Transformation of Rage. Peggy Fitzhugh Johnstone

      NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS New York and London

      © 1994 by New York University

      All rights reserved

      Library of Congress-in-Publication Data

      Johnstone, Peggy Fitzhugh, 1940-

      The tranformation of rage : mourning and creativity in George

      Eliot’s fiction / Peggy Fitzhugh Johnstone.

      p. cm.—(Literature and psychoanalysis ; 7)

      Includes bibliographical references and index.

      ISBN 0-8147-4194-0

      1. Eliot, George, 1819-1880—Knowledge—Psychology. 2. Characters

      and characteristics in literture. 3. Psychoanalysis and

      literature. 4. Creativity in literature. 5. Emotions in

      literature. 6. Grief in literature. 7. Anger in literature.

      I. Title. II. Series.

      PR4692.P74J64 1994

      821'.8–dc20 94-12908

      CIP

      New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability.

      Manufactured in the United States of America

      10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

       For the Class of 1958 University City High School, St. Louis, Missouri

      Contents

       Foreword by Jeffrey Berman

       Acknowledgments

       Introduction

       ONE Self-Disorder and Aggression in Adam Bede

       TWO Narcissistic Rage in The Mill on the Floss

       THREE Loss, Anxiety, and Cure: Mourning and Creativity in Silas Marner

       FOUR Pathological Narcissism in Romola

       FIVE Fear of the Mob in Felix Holt

       six The Vast Wreck of Ambitious Ideals in Middlemarch

       SEVEN The Pattern of the Myth of Narcissus in Daniel Deronda

       Conclusion

       Works Cited

       Index

Foreword

      As New York University Press inaugurates a new series of books on literature and psychoanalysis, it seems appropriate to pause and reflect briefly upon the history of psychoanalytic literary criticism. For a century now it has struggled to define its relationship to its two contentious progenitors and come of age. After glancing at its origins, we may be in a better position to speculate on its future.

      Psychoanalytic literary criticism was conceived at the precise moment in which Freud, reflecting upon his self-analysis, made a connection to two plays and thus gave us a radically new approach to reading literature. Writing to his friend Wilhelm Fliess in 1897, Freud breathlessly advanced the idea that "love of the mother and jealousy of the father" are universal phenomena of early childhood (Origins, 223–24). He referred immediately to the gripping power of Oedipus Rex and Hamlet for confirmation of, and perhaps inspiration for, his compelling perception of family drama, naming his theory the "Oedipus complex" after Sophocles' legendary fictional hero.

      Freud acknowledged repeatedly his indebtedness to literature, mythology, and philosophy. There is no doubt that he was a great humanist, steeped in world literature, able to read several languages and range across disciplinary boundaries. He regarded creative writers as allies, investigating the same psychic terrain and intuiting similar human truths. "[P]sycho-analytic observation must concede priority of imaginative writers," he declared in 1901 in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (SE 6213), a concession he was generally happy to make. The only exceptions were writers like Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Schnitzler, whom he avoided reading because of the anxiety of influence. He quoted effortlessly from Sophocles, Shakespeare, Goethe, and Dostoevsky, and was himself a master prose stylist, the recipient of the coveted Goethe Prize in 1930. When he was considered for the Nobel Prize, it was not for medicine but for literature. Upon being greeted as the discoverer of the unconscious, he disclaimed the title and instead paid generous tribute to the poets