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E.T.A. HOFFMAN'S STORY "THE SANDMAN."
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Analysis of the romantic horror story and critical interpretations.... More...
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Paper Abstract:
Analysis of the romantic horror story and critical interpretations. Discusses Freud's interest and the application of his psychoanalytic theory to the story. Structuralist literary criticism. Analysis of personality of literary characters vs. application of cultural and literary codes to construct meaning. Contends both theoretical approaches supply insights into the characters, although each has its limitations.
Paper Introduction:
E. T. A. Hoffmann's story "The Sandman" is a striking account of the nearly inexplicable horror experienced by a man who is traumatized in childhood and whose fear returns in adulthood with tragic results. With four narrative voices, various characters' opinions about the nature of the main character's experience and feelings, a great deal of supernatural or uncanny material, and a sharp, surprising split between the earlier and later parts of the story it is a literary work that seems ripe for many kinds of criticism. Tales of Romantic horror often seem to lend themselves in particular to psychoanalytic criticism, especially when, like Hoffmann's tale, they seem to involve the disintegration of a character's personality and clearly involve childhood experience and sexual concerns. Indeed Sigmund Freud himself discussed the story at some length in his
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Structuralist criticism's concentrationon the relationships of the parts of the structure as the source ofmeaning, while it provides a rich and almost limitless method ofunderstanding how texts mean, deals with the author only in limited ways.Psychoanalytic criticism, of course, deals with the manner in which theauthor reveals her/his own conflicts and desires through the text and thistoo is somewhat limited. But Freud directs most of his attention to the early part of the story andmerely dismisses the episode of the robot Olympia as an aspect of thethematic reading of Coppelius as castrating father. But structuralist criticism sets aside any focuson "the addresser [and] the referential function of the message" and plumbsthe ambiguity inherent in the text (Lye n.p.). What itmakes clear, however, is that certain facts are genuine and it is onlytheir interpretation that is questionable--whose interpretation is sound--the reader's or Nathanael's is left open, however. This activity involves the dissectionof the object, which can be a diffuse phenomenon or an 'assembled' object,i.e., a work of art or some other created thing. He hadalmost been successful in enacting a form of rejection of his own desirefor the mother (as embodied in Klara) by, in essence, giving himself overto the castrating father (Lothar). In addition"Freud's concept of the ego's defenses and the concept of adaptation(largely developed after Freud's death)" considerably broadened the scopeof psychoanalytic criticism (Holland, Five 55). It becomes clear that his betrothal to Klara is thesource of his disquiet when she tells him in her letter that "You surelyhad me most vividly in mind when you intended sending your last letter toLothar, because you addressed it to me instead" (Hoffmann 284). When Nathanael's father was killed the second, castrating, fatherdisappeared from the town and Nathanael never re-enacted his repression ofthe oedipal conflict because the 'good' father's goodness was safelyassured by his being dead and the bad father's threat was removed, leavingNathanael alone, as it were, with his mother. The structuralist critique of literature consists, therefore, in the"study of the cultural construction or identification of meaning accordingto the relations of signs that constitute the meaning-spectrum of theculture" (Gerard Genette, quoted in Lye n.p.). "The Mind and the Book: A Long Look at Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism." University of Florida, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. But, after looking at works of literaturethrough other critical methods, this seems, however, less compelling thanit used to. Nathanael, trapped by his victory over the father in theoedipal conflict, repeatedly recreates the castrating father and repeatedlytries to reject the mother, thereby renouncing his incestuous desire. The three are reconciled, however, and Nathanaelaccepts Klara's and Lothar's rational explanations of his disturbance--until, that is, he finds a more effective means of rejecting her byreplacing Klara with his passion for the automaton Olympia. This still leaves plenty ofroom, therefore, for the old-fashioned endeavor of trying to determine whatthe author wished to say. But, ironically, the castrating father (this time in the form