A Kleinian Approach to Fairy Tales by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
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THE EXPEDIENCE OF ANXIETY AND PLEASURE: A KLEINIAN APPROACH TO FAIRY TALES BY JACOB AND WILHELM GRIMM by Yanna Philippou A dissertation submitted to the Department of English Literature and Culture, School of English, Faculty of Philosophy Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece In fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Thessaloniki 2013 THE EXPEDIENCE OF ANXIETY AND PLEASURE: A KLEINIAN APPROACH TO FAIRY TALES BY JACOB AND WILHELM GRIMM by Yanna Philippou A dissertation submitted to the Department of English Literature and Culture, School of English, Faculty of Philosophy Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece In fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Supervising Committee: Ruth Parkin-Gounelas (Emeritus Professor, School of English) Ekaterini Douka-Kabitoglou (Emeritus Professor, School of English) Karin Boklund-Lagopoulou (Professor, School of English) Thessaloniki 2013 Abstract The year 2012 marked two hundred years from the publication of the first edition of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s Nursery and Household Tales. The international celebrations of the bicentenary, ranging from academic conferences to reworkings of the tales themselves in a variety of cultural contexts, testify to the enduring fascination that the tales continue to exercise on numerous and heterogeneous audiences all over the world. Based on the presupposition that literature and psychoanalytic theory function as communicating repositories of narratives, I attempt a parallel reading of paradigmatic texts of the Grimms and Klein, in order to highlight the way they mutually inform each other. While primarily synchronic in orientation, the thesis also employs a diachronic approach to the writing and reception of the Grimm tales and the life and psychoanalytic theory of Melanie Klein. Born in 1882 Vienna, Klein was brought up in a cultural environment where the Grimm tales had become institutionalized as the primary entertaining and educational narratives for children. Klein’s theories of psychic development stemmed from the analysis of children who were in turn brought up in a similar cultural milieu. This congruence, I argue, is reflected in some of Klein’s theoretical papers and recently-available clinical notes, which include imagery, symbols and structures often found in the Grimm tales. It is my contention that the Grimm tales exercised an indirect yet formative influence on Klein’s theories. Simultaneously, however, a synchronic study of the two genres brings out their common structural and symbolic elements in a way that permits us to achieve a different understanding of the way the Grimm tales resonate with different audiences. Key Kleinian concepts such as the centrality of the maternal in the formation of individual identity, anxiety as a prerequisite to symbolization, the paranoid-schizoid and the depressive positions, the good internal object, all find their structural or symbolic equivalents in aspects of the tales. This mediation between psychoanalytic theory and the tales is facilitated by the ii use of Propp’s theory on the morphology of the folktale, a landmark text in the study of folklore, as well as by aspects of the work of psychoanalytically-oriented folklorist Alan Dundes, whose work was built around the view that any collection of folklore, whatever its form, should be accompanied by informed attempts to situate folkloric elements within their cultural contexts as well as to provide interpretations of their possible use and significance for those who listen to or read them. iii Acknowledgments Writing a thesis is a quest in its own right, replete with questions, trials and wandering through intellectual woods till it comes to completion. It is also always the result of an active – and indispensable – support network. I am first and foremost indebted to my supervisor Dr. Ruth Parkin-Gounelas for her invaluable support and contribution. Her supervision provided me with all the help and guidance possible, as well as with the necessary boundaries that helped me chart my course in a vast academic plane. Words cannot do justice to her warmth, kindness, generosity and wisdom, which extend well beyond any academic obligations, and which will always remain with me as an example of what it means to be an inspiring teacher. My two co-supervisors, Dr. Karin Boklund-Lagopoulou and Dr. Ekaterini Douka- Kabitoglou, responded promptly and graciously to all queries, while providing facilitating and encouraging feedback. I have had the privilege of being their student throughout my academic trajectory as an undergraduate and postgraduate student of the Department of English Language and Literature; this has been a scholarly experience which I will always treasure and do my best to honor in my own field of work. My gratitude extends to the staff at the School’s library and administration, which helped smooth over the difficulties stemming from my undertaking this project from afar. Special thanks go to my friends who have shared in my joy and worries and did not lose their faith in me even at times when I lost mine. My family has also been a source of constant support. My father, Thomas, set the example by being of an enquiring mind; although our choices are different, he has taught me the love of learning and of asking questions. My mother, Mary, supported me both emotionally and practically. She is a pillar of unwavering and enthusiastic encouragement, who undertook many obligations in order to provide me with a room of my own, both physically and mentally, in which to write. In this she was assisted by my mother-in-law, Vaia, who extended a helping hand each and every time she iv was needed. My brother, Andreas, ascertained his faith in me with his own gentle, unassuming manner. To my husband, Dimitris, I owe my thanks for his generosity of spirit. While often disagreeing with my choices, he stood by me in good times and in bad, and his constant challenges helped me retain my perspective. Finally, my deepest love goes to my little fairytale daughter, Nephele, who is a constant reminder of the wondrous inherent in everyday life. Because she often had to share her mom’s affection with her ink-and-paper sibling, it is to her I dedicate this thesis. v Table of Contents Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 1 Part One: A Historical and Psychoanalytic Approach to the Grimm Tales and Kleinian Theory Introduction to Part One: Phantasy and Projective identification ............................................ 15 Chapter One. Once Upon a Time in Budapest: Beginnings .................................................... 23 Chapter Two. Second Only to the Bible: The Grimm Canon and the Fairy Tale Tradition .... 38 II. .............................................................................................................................................. 57 Chapter Three. Mapping Neverland in Berlin: The Psycho-Analysis of Children…………........................................................................................................74 Chapter Four. The London Years: Fantasy, Phantasy and Symbolization in the Case of Dick…..………………………………………………………………………………92 II. ……………………………………………………………………………..…….100 Chapter Five. Deeper Into the Woods: The Depressive Position and the Paranoid-Schizoid Position……………………………………………………………….…...118 II. …………………………………………………………………………………...136 Part Two: The Tales Introduction to Part Two……………………………………………………………149 Chapter Six. “Snow White” and Envy……………………………………………...152 Chapter Seven. Splits in the Self and in the Others: “|Mother Holle”, “The Three Little Gnomes” and “The Golden Goose”……………………………………………………………………………..179 Chapter Eight. The Wolf at the Door of the House in the Woods: Symbols of the Maternal in “Hansel and Gretel” and “Little Red Riding Hood”…………………195 ΙΙ. ..............................................................................................................................212 Chapter Nine. “All Fur” and “Cinderella”: The Depressive Position……………...232 vi II. ...………………………………………………………………...........................251 Epilogue: Klein’s Legacy and the Relevance of the Grimm Tales Today: Transitions………………………………………………………………………… 272 Works Cited………………………………………………………………………...282 vii Introduction It has become a truism in literary psychoanalytic criticism that psychoanalysis and literature are two discourses that have been implicated from the very beginning of the inception of psychoanalysis. Literature has provided psychoanalysis with what literary theorist Shoshana Felman terms “the constitutive texture of its conceptual framework”, the boundaries between the two disciplines being artificially imposed, since literature traverses psychoanalysis: “Literature is therefore not simply outside psychoanalysis, since it motivates and inhabits the very names of its concepts, since it is the inherent reference by which psychoanalysis names its findings” (9). In addition, leading theorist Peter Brooks states his conviction that literary works share common ground with mental processes as these have been described by means of analytic processes. In his Psychoanalysis and Storytelling (1994) he writes: We continue to dream of a convergence of psychoanalysis and literary criticism because we sense that there ought to be, that there must be, some correspondence between literary and psychic process, that aesthetic structure and form, including literary tropes,