How Does Stanley Renner Address the Problem of Psychoanalytic Critics - Research Paper Example

Renner Assignment 30 October, 2008 How does Stanley Renner address the problem of psychoanalytic critics tending to privilege the individual “psycho-drama” of the author or characters over analysis of the novels cultural context and dramatization of social conflict in his essay? Although the interpretative value of psychoanalytic criticism is highly contestable among literary and cultural theorists (Barry, 101-105, 130-133), it is, I believe, reasonable to argue that its use as an interpretative tool has greater legitimacy when considering a work such as Henry James The Turn of the Screw, which is widely acknowledged by critics to be a portrait of abnormal psychology as well as being a “ghost story”. The identification of sexual repression and female hysteria as the motive force behind the governesss apparent encounter with the ghosts of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel dates back to Edmund Wilsons 1934 orthodox Freudian critique, “The Ambiguity of Henry James”, and since then the tale has been the centre of numerous debates based around both Freudian and anti-Freudian interpretations (Renner, 176, fn. 2). As with Wilsons landmark account, Stanley Renners identification of female sexual hysteria to explain both the supernatural aspect to the story and the governesss subsequent behaviour (176) would appear to bear out Peter Barrys claim in Beginning Theory that psychoanalytic critics privilege “the individual psycho-drama above the social drama of class conflict” (105). Certainly, Renner makes no reference to class conflict in this essay. Much less does he see it as a mere “ghost story”; rather, it is to him very much a projection of internal fears and anxieties – its “dramatization of a womans psychosexual problem and the damage it does to the children in her charge” is, he confidently states, “the true – and clearly the richer – story [...] (175). Nevertheless, the supernatural aspects of the story cannot be dismissed out of hand, as Renner notes – indeed, his particular reading of the story arises in response to one of the strongest arguments against a purely naturalistic interpretation: how did the governess manage to give a detailed description of a man she had never seen, unless she had genuinely seen a ghost? (175) Renners analysis of the governesss spectral visions centres on two propositions: first, that she is a casebook sexual hysteric, and second, that her uncannily detailed description is based not on a personal encounter with a ghost as she believes, but is instead the imaginary product of what he argues was a significant cultural theory in nineteenth century Europe. This is physiognomy, a pseudo-science which held that a persons character could be inferred from their physical features. “Not only is it reasonably certain that James knew about physiognomical theories and the use of such devices by novelists familiar to him,” writes Renner, “but he also creates in his governess a character who fits the profile of the typical sexual hysteric, who has hysterical hallucinations, and whose mind projects her sexual fear in a form that draws on the very religious and physiognomical stereotypes with which a mind such as hers would logically be furnished.” (187) With this device, Renner seeks to situate his Freudian underpinnings within a broader (non-Freudian) social context that draws upon two other (arguably rival) forms of interpretation that were commonplace in the culture of the time, physiognomy and religiosity. With the exception of a reference to the Oedipal implications of Miles and Floras burgeoning sexuality (194), Renners reliance on standard Freudian categories – the “classic psychoanalytic symptoms, conditions or phases, such as the oral, anal, and phallic stages” (Barry, 105) – is minimal. The central interpretation preferred by Renner is still centred on Freudian theories of repressed female sexuality and hysteria. However, this manifests itself by the governess conjuring up, as it were, a stereotypical representation of a “redheaded sex fiend” (191) and a “villainously libidinous male” (192), one that Renner argues (with reference to the work of Graeme Tytler) is rooted in cultural stereotypes of evil dating back to Biblical times (182). How persuasively Renner leavens his Freudian interpretation by introducing these non-Freudian factors into his thesis is, however, open to debate, especially when considering his subsequent interpretation of these factors, which methodologically has noticeable similarities to Freudian associative techniques (Barry 98-102), which themselves are problematic and tendentious. In this instance, Renner gives himself free rein to definitively locate the source and significance of the governesss ghastly visions. Fuelled by hysteria and sexual anxieties, they are coloured by a physiognomical interpretation of the apparition of Peter Quint as a Satanic figure, which itself draws on deeply held religious stereotypes of evil and temptation of the sort that would presumably be commonplace to a Victorian-era parsons daughter of an impressionable age. The major problem with Renners argument, however, is not so much a tendency towards standard Freudian reductionism – as noted, his use of Freudian categories throughout is sparing – but rather his methodological approach, which, like Freuds celebrated “aliquis” encounter with the young Austrian Jewish man, shows how associative techniques can easily slide into rank speculation, as the Italian Marxist textual critic Sebastiano Timpanaro deconstructs in his landmark critique of the theory of parapraxes, The Freudian Slip. For example, Renners explanation of how the governess can give a detailed description of a figure she has never met rests on the assumption that the spectre of Peter Quint is actually a physiognomical representation of Satan. Renner amasses examples from various sources to show how the governesss description of