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A DISEASE OF THE SPIRIT:
THE IDENTIFICATION AND EXAMINATION OF SHAME
IN SELECTED WORKS OF MODERN AMERICAN LITERATURE
DISSERTATION
Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for
The Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate
School of The Ohio State University
By
Cray Little, BA., M.A.
*****
The Ohio State University
1999
Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor Anthony Libby, Advisor
Professor Walter A. Davis Advisor Professor Jeredith Merrin Department o£/English UMI Number: 9951689
Copyright 2000 by Little, Cray
All rights reserved
(S>
UMI Microform 9951689 Copyright 2000 by Bell & Howell Diformatlon and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition Is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code.
Belt & Howell Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1346 ABSTRACT
Using the concepts of affect theory and, more particularly, shame psychology, this dissertation analyzes a number of well-known literary characters whose behavior has been influenced in significant ways by an affect to which they cannot put a name. The five authors (William Faulkner, Arthur Miller, Eugene O'Neill, Nathanael West, and
Tennessee Williams) whose writings are explored in this dissertation illuminate the analytic landscape o f shame theory by providing critical insights into the psychodynamics of this affect. Although shame was neglected in the realm o f human psychology until recently, these writers demonstrate through their characterizations that shame affect possesses the power to produce substantial psychological turmoil. In this way, literature gave us examples of shame-based characters before psychology fully understood the importance of the affect. As this dissertation demonstrates, through our understanding of shame dynamics we can now achieve an important new perspective from which to view characters complicated by their interactions with a complex modem industrial culture that redefined a number of paradigms.
Through detailed discussions of character behavior and, when available, familial history, the argument is made in this dissertation that, while many cogent analyses of these complex characters have been conducted by literary critics, a new interpretive methodology is required to uncover both the origins and the responses to unidentified
Ü affect. Shame theory adds to previous interpretations by providing fuller and, in many cases, more accurate accounts o f the motivations underlying the behavior o f characters confronted by an entirely new set o f expectations and other demands that expose them to additional pressures. The dissertation includes a summary o f shame psychology, including shame's primary origins and symptoms, a discussion of shame's long neglect by the field of psychology and the role Freud played in this neglect, and shame's virtual disappearance from American consciousness during the modem period.
m Dedicated to Heidi Little Oglesbee
IV ACKNDWLEDOVENrS
I wish to thank my advisor, Tony Libby, whose countless reviews and patient guidance helped me immeasurably.
I also wish to thank the other members of my dissertation committee. Mac Davis and Jeredith Merrin, for their encouragement and their helpful suggestions.
I am grateful to Judy Alvarez, whose capable and patient word processing assistance I could not do without.
Finally, I thank my family members, Rachel, Chuck, and Kathryn, for their unwavering support and patient understanding throughout my doctoral studies. VITA
February 2, 1946 ...... Bom —Camden, N. J.