ofCoppolla) interfered and 'castrated' Olympia by removing her eyes, therebyrevealing her to be not just a robot but an unsuitable object for ameaningful enactment of Nathanael's rejection of his incestuous desire.Freud noted in his discussion of Hoffmann's tale that the uncanny derivedin part from the unconscious mind's "'compulsion to repeat' . Like the sexual relationshipof his parents the sibling relationship of Klara and Lothar excludedNathanael and included him only as a member of the trio with a differentkind of standing. A. "The Sandman." Trans. The fear of castration at the hands of thefather was, however, repressed in the course of personality development--asare most painful or unpleasant memories and feelings. IndeedSigmund Freud himself discussed the story at some length in his essay onthe "uncanny," although his interpretation was somewhat limited as it wasprimarily a means of illustrating how the uncanny functioned in literature. Five Readers Reading. Both psychoanalytic and structuralist criticism have numerous strandsand there is no single method for either. In the interval during which herecovers from his shock over the Coppola incident at his mother's houseNathanael persistently addresses fantastic, horrific thoughts to Klara inthe form of the writings he reads to her. acompulsion powerful enough to overrule the pleasure principle [and]whatever reminds us of this inner `compulsion to repeat' is perceived asuncanny" (236). Thesecond part of the structuralist activity is the articulation of "certainrules of association," that govern the units' "submission to regularconstraints" (Barthes 161). In contrast, therefore, the emergence of uncanny detailsin Nathanael's accounts of Coppelius and Coppola is ambiguous--a genuineaccount of certain facts or the account of Nathanael's illusions. Thus, from the brief account of the nurse's version of the Sandmanstory to the omniscient narrator's voice, Hoffmann orchestrates a number ofgenre expectations. 277-3 8.Holland, Norman N. But the situation does not reachits climax until he provokes Lothar as well by his brutal rejection ofKlara whom he claims to hate because she cannot comprehend his state ofmind and only counsels him that he suffers from illusions in regard toCoppelius and Coppola. Vernon W. New Haven, Yale UP, 1975.Lye, John. Freud's theory was a means of describing the processes of the humanmind and it was based on his tripartite model of the mind: irrational,instinctual id (source of drives that aim to fulfill the pleasureprinciple); censorious superego (driven by the morality principle derivedfrom social norms); and rational, logical, and largely conscious ego(negotiator, via the reality principle, of balance between the drives ofthe id and the demands of the superego). . Structuralist criticismdeveloped from a variety of investigations into the nature of language andpsychoanalytic approaches all stem from Freud's initial forays intoliterary criticism or from his general theory and its subsequentdevelopment. T. There is a contrast in thetone of the letters that deliberately sets off the first as coded for thegenre of the fantastic. Nathanael's anxiety was reinvoked by his impendingmarriage to the sensible Klara and he recreated the oedipal triangle withKlara as his mother and Lothar as his castrating (dueling) father. A. . Structuralist literary criticism also provides insights into therelationships among the characters in Hoffmann's story. XVII. 157-63.Freud, Sigmund. Shortly after both fathers disappeared, and Nathanael was victorious,Lothar and Klara joined the household, becoming, in effect, his brother andsister. Hoffmann's story "The Sandman" is a striking account of thenearly inexplicable horror experienced by a man who is traumatized inchildhood and whose fear returns in adulthood with tragic results. "The Structuralist Activity." European Literary Theory and Practice: From Existential Phenomenology to structuralism. Heis finally driven, by 'seeing' the approach of the castrating father yetagain, to try to kill the mother in order to kill his illegitimate desirebut this time the father is victorious. New York: Delta, 1973. Structuralism is,as Barthes says, ""essentially an activity, i.e., the controlled successionof a certain number of mental operations" whose goal "is to reconstruct an'object' in such a way as to manifest thereby the rules of functioning (the'functions') of this object" (158). Withfour narrative voices, various characters' opinions about the nature of themain character's experience and feelings, a great deal of supernatural oruncanny material, and a sharp, surprising split between the earlier andlater parts of the story it is a literary work that seems ripe for manykinds of criticism. Once the letters have concluded the narrative switches to theomniscient narrator who commences with a calming greeting, "Gentle reader,nothing can be imagined that is stranger and more extraordinary