I can’t help thinking about an essay I read some time ago by Bruno Bettelheim titled, The Child’s Need for Magic. Many of the concepts seem to be relevant to our readings this week. If anyone cares to read it, here is the link: http://tinyurl.com/23mxw59
I found Freud’s passages about animated parts especially relevant to Frankenstein. In his description of Hauff’s fairy tales he describes, “a severed head, a hand cut off at the wrist...feet which dance by themselves” (835). These concepts feel very familiar, but it does not seem that Shelly could have been influenced by them as Hauff was born in 1802. Can we assume that Shelly may have played a direct impact on these tales, or did they live, via folklore, before having been written down?
Would it be feasible to say that Victor may have been attempting to live out an unresolved childhood impulse by making the inanimate, animated? This theory may seem slightly literal, but I mean it in the childlike “animistic” sense. Though Victor’s family was extremely loving and altruistic, we can assume that plenty of psychological baggage remained (mother’s death, in love with “cousin”) in his young adulthood. Wouldn't it make sense, then, that Victor’s obsession with animating the inanimate would be some kind of an attempt for him to deal with these unresolved family conflicts? Could these “uncanny” feelings that Victor had have led him to, as Freud quotes from Jentsch, “doubt(s) whether an apparently animated being is really alive; or conversely, whether a lifeless object might not be in fact animate” (828). Were his perceptions somehow stunted, leaving him in a childlike state of animistic awe?
I found Freud’s passages about animated parts especially relevant to Frankenstein. In his description of Hauff’s fairy tales he describes, “a severed head, a hand cut off at the wrist...feet which dance by themselves” (835). These concepts feel very familiar, but it does not seem that Shelly could have been influenced by them as Hauff was born in 1802. Can we assume that Shelly may have played a direct impact on these tales, or did they live, via folklore, before having been written down?
Would it be feasible to say that Victor may have been attempting to live out an unresolved childhood impulse by making the inanimate, animated? This theory may seem slightly literal, but I mean it in the childlike “animistic” sense. Though Victor’s family was extremely loving and altruistic, we can assume that plenty of psychological baggage remained (mother’s death, in love with “cousin”) in his young adulthood. Wouldn't it make sense, then, that Victor’s obsession with animating the inanimate would be some kind of an attempt for him to deal with these unresolved family conflicts? Could these “uncanny” feelings that Victor had have led him to, as Freud quotes from Jentsch, “doubt(s) whether an apparently animated being is really alive; or conversely, whether a lifeless object might not be in fact animate” (828). Were his perceptions somehow stunted, leaving him in a childlike state of animistic awe?
No comments:
Post a Comment