1980 ...... JM. A., The Ohio State University
1992 - 1997 ...... Graduate Administrative, Research and
Teaching Associate, The Ohio State University
1997 — present ...... Xecturer, The Ohio State University
FIELDS OF STUDY
Major Field: English
VI TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract ...... ü
Dedication...... iv
Acknowledgments ...... v
V ita...... vi
Chapters:
Introduction...... 1
1. Fundamentals of Shame Theory: A Portal to a New Understanding of Character Motivation...... 12
I. What Shame Is and How It Is Distinguished from Guilt...... 13 H. Shame and Human Experience ...... 22 m. Meta-shame and the Diminution of Self...... 27 IV. Freud and the Neglect of Shame ...... 29 V. The Importance o f Studying Shame in Modem American Literature...... 36 VI. Hidden Shame and Its Identification ...... 40 Vn. The Symptoms of Shame...... 42
2. Tomkins, Foucault, and Contemporary Theorists: Shame Dynamics and the Process of Internalization...... 57
I. The Phenomenology of Shame...... 57 n. Affect Theory...... 61 m. Shame and Merpersonal Relationships ...... 63 IV. Cultural Origins o f Sham e...... 70 V. Internalization o f Sham e...... 75 VI. Foucault and the fritemalization of Shame...... 82
vu 3. The Generational Nature of Shame: The Lomans and the Tyrones...... 91
4. Master of Shame: William Faulkner and the Humiliated S e lf...... 150
5. Culminating Responses of a Shame-based Psyche: Flight, Rage, and Violence In Works by Tennessee Williams and Nathanael W est ...... 219
6. The Meaning Behind the Masquerade: Narcissism and Illusion in A Streetcar Named Desire and The Dav of the Locust...... 261
Conclusion...... 295
Bibliography...... 298
vm INTRODUCTION
There are a number of major characters in modem American literature whose behavior can be better understood through an examination of their internalized shame.^
For the last twenty years or so, shame has become the focus o f study of a relatively small group o f psychoanalysts and sociologists who believe that shame plays a far more significant role in the formation o f personality and behavior than has been acknowledged heretofore (except by a few psychologists and sociologists, including Helen Lewis and
Helen Lynd, who conducted clinical observations based on shame affect in a number of patients beginning in the 1950s)/ The importance of shame was popularized in 1988 with the publication of John Bradshaw's Healing the Shame That Binds YoUy the third
' The psychodynamic process of the intemalization ofsham e is discussed in Chapter Two, along with affect theory. (Affect is defined by Kaufman as the "primary, innate biological motivating mechanism" [Psychology o f Shame viii]. While sham e is generally tfaou^t of as an emotion—indeed, Kaufman refers to affect as "an emotion or feeling—not a thought, drive, or interpersonal phenomenon per[Shame se" xi]—the concept of shame affect extends beyond emotion as the following discussion explains.)
~ Helen Lewis, a psychologist concerned about neurotic patients for whom psychoanalysis had failed, undertook what she calls a "microanalysis" of the "psychological states" of shame and guilt, paying particular attention to shame. Her hypothesis that "unanalyzed shame in the patient-therapist relationship is a factor in the negative therapeutic reaction" grew out of her work with return patients and her clinical observations "about the modes of superego fimctionmg." Lewis notes that her patients and observed subjects were affected negatively by unidentified and by-passed shame (discussed below). Lewis also notes that the role of shame in producing neurotic symptoms had not been clearly traced by the end of the 1950s, and so she made that one of the subjects of her sem inal work on shame.Shame and Guilt in Neurosis (13-14, 19), published in 1971. Helen Lynd, a sociologist, undertook the task of defining personal identity in the second-half of the twentieth century. In the process, Lynd observed that certain "pervasive experiences" that were not easily labeled slipped through the standard categories of psychology and
1 book in Bradshaw's trilogy on recovery and the dysfunctional family. Many of
Bradshaw's insights are derivatives of the woric done by Gershen Kaufinan, a professor in the Counseling Center at Michigan State University and a pioneer in the field of shame theory. Kaufinan's work in the area of shame is based in part on SilvanTomkins' affect theory, a summary o f which is provided in Chz^ter One. With the publication ofShame:
The Power o f Caring in 1980, Kaufinan presented a comprehensive and compelling theory of shame identifying many of its origins and their impact on human behavior.
Soon other psychoanalysts followed with the publication of their own studies, and the floodgates of shame analysis were opened.
Although shame's power to produce substantial psychological turmoil has been intimated by some prominent psychoanalysts including Sigmund Freud, none really gave shame serious, sustained attention until Kaufinan in the late 1970s.^ Carl Goldberg, a professor of psychology and practicing clinician who has written extensively on shame, recognized that shame was routinely neglected both in individual clinical settings and in broader psychological studies:
sociology. She noted that these experiences produced some "diffused sensations,” including shame, that had an effect on the formation of identity. Thus, Lynd became interested in experiences of shame, and her investigation resulted in another important early text.On Shame and the Search fo r identity (16-17), which was published in 1958.
