret these dreams, we need to be aware of the male and female imagery that can occur in them. Male imagery, or phallic symbols, can include towers, rockets, guns, arrows, swords, and the like. In short, if it stands upright or goes off, it might be func‑ tioning as a phallic symbol. For example, if I dream that I am holding my friend at gunpoint, I might be expressing unconscious sexual aggression toward that friend or toward someone else for whom that friend is a safe stand-in (such as my friend’s mate or my mate). In addition, my sexual aggression might be inter‑ preted in a number of ways: is the emphasis on the sexual, on the aggression, or on both? Do I desire my friend’s mate, or am I jealous of my friend’s mate? Do I want to become more assertive in my sexual relationship with my mate, or do I want to hurt my mate’s sexual self-image as my mate has hurt mine? To decide which interpretation is correct requires more data in the form of other similar dreams, patterns in my waking behavior, and an honest analysis of my feelings about the dream and about the people involved. Analogously, if I dream that I am being held at gunpoint, I might be expressing an unconscious feeling that my sexuality, or my identity in general, is being exploited or endangered. Female imagery can include caves, rooms, walled-in gardens (like the ones we see in paintings representing the Virgin Mary), cups, or enclosures and containers of any kind. If the image can be a stand-in for the womb, then it might be function‑ ing as female imagery. Thus, if I dream I am trapped or lost in a small, dark room, I might be expressing an unconscious fear of my mother’s control over me or an unconscious fear that I have never completely matured as a human being. Perhaps I’m expressing both, for these two problems are certainly related. Female imagery can also include milk, fruit, and other kinds of food as well as the containers in which food is delivered, such as bottles or cups (yes, there is an overlap here with womb imagery)—in other words, anything that can be a stand-in for the breast, which is itself a stand-in for emotional nurturing. So if I dream that I am trying to feed a litter of hungry kittens from a small and rapidly diminishing bottle of milk (a dream that either gender can have), I might be expressing an unconscious feeling that too much is being asked of me by my children or by my spouse or by my employer—or by all of them—or that I am putting too much pressure on myself to take care of others. Analogously, if I dream I am hungry or looking for food, I might be expressing an unconscious need for emotional nurturing. To move to other kinds of symbols, if I dream about water—which is fluid, changeable, sometimes soothing, sometimes dangerous, and often deeper than it looks—chances are good that I’m dreaming about my sexuality or the realm of the emotions or the realm of the unconscious. So a dream that I’m about to be overwhelmed by a tidal wave probably indicates some fear of being overwhelmed RT19943.indb 20 6/29/06 7:10:29 PM