than thefate that befell my poor friend" (Hoffmann 288). London: Hogarth Press, 1955. Works CitedBarthes, Roland. Clearly both approaches to literary criticism provide insight intoHoffmann's tale, although these insights are of a very different type.Each approach has certain limitations as well. 1999. The narrator is,therefore, an individual familiar with the case and acquainted with thecharacters. In literary terms psychoanalysis lends itself to the discovery of thedefenses and fantasies of fictional characters in a way that "can help usshape and articulate the psychological experience of the writer or thecharacters to ourselves" (Holland, "Mind" n.p.). Because he is unable to re-enact the repressionof the threat of castration that would enable him to overcome the oedipalconflict Nathanael is not, Freud argues, capable of forming a coherent ego. The chief clue lies in the remark made by the narrator who saysthat everything concerning Coppelius was kept from Nathanael's motherbecause she too could not "think of him without horror, since likeNathanael, she believed him to be guilty of her husband's death" (Hoffmann295). But this time, ironically, themother/Klara interceded and removed the threat of castration by her appealto the father, approving, in effect, of his incestuous desire. There was, therefore, noneed to repress the conflict with his father because he had won. Lennard J. All human activity is, in the estimation ofthe structuralists, culturally constructed and bears no relation toreality; instead its meanings reside in the relationships among the partsof the structure. The aspect of personality in which these defenses and adaptationswere developed has been termed "character." As Holland notes, the egodevelops habitual ways of adjusting to the many demands of id, superego,and the external world and "character equals specific methods of solutionto inner and outer demands" which can persist for a very long time (Five54). Tales of Romantic horror often seem to lend themselvesin particular to psychoanalytic criticism, especially when, like Hoffmann'stale, they seem to involve the disintegration of a character's personalityand clearly involve childhood experience and sexual concerns. Yet his reaction to her common-sense response is to reject itand, eventually, to reject her as well. As he says, Olympia isthe embodiment of the infant Nathanael's "feminine attitude towards hisfather" and "a dissociated complex of Nathanael's which confronts him as aperson" (Freud 232). E. The first lays out the story ofNathanael's traumatic association with Coppelius and his version of themeeting with Coppola, Klara's response to this letter urges him to considerall his concerns to be illusory, and then Nathanael's reassures Lothar inthe brief letter in which he promises to visit. For the purposes of this essay both theories will be viewedin very basic terms: the psychoanalytic approach as the analysis of thepersonality of literary characters who manifest various psychologicalbehaviors unbeknown to themselves and, most often, to their creators aswell; and the structuralist approach as the discovery of the cultural andliterary codes that form the context in which the relationships of signswithin a structure create meaning. This meantthat Nathanael's wish to resolve the problem of incestuous desire could notbe accomplished with a woman who was both rational (and talkative) andloving and his turning to the nearly mute Olympia was a means of finding asubstitute object of desire that would allow him to reject her. Kent and Elizabeth C Knight. Although Freud clearly deals at a basic level with Nathanael'sformation of defenses against the return of the repressed threat ofcastration he does not view them in terms of a system of "specific methodsof solution to inner and outer demands" that constitutes his character(Holland, Five 54). In the structuralist approach what matters is theperception and description of structures and these units, "which have nosignificant existence" outside their relationship to other parts of thestructure, are the constituent parts of the structure (Barthes 16 ). The question that arises is why did Nathanael choose to make Klaraaware of his anxiety and why did the barometer salesman reactivate his oldanxiety? Freud's approach toliterary criticism is illustrated by his approach to Hamlet in which he"applied the idea of oedipal conflict to the audience response and to thecharacter of Hamlet . 219-2 .Hoffmann, E. T. These two people, male and female, were alsorelated in a fashion that excluded Nathanael. "The 'Uncanny.'" Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud Vol. Available http://www.brocku.ca/english/courses/4F7 / struct.html Among the means of studying these structures aresemiotics, the study of the sign, i.e., "a union of signifier and signified[or] anything that stands for anything else," and the cultural and literarycodes that provide their context (Lye n.p.). Rev. 1998. Dissection consists ofidentifying those units "whose differential situation engenders a certainmeaning" (Barthes 16 ). Available http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/nnh/mindbook.htm---. The benign pseudo-incest of Nathanael's attachment to Klaramirrored the incestuous attachment to his mother that was implied by hisvictory over his father. In other words, as is shownby her agreement with Nathanael's estimation of Coppelius, he hadsuccessfully gained possession of his mother. . In addition to a few minor variations the principal narrativesemployed by Hoffmann are the three letters at the beginning of the storywritten by Nathanael and Klara. The blend of realistic detail and the extremes ofthe material recounted by Nathanael is contrasted with the nursery-talequality of the old woman's account of the Sandman myth. Hisproblem then became the repression of his knowledge of his incestuousvictory. At the time of the return of (the possiblyfantastic) Coppelius as the barometer salesman Coppola Nathanael is engagedto Klara who, with her brother Lothar, was adopted by his mother aftertheir Father's death. Her use of thevalue terms "wicked man" and the didactic slant of the story clearlyindicate that this is how a fantastic tale is contrived and related(Hoffmann 279). As Holland points out,"literary criticism is about books and psychoanalysis is about minds [and,]therefore, the psychoanalytic critic can only talk about the mindsassociated with the book" (n.p.). 1982. Of course any literary critical theory could be applied to the story but,in addition to psychoanalysis, structuralism's insistence that the literarytext does not reflect a given reality but is itself made up of otherconventions and texts that can only be understood in relation to each otherpromises insight into the strangely constructed world of "The Sandman."This essay will briefly address the nature of psychoanalytic andstructuralist literary criticism prior to analyses of Hoffman's story ineach of these modes. For somereason, therefore, Nathanael unconsciously desired to make his story knownto Klara. Freud interpreted Hoffmann's story largely as an instance of thereturn of Nathanael's repressed fear of the threat of castration which wasoccasioned by the late-night visits of the strange Coppelius to the familyhome and by the complex series of events through which he had become the"sandman" whose nocturnal visits were described in terrifying terms of thisfantastic personage's desire to tear out the bleeding eyes of children.Nathanael is seriously disturbed by the return of this repressed materialand when Coppelius completes his role as Sandman by threatening to tear outNathanael's eyes the boy copes with his overwhelming anxiety by splittingthe father's imago into the fantasy of the good father who is replaced bythe wrathful bad father. Nor does he give extensive consideration toNathanael's situation in life. . Thus Hoffmann conforms to the expectations of the horror(or, even, science fiction) genre by offering various assurances that whatis said is true--an essential ingredient in creating the horrific effectdesired by the reader. Gras. The most important formativedevelopmental principle in Freud's theory was the Oedipus complex whichheld that the (male) individual's desire to possess the mother invariablyled to conflict with the father and this conflict was the source of thedevelopment of personality. and speculated about the role of oedipal guilt"in Shakespeare's life (Holland, "Mind" n.p.). This is a typical strategy for ensuring the reader's belief inthe narrative and, coming immediately after the first mention of Olympia issituated so as to confirm that the objective observations made by Nathanaelcan be trusted. This will be followed by a comparison of thesuccesses and shortcomings of the two approaches. One of the most importanttypes of the rules of functioning of which Barthes speaks is theconventions of genre, "basic rules as to how subjects are approached, levelof seriousness, significance of language use, and so forth" (Lye n.p.).Because Hoffmann's story integrates the fantastic (whether it is imaginedby Nathanael or actually happens), and because he employs a number ofdifferent narrators, adherence to the rules of genre are especiallyimportant in conveying the differences among the various parts of thestory. As Holland says, "fantasies about money, devouringand being devoured, going into dangerous places" and many others were addedto the basic notion of the oedipal triangle ("Mind" n.p.). But subsequent developmentsin psychoanalytic theory, especially in the realms of pre-oedipal stages oflife and personality development, expanded the range of what critics couldlook at in literature. Ed. "Some Elements of Structuralism and its Application to Literary Theory." Brock University, Department of English.
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