^ I understand that any psychological analysis asserting the primacy of affect theory must confront the significant influence of Freud and his theories based on instinctual drives. To this end. Chapter One addresses Freud's neglect o f shame, while Chapter Two provides an overview o f Silvan Tomkins' affect theory and theorists' arguments on the significant role this theory plays m personality development and disorder. What should be kept in mind is that Gershen kanfinan and the other shame theorists are not arguing that affect theory replace Freudian psychoanalytic princÿles and their practice or other accepted psychological theories. What diese dteorists do suggest however, is a shift in perspective, with less emphasis on drive theory and what Kaufinan calls the "neurotic organizations" that have been the primary focus of psychology durmg this century and more emphasis on affect theory. A full examinatioa of the etiology and clinical implications of shame is a neglected area of psychological investigation. ThePsychological Abstracts does not have a separate subject category for it, placing this elusive affect under the category of guilt, hi short, shame and its variants are the most seriously neglected and misunderstood emotions in contemporary society, (x)
Until recently, shame also has been largely neglected in the literary analyses of modem
American literature, which is fiaught with psychological conflict and itsdamaging
consequences on behavior. The neglect of shame in the area of literary analysis, then, is
related to the neglect of shame in the realm of human psychology.
One reason for neglecting shame as an important factor in human psychology is
the attention brought to bear on guilt.^ Goldberg notes that:
We have traditionally attributed much o f our most complex and difGcult clinical cases of shame and despair to the agent of guilt rather than to the steward of shame. Due to an overabundance of clinical studies of guilt, the emotional workings of shame have only recently received some of the careful psychological investigation they deserve. Going back to Sigmund Freud, there had been a shame about studying shame in the psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic fields. Only in recent years has this stigma been lifted, (x)
Another reason that shame and other affects were neglected until recently was the pervasive influence of Freud and the importance he assigned to drive theory. Joseph
Adamson, whoseMelville. Shame, and the Evil Eye (SUNY Press) is, like my own study.
* While fuller definitions of both sham e and guilt are given in chapter one, the following is a summary of Helen Lewis's detailed discussion of both tenns in Shame and Guilt in Neurosis: "Sham e ... involves more self-consciousness and more self-imagingthan guilt. The experience of shame is directly about the self, which is the focus of evaluation, hi guilt, the self is not the central object of negative evaluation, but rather the thing done or undone is the focus" (30). Furthermore, Lewis explains, "shame is an emotion, and a painful or negative emotion.... [while] guilf is not necessarily an emotion, but something more objective: 'a failure of duty, delinquency, offence'. . .. Shame, in contrast, is a painful affective state" (64). It should be noted, however, that shame often acconqianies guilt While guilt regularly results fiom the commission of a moral or criminal offense, this is not to say that certam behavioral acts fl-ewis's "objective" criterion) do not evoke shame as well. Guilt and shame are notm utually exclusive states. While it is generally true that guilt is connected with a specific behavior committed by the one who experiences the guilL and shame is an affective response to something done to one by anodier, this is not to say that one who engages in guilt-producing behavior (e.g., infidelity or spousal abuse) is precluded from feeling shame. based on shame psychology, makes the following important point regarding affect theory and Freud:
The gradual turning, since Freud, of psychoanalytic attention to the neglected area o f the role of the emotions or of affect in psychic development does not necessarily entail a wholesale rejection of Freud's basic discoveries and insights. But it certainly requhres a thoroughgoing réévaluation of a theory that placed too much importance on the drives at the cost o f neglecting the vital part played by the emotions— Part o f the problem with Freud's model was that, in a historical period in which both instinctual and affective life were subject, at least among a certain social class, to a high degree of denial and repression, the complex emotional coloring of sexual experience made Freud lose sight of the significance o f affective life and led him to confuse the role o f drives—hunger, thirst, elimination, sex, pain, breathing—with the very distinct role of affects ... (7-9).^
In my first chapter, Freud's early theory about shame is discussed along with his reasons for abandoning shame as a significant factor in emotional conflict. By shifting his attention to guilt and the Oedipus complex, Freud relegated shame to a position of secondary importance where it would lie dormant for most of the twentieth century.
