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As I have said, a Horneyan approach has led me to see that there are almost bound to be disparities between rhetoric and mimesis. I have come to realize that these disparities can be either exacerbated or reduced by the choice of narrative technique. Omniscient narration tends to exacerbate them because although omniscient narrators present themselves as authoritative sources of interpretation and judgment, they are not. First person narration reduces the disparities because the interpretations and judgments belong to a character and therefore are clearly subjective. First person narration creates other problems, however, such as those of reliability. How do we know the degree to which the narrator’s perspective is endorsed by the implied author? How do we know whether the narrator’s interpretations and judgments are trustworthy? And, most perplexing, how do we know if the narrator’s accounts of self and others are accurate? In omniscient narration, we believe what the narrator shows us about the characters, even if we are skeptical about what we are told. But in first person narration, can we believe the narrator’s accounts of self and others, even when they are presented dramatically? The perceptions and recollections of an anxious, defensive, insecure narrator may well be distorted.
I have found that both omniscient and first person narrators require psychological analysis. The omniscient narrator’s interpretations and judgments are a reflection of the character structure of the implied author, who has a vested interest in giving a certain rhetorical spin to the story. First person narrators are usually characters with profound psychological problems who are engaged in various forms of self-punishment and self-justification. Understanding their needs and defenses can go a long way toward helping us to detect their distortions and assess their reliability. As I have suggested, a Horneyan approach to narration often gives us a great deal of insight into the psyche of the implied author.
Some works, such as Wuthering Heights, employ multiple narrators. First person narrators often seem to be speaking for the author, but the use of multiple narrators tends to relativize the narration, especially when the narrators have differing perspectives. Techniques such as this that lead to the disappearance of the author can diminish or eliminate the disparity between rhetoric and mimesis, since the rhetorical stance of the implied author becomes difficult or impossible to define. The implied author may be recovered through psychological analysis, however, if we see the multiple narrators as expressing conflicting components of the author’s psyche and consider the motives behind this choice of narrative technique.
The studies of individual works in the body of this book will illustrate most of the applications of a Horneyan approach that I have discussed, and I shall suggest others in the conclusion. In part 2, I shall examine characters and relationships in works by Ibsen, Barth, Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Sophocles. The texts I have selected display most of the defensive strategies Horney describes and show the forms they have taken in various periods and cultures. These works are bound together by a number of recurring motifs, such as living through others, morbid dependency, suicide or suicidal tendencies, and searching for glory, all of which Horney’s theory illuminates. I shall not consider the works chronologically but in an order that facilitates comparison.
In part 3, I shall continue to examine characters, relationships, and recurring motifs, but I shall also consider the protagonists in relation to rhetoric and plot and shall explore the ways in which mimesis functions as a subversive force. I shall focus on six novels: Great Expectations, Jane Eyre, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Madame Bovary, The Awakening, and Wuthering Heights. Some of these novels display the education pattern that I have described above, while others have a vindication pattern, based on the Cinderella archetype, in which a virtuous but persecuted protagonist finally achieves the status and approval he or she deserves. Both of these patterns are supported by the rhetoric and undermined by the mimesis, which (as I interpret it) shows the educated characters to be compulsive and immature and the vindicated characters to be less deserving of glorification than the author would have us believe.
I shall compare the novels in terms of these formal patterns and also in terms of their narrative techniques. Great Expectations and Jane Eyre have unreliable first person narrators, The Mayor of Casterbridge and The Awakening have problematic omniscient narration, and Madame Bovary has an omniscient narrator who is not as invisible as many, including the author, have claimed. Wuthering Heights avoids most of the difficulties found in the other novels by its use of multiple narrators. The problem here is to locate the implied author and to get some sense of where she stands in relation to the characters and their values. I believe that a Horneyan approach can help us to solve this problem.
In my discussions of literature, I shall use Horney’s theory as a source of insight rather than as a grid upon which to lay texts. Although influenced by Horney, the readings I offer are mine. They are not the inevitable result of the application of her theory; indeed, I sometimes disagree with her analysis of a literary character.
I believe that psychoanalytic theory illuminates literature, that literature enriches theory, and that combining theory and literature enhances both our intellectual and our empathic understanding of human behavior. This process involves not just theory and literature but also our own personalities and our insight into ourselves. There is a triangular relationship between literature, theory, and the individual interpreter. Our literary and theoretical interests reflect our own character, the way in which we use theory depends on the degree to which it has become emotionally as well as intellectually meaningful to us, and what we are able to perceive depends on our personality, our theoretical perspective, and our access to our inner life.
I have found Horney’s theory to be a powerful instrument of analysis, and I am eager to share this discovery with others so that their understanding of literature and life might also be enriched by it. I know, however, that no one will entirely agree with my readings, just as I never entirely agree with anyone else’s, and that the application of Horney’s theory might yield different results in other hands.
For those unfamiliar with Horney or with my previous expositions of her ideas, I provide an account of her mature theory in the following chapter. Those who know her theory well may wish to proceed directly to chapter 3.
2 Horney’s Mature Theory
Born in a suburb of Hamburg in 1885, Karen Horney (née Danielsen) attended medical school in Freiburg and completed her studies at the universities of Göttingen and Berlin. She married Oskar Horney in 1909, was in analysis with Karl Abraham in 1910–12, had three daughters between 1911 and 1916, received her M.D. in 1915, and became a founding member of the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute in 1920. She separated from Oskar in 1926 and accepted Franz Alexander’s invitation to become founding Associate Director of the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute in 1932. In 1934, she moved to New York, where she joined the faculties of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute and the New School for Social Research. Because of her critique of orthodox theory, Horney was forced to resign from the New York Psychoanalytic in 1941, whereupon she founded the American Institute for Psychoanalysis, of which she was dean until her death in 1952.1
Horney’s thought went through three stages. In essays she wrote between 1923 and 1935, she tried to revise Freud’s phallocentric view of feminine psychology while remaining within the framework of classical