are often wrong and almost always oversimple, in contrast to their intuitive grasp of the characters’ psychology. The more we recover their intuitions and do justice to their mimetic achievement, the more disparities we perceive between their representation of human behavior and their interpretation of it.
Psychological analysis leads us to judgments that are in conflict with those of the author because it enables us to see the destructiveness of the solutions that have been glorified by the rhetoric. Writers tend to validate characters whose defensive strategies are similar to their own and to satirize those who have different solutions. The rhetoric of the work and sometimes even the action are designed to gain sympathy for the life-styles and values of the favored characters. Changes from a condemned defensive strategy to an approved one are celebrated as education and growth, although the new solution is often as unhealthy as the one that has been discarded. Insofar as the characters are mimetically portrayed, we are given an opportunity to understand them in our own terms and to arrive at our own judgments. When we arrive at different interpretations and judgments, the author’s spell is broken, the characters are seen to rebel, and we experience a disparity between rhetoric and mimesis.
To be more precise, we experience a disparity between the author’s interpretations and judgments and our own. The mimetic component of literature can never be definitively interpreted, by the author or anyone else. By virtue of its richness, it escapes all conceptual schemes, and conceptual schemes are constantly changing. I employ a Horneyan approach because it satisfies my appetite for clarity here and now. I am aware of the epistemological problems, but I choose to make as much sense of things as I can, according to my best lights, rather than to dwell on the uncertainty of knowledge. Although I shall not be constantly calling attention to the fact, let it be understood that I know that I am presenting my version of reality, which I hope will be of use to some others in the construction of theirs.
Once psychological analysis of mimetic characters led me to resist authorial rhetoric, I began to interpret the rhetoric itself from a psychological perspective and to see it (along with much else) as a reflection of the psyche of the implied author. When the rhetoric consistently glorifies characters who embrace a particular solution while criticizing those who have adopted others, it reveals the implied author’s own defenses, repressions, and blind spots. In works where the rhetoric is inconsistent, such as Vanity Fair or The Awakening, it reveals the implied author’s inner conflicts. It is possible to psychoanalyze not only the implied authors of individual texts but also the authorial personality that can be inferred from many or all of a writer’s works. I have done this with Thomas Hardy (Paris 1976a), Jane Austen (Paris 1978b), and William Shakespeare (Paris 1991a). The next step would be psychobiography, in which texts could be used as a source of insight into the inner life of their creator. Karen Horney’s theory has been employed in this way by Lawrance Thompson in his monumental biography of Robert Frost (1966, 1970, 1976), and many other writers would be illuminated by Horneyan analysis.
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