Goldberg and others charge that Freud made a conscious decision not to explore shame further, by choosing instead to focus almost exclusively on guilt and the Oedipus myth, which became the basis for this limited focusGoldberg challenges this aspect of
Freudian thought, countering: "... shame and its existential consequences, rather than guilt, lie at the heart of our difGculties in understanding complex manifestations of human suffering far more often than the psychoanalytic literature suggests" (xi-xii). An understanding of shame dynamics will help to unlock the portal to many characters in
^ Adamson credits Silvan Tomkins for developing the "most cogent critique of the Freudian model in terms of its neglect of emotion...” (8). By privileging affects over drives, Tomkins cleared the way for other psychoanalysts to reinterprethum an behavior in tenns of affective response. As a result, literary critics such as Lev Raphael and Adamson now have the analytic feamework to evaluate characters according to affect, particularly shame.
^ Lewis argues that an idea which developed out of the Enlightenment had a significant influence on Freud and, therefore, also contributed to the neglect of shame; human beings are driven by their sexual and modem American literature whose behavior has not been hilly interpreted by literary critics because they have not had the necessary theoretical fiamework with which to conduct such an analysis.
What This Project Does
As I argue throughout this study, the application of shame theory does not invalidate the many fine analyses that have been conducted on the characters whom I discuss. Instead, shame theory offers another perspective fi’om which to view these characters, revealing an aspect that is crucial to a fuller understanding of them. For example. Lev Raphael, whoseEdith Wharton’s Prisoners o f Shame (St. Martin's) was the first book-length study by a literary critic to be based on shame psychology, uses affect theory to achieve a new perspective on character motivation in Wharton's lesser-known fiction. He asserts that "[i]t is only through the application of affect theory that we can both appreciate Wharton's neglected fiction as generally superior than previous critics have acknowledged, and fully comprehend decisions of her characters that have been misinterpreted, or dismissed as artistically unconvincing and flawed" (viii). Like
Raphael, I am not arguing that shame theory is global and that all literary works must now be reinterpreted in its context. My aim is quite similar to his own: "to demonstrate that in certain cases the failure to recognize the centrah^ of shame has led to aggressive instmcts (which, scientists deduced, was the result of our evolutionary heritage). 'Trend adhered to this view o f human nature. In this view, only a fragile sense of guilt, evolved as a social contract,' prevents us from reverting to our animal instincts. Guilt thus becomes a painfully learned set of rules of'law and order,' necessary to curb our aggressions, rather than being an emotional state consequent on injming other people"{Role o fShame 3). In this way, Freud revised significantly the affective states of guilt and shame, turning them into automatic responses invoked to curb sexual and aggressive instincts. Such a view lent itself to exemplification through the Oedÿus myth, which had a profound influence on an evolving psychology o f human behavior. For decades, this aspect of Freudian theory all but foreclosed any consideration of shame for what it is: a primary affect havmg the potential to produce or exacerbate any psychopathological disorders. inappropriate evaluations and mistaken interpretations ...” (ix). Of course, Raphael is referring specifically to Wharton's fiction, while I am making the same assertion about novels and plays written by five modem American writers. However, the point remains the same: the application of shame theory to the seven worics discussed below provides revised interpretations o f character behavior and motivation.
Adamson is another literary scholar who, like Raphael, uses shame theory to illuminate his character analyses, fit Melville, Shame, and the Evil Eye, Adamson notes that shame psychology, along with Heinz Kohut's analysis of narcissistic personality disorders, have received little attention fiom literary scholars due in part to Lacanian and poststructuralist theories, which have held the center court of literary criticism for nearly two decades. And while Adamson believes that "(pjsychoanalytic models of a Lacanian and a poststructuralist provenance have been invaluable in stimulating a renewed activity in psychological approaches to literature," they also have had "the effect of discouraging any widespread curiosity about approaches that lie outside the routine of their particular theoretical framework" (I).