her vision to Mrs Grose matches that of traditional representations of Satan (182-3): red curly hair, a smart dresser, sharp eyes, arched eyebrows, cruel mouth, etc. Yet why is Satan in particular an appropriate foil for repressed female sexuality, hysteria, and fear of male sexuality? Renners argument rests on too many unproved assertions: that the governess is an hysteric steeped in religiosity, whose sexual fears are so extreme that even the merest thought of male sexuality represents itself to her in the form of “the Tempter himself”. Even here, Renners claim is conditional. Such a scenario, he writes, “would not be surprising” for a parsons daughter (184). Similarly, the arbitrary nature of many of these physical traits is acknowledged even by Renner, who notes, albeit as an aside, that “[t]his is a precarious business at best; the spuriousness of the science assures that one can find almost as many different readings of the same features and expressions as there are physiognomists”. (185) (Here, he may well have confirmed the observation of the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, who once stated that the “interpretative mechanism” of psychoanalysis “can be summarized as follows: whatever you say, it means something else” (Deleuze, 9, cited in Timpanaro, 46).) Equally tendentious is the evidence Renner presents to support his hypothesis that James consciously used physiognomy as a device. Renner relies heavily on the works of one Johann Caspar Lavater, an eighteenth-century Swiss clergyman who pioneered the pseudoscience. He is correct to point out that Lavaters work was widely known throughout Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He is also correct to point out that there is no evidence that James was specifically familiar with Lavaters theories (182). Renners citation of Tytler that a wide range of European authors (Fielding, Dickens, the Brontës, Balzac, Flaubert, George Sand) were so influenced, and that this is therefore likely to have influenced James in turn, is less than convincing. Renners argument for the centrality of a physiognomical interpretation is somewhat undermined by his later acknowledgment that by the later nineteenth century, physiognomical explanations “had lost credibility for perceptive people”. (The Turn of the Screw was written in 1897.) James may very well have lightly drawn on this cultural form but there are many more obvious cultural influences that informed James life, ranging from his fathers abiding interest in spiritualism and Swedenborgianism (which Renner overlooks entirely) to the psychological works of his own brother, William. Equally, Renner touches only lightly on the possibility that the sexual repression underpinning James narrative was located not so much in the governess but in James himself, an argument pursued more vigorously by the Marxist cultural theorist Jonathan Flatley in his 2004 essay “Reading into Henry James” (109). The secrets and secretiveness that suffuse the tale, secrets about ghosts, secrets about sexuality, mirror the sexual secret playing out “at the very moment of the composition of the story, “the trial of Oscar Wilde, which was a turning point in the creation of the personage known as the homosexual.” (116). Recent critical and biographical studies, such as John R. Bradleys Henry James and Homo-erotic Desire and Fred Kaplans The Imagination of Genius, have highlighted an homosexual or homophilic orientation ignored or overlooked by previous critics and biographers; Renner merely refers – ambiguously – to “Jamess own well-known sexual problems” (191). This was written five years after the gay critic and James expert Richard Hall had decried the marginalisation of the homosexual imagination by scholars (84). Surprisingly, the matter is not pursued. As for the social implications of class relationships, these do not feature at all in Renners account, even though it can be reasonably argued that the governesss social status is as likely to be a cause for anxiety as her supposed sexual repression. Flatley – who anchors his reading in an exploration of the new sexual identities that arose in the latter part of the nineteenth century following the Wilde trial – nevertheless also highlights where Renner does not the class implications of the governesss displacement: “When the governess arrives at the estate she finds everything indescribably beautiful, marvelous, superlative in every way. It is the reaction of a poor girl who has all of a sudden accomplished a great feat of class mobility. [...] In a kind of perversion of the dictatorship of the proletariat, she seems to have reversed class roles with the unusual authority she has been granted. But she is alone, without class allies.” (112-3). Such a reading may no doubt have been coloured by Flatleys preference for Marxist criticism. Nevertheless, questions of class status and the ambiguous station of the outsider were central to many of James other works. By marginalising these and other such known cultural influences on Henry James while possibly overemphasising (even by his own account) far less obvious influences, such as physiognomy, Renner fails to move beyond individual psycho-drama, despite his best intentions. Works Cited Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002. Deleuze, Gilles, et al. Psicanalisi e politica. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1973. Flatley, Jonathan. “Reading into Henry James”. Criticism. 46. 1 (2004): 103-123. Hall, Richard. “Henry James: Interpreting an Obsessive Memory”. Literary Visions of Homosexuality. Ed. Stuart Kellogg. New York: Haworth Press, 1985. James, Henry. The Turn of the Screw. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1994. Renner, Stanley. “Sexual Hysteria, Physiognomical Bogeymen, and the Ghosts in The Turn of the Screw.” Nineteenth-Century Literature. 43. 2 (1988): 175-194. Timpanaro. Sebastiano. The Freudian Slip: Psychoanalysis and Textual Criticism. London: New Left Books, 1976. Read More