Adamson also notes that Gordon Hirsch, "in an intriguing essay on shame in Jane
Austen's Pride and Prejudice, has come to similar conclusions: 'One reason for the importance of studies of shame in contemporary psychological research is the emphasis on observed, primary affect, and on a response to this affect which is also frequently evident on an emotional level, without an inordinate reliance on abstract psychological metatheory'" (2). As my own analysis demonstrates, shame theory, with its clearly defined and logically linked origins and symptoms, provides an analytic framework that yields a comprehensive interpretation of a character's psychological state.
6 Adamson relies on the theoretical firamework of shame psychology in much the same way as I do. For him:
The pivotal role of shame in the development of human personality has been examined in a fascinating and extremely diversified body of research, hi developing my approach to the specific questions posed by Melville's works I have tried to take full advantage of the great variety of perspectives offered in studies by Helen Merrell Lynd, Silvan Tomkins, Helen Block Lewis, Donald Nathanson, Carl Schneider, Leon Wurmser, and others. The sophistication of the available literature has allowed me to explore in great detail the extent to which Melville’s writings are attuned to the various modes of shame (such as feelings of embarrassment, humiliation, mortification, disgrace, or dishonor) and the reactions to shame (narcissism, excessive idealization, destructive feelings of rage, resentment, and envy, turning the tables, scom, contempt, and defiance). (16)
Like Adamson, I am indebted to shame theorists on whom I rely for the construction of my theoretical fiameworic fiir being attuned "to the world of literature and culture and to the insight it has to offer about shame and its effects on inner life" (17). Adamson notes that these theorists, including Tomkins, Lynd, and Wurmser (whose ideas on shame inform my own analysis), "have shown a keen and profound interest in the interpenetration of psychoanalytic theory and literature." Adamson credits Wurmser for his penetrating discussions on a number of writers, including Dickens, Ibsen, and Kafka, noting that Wurmeris analyses serve as a "model o f what a criticism richly informed by a psychoanalytic understanding of the role o f shame has to offer." Adamson realizes that the literature has a symbiotic relationship with shame theory in that, while "the psychoanalytic understanding of these [literary] conflicts can help us to a fuller understanding of the deeper import of... literary fiirm," (17) such character conflicts, when analyzed in the context of shame psychology, exemplify the psychodynamics of shame theory, embodying and thus vivifying theoretical concepts that may seem rather one-dimensional in the absence of life-like examples. It should come as no surprise, then, that the works discussed in this study were
chosen because they all contain characters who are affected to varying degrees by
internalized shame and experience relational conflicts—both personal and cultural—that
come under the destructive influence of this affect. The works also were chosen because
of their quality. Like Melville's writings, the works of Faulkner, Miller, O'Neill, West
and Williams are attuned to the various origins of shame and to the responses they spawn.
For instance. Miller's Loman family and O'Neill's Tyrone family are exemplars o f
generational shame. Williams's Stanley Kowalski is one of modem American literature's
best examples of shamelessness, and both he and West's Homer Simpson exemplify the
two primary reactions of the retaliatory response. And, while Faulkner's Joe Christmas
may best exemplify the shame-related responses generated by broken interpersonal
relationships and cultural homelessness, Gail Hightower is the paradigmatic example of
one who creates an alternate reality based on an illusion in order to revise familial history
in an attempt to avoid shame.
Each o f the writers addressed in this study built on the idea of naturahsm by
depicting their characters as shaped by heredity and environment. However, unlike the true naturalistic character, who inherits "his personal traits and his compulsive instincts, especially hunger and sex," the characters discussed herein develop compulsive behaviors and exhibit specific responses in reaction to shame. On the other hand, these writers create characters who resemble the naturalistic one, who "is subject to the social and economic forces in the family, the class, and the milieu into which he was bom" (Abrams
142). However, while these authors demonstrate that man's character is determined largely through heredity and environment, they place more emphasis on environmental
circumstances and particularly upon experiences within the family.
Chapter Organization
These five writers exemplify Freud's claim that the poets knew it first. These
American modernists provide us withpowerfiil examples of characters whose familial and cultural experiences and circumstances triggered the psychodynamic processes that shaped their psyche and irrevocably changed their lives, leading to a host o f behaviors the origins of which had not been identified until the recent development of affect theory.
Through its clearly identified origins and symptoms, shame theory provides an effective analytic perspective fiom which to view a character, giving us a means to build on existing literary analyses through a more specific illumination of character behavior and its motivations. Thus, shame theory supplements previous psychological interpretations of these characters through its deliberate declension of affective cause and effect.
In the first two chapters I construct the analytic fiamework that I use to explore the seven works discussed in Chapters Three through Six. In Chapter Three, I explore the legacy of shame by examining the behavior of and the interactions among the characters in Arthur Miller’s Death o fa Salesman and Eugene O’Neill's Long Day's
Journey Into Night. These works are about the experience o f family, including the dynamic of passed-on or generational shame. Theorists talk about shame-based or shame-bound families in which one generation's shame is passed on to members of the next generation. Like a genetic trait, shame becomes an inseparable component in a family's behavioral DNA, and both Miller and O'Neill provide us with compelling examples of how shame is bequeathed to one generation by another. Through their
characters, these playwrights also demonstrate the destructive nature o f generational
shame and its various manifestations, including the breakdown of interpersonal
relationships.
hi Chapter Four, the generational nature of shame is again explored, this time in
Faulkner's Light in August, which includes three characters—Joe Christmas, Joanna
Burden, and the Reverend Gail Ifightower—who are so imbued with this affect that
practically every decision they make and every act they commit may be seen as a direct
response to their internalized shame. While passed-on shame plays a significant role in
symptom formation in Faulkner's novel, the profound impact of broken interpersonal
relationships is demonstrated again and again. Each character's experience is punctuated
by relationship dysfimction leading to loss and separation fiomcommunity. As Carl
Goldberg suggests, shame-based people are ill-equipped to establish and maintain normal
relationships. The same can be said for the shame-based characters discussed in the
following chapters.
In Chapter Five, the focus shifts fiom generational shame and its destructive
legacy to an exploration of culminating responses, those shame-inspired reactions that, while alienating, self-destructive, and often violent, are initiated nevertheless in an
attempt to ameliorate shame's negative effects. In addition to an analysis of the culminating responses to shame, this chapter also focuses on Williams's idea of shame mitigation, which may be achieved through redemptive relationships characterized by acceptance and understanding.
10 Then, in Chapter Six, the idea of escaping one's shame through illusion and masquerade is pursued, and a few important shame-related concepts not raised heretofore, such as the firagmented self and the caricature self are discussed.
Additionally, through an analysis o f Williams's Blanche DuBois and West's Faye
Greener, a more thorough discussion o f narcissistic responses to shame is conducted. As a part of this analysis, we see that narcissism can manifest in symptoms other than grandiosity, pride, and vanity. Lying, as well as exhibitionism, also are narcissistic responses to shame.
The point that 1 want to emphasize is this: the five authors whose works I analyze in this dissertation illuminate the analytic landscape of shame theory through exemplification. These authors' works are attuned to shame, its variants, and the reactions they provoke. Although shame was neglected in the realm of human psychology until recently, these writers knew intuitively that shame affect possessed the power to produce substantial psychological turmoil. Thus, literature gave us examples of shame-based characters before psychology fully understood the importance of the affect.
Now, however, armed with an understanding of shame dynamics and the language to describe them, we can achieve a new perspective from which to view modem American literature. The result: a fuller evaluation of character behavior and the motivations behind it.
11 CHAPTER I
FUNDAMENTALS OF SHAME THEORY: A PORTAL TO A
NEW UNDERSTANDING OF CHARACTER MOTIVATION
Shame lies hidden behind inaccurate words, symbols that fail to grasp the inner experience o f the self
Gershen Kaufinan, Shame
The inaccurate words to which Kaufinan refers are words uttered by the shame-based self which, in most instances, cannot achieve a conscious awareness of the shame pervading it. Shame may be the most profoundly disturbing and disrupting human affect. Once internalized, the intensity of shame's pain and the frequency of its presence produce a chronic state of inner turmoil affecting every aspect of personality. In an attempt to ameUorate shame's destructive potential and to suppress the production of additional shame, the self employs a host of psychological defenses to shield itself from this affect. In this way, one's shame remains hidden from oneself as well as from others.
The "inaccurate words" one uses to describe one's inner experience are not chosen to mislead intentionally. Shame divides the self from the self making one a stranger to oneself.
12 Although some characters, such as James and Mary Tyrone in O'Neill'sLong
Day's Journey Into Night, experience moments when they actually feel their shame, none
of the characters addressed in this dissertation are consciously aware of the extent to
which their lives are negatively aSected by internalized shame. While the writers are
attuned to shame and responses to it, their characters' truth is often hidden behind the
inaccurate words and misleading behaviors of defense and denial that must be interpreted by affect theory. These characters represent those shame-based individuals for whom shame is not an articulable state. The purpose of this initial chapter, then, is first to distinguish shame firom guilt and to define shame more fully so that its importance to human development and behavior may be put into perspective. After shame has been defined and distinguished firom guilt, we look into how shame affect is experienced.
Next, the long neglect o f shame is discussed, followed by an enumeration o f the reasons that make studying shame in modem American hterature so important, including the observation that shame all but disappeared firom consciousness during the nineteenth century. Lastly, we explore hidden or unidentified shame and ways to uncover it through the identification of symptoms.
I. What Shame Is and How It Is Distinguished firom Guilt
It is incumbent upon shame theorists, those psychologists, psychiatrists and sociologists who have studied shame in clinical settings, to define not only shame, but guilt as well, making a distinction between these often confused terms, hi a larger sense, shame's definition will be elaborated and exanplified throughout this dissertation, for it is
13 a primary affective state having numerous origins and manifold consequences that are not easily encapsulated by a summary definition. Only through a close analysis of a number of characters will a full understanding of shame's scope be approached. For the time being, however, it might be useful to form a woridng definition of shame based on the theorists' own attempts.
The shame-based individual feels transparent, believing that his flaws, multiplied in number and magnified out o f proportion by his negative internal critic, are on display for all to see. Acutely self-conscious, he reaches a point where he fears additional exposure because he knows, unconsciously, that to interact with others is to risk further shaming when his shame reservoir is overflowing. Thus, the toxically shamed individual is not only highly self-conscious, but also extremely anxious. Shame-bound people retreat firom reality. As Lewis writes, "Darwin, who was the first modem scientist to write about shame, put it succinctly: Under a keen sense of shame, there is a strong desire for concealment'" (Role o f Shame 1). Sometimes the retreat is literal, manifested as extreme shyness (Laura Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie), complete social withdrawal (Gail Hightower in Light in August), or a temporary flight firom current responsibilities (Larry Shannon in The Night o fthe Iguana). Additionally, as will be seen in subsequent discussions on shame symptoms, shame-based individuals can retreat in other ways, including obsessive-compulsive behaviors such as alcohol and drug abuse
(James, Jamie, and Mary Tyrone m Long Day's Journey into Night), promiscuity
(Blanche DuBois inA Streetcar Named Desire), and illusion, rage, and violence
(Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie and Stanley Kowalski in .4 Streetcar Named
14 Desire). As will be discussed later in this chapter, compulsive behavior is often associated with shame, and many characters in modem American literature are addicted to one or more substances or behaviors.
Many shame-based individuals cannot define their state because they cannot determine that they have been deeply affected by shame. They suffer firom the psychological equivalent of an undiagnosed physical disease. Possum and Mason address this aspect o f shame, saying:
For many people shame exists passively without a name. Its origins are in identity development or in the premises of "who I am." The roots of shame are in abuse, personal violations, seductions and assaults where one's sense of self has been trampled, one's boundaries defiled. What remains may be only an ache. There are no words for the absence of an afGrmation of self, as shame often is. How do we say, "I fail to affirm my worthiness to myself?" The more active experience o f shame does have words, like, "stupid," "weakling," "weird," "sickie." (6)
And, while one might recall the origins of one's shame (e.g., sexual abuse or emotional neglect), one is far less likely to realize that these violations and abuses have resulted in a lasting sense of shame that pervades one's entire self. One's intemalized shame remains hidden to the self, and one's wounded identity limps through life unaware of shame's poisonous, debilitating effects.
Helen Lewis, a psychoanalyst who became an important early contributor to an understanding of shame's significance to human development and behavior through her clinical experiments and observations, well understood this nameless state of shame:
[SJhame is a relatively wordless state. The experience of shame often occurs in the form of imagery, of looking or being looked at.... The wordlessness of shame, its imagery of lool^g, together with the concreteness of autonomic activity [such as blushing, an autonomic response that attends excessive self-consciousness], make shame a primitive reaction that resists rational solution. One is often ashamed of being or having been ashamed. Shame thus compounds itself out of
15 an intrinsic difficulty in finding a "rational" place for it in the adult's psychic life. (JRole o f Shame 19)
Thus, for many shame-based individuals, shame is not an articulable state, even though its effects pervade the personality and influence behavior. Additionally, shame is such a painful state one wants no part o f it. The self literally hides firom itself using one or more of a host of defensive strategies.
Lewis also notes that shame has a vicarious component. She says that "shame can be experienced for someone else, as if the 'other's' honor were one's own. In this meaning of the term, there is a feeling of personal responsibility, and yet the self is by implication helpless to avoid shame of the other" who is close"{Shame and Guilt 64). For example, a parent can experience shame over the behavior of his or her child, a brother over the behavior o f his sister.^
From a cultural perspective, one can experience shame affect when one's behavior violates cultural standards. In addition, one can feel the sting o f this afiect when one fails to meet social or famihal expectations, even though no ethical or moral standard has been broken. Goldberg calls this the "distress of shame:" "[t]he suffering is derived from our reflection on our human condition and the realization that we are falling short of some expected desired state of existence" (52).
' One can take into oneself the feeling-states of others, and this dynamic is exemplified by Quentin Compson(JTie Sound and the Fury, Absalom. Absalom!). Quentin, in first learning and then retelling Thomas Sutpen's story, becomes an inextricable part of the events, which not only intensifies his own iimer shame, but also generates additional shame. He feels responsible for his sister Caddy's promiscuity and tries to take the blame for it. More generally, he has absorbed his family's failures and die deep shame and guilt related to them. The Compsons, Quentin realizes, are on the same trajectory as Su^en: the Compsons had reached the pinnacle of Southern power and aristocracy only to fall gradually but inexorably into poverty; Sutpen began as poor white trash to build a plantation and, thereby, attain the social status he sought only to lose everything in the end. Quentin also absorbs Sutpen's shame, taking Shreve's "lighthearted" criticism about the South (to the effect that all Southern men are incestuous) to heart. His suicide is his way of retreating firom these and other shame-producing situations.
16 This last point is o f significant importance to our examination of shame in modem
American literature because many characters found within it experience profound shame when they believe that they have failed to meet cultural expectations. Twentieth- centuryAmerica is replete with potential shaming circumstances.^ We live in an era when performance-related expectations infiltrate every aspect o f our lives—firom academics to athletics, sex to financial success—and we are surrounded by shame-creating paradigms made all the more influential by ubiquitous media. Goldberg well understands the psychodynamic process at work here, and he connects performance shortcomings to shame and the suffering it creates. He says
[emotional] ^ain does not cause sufiering until it is translated into a category of meaning. This latter category is derived firom assumptions conveyed to us by others. Often we do not know what we are experiencing until we can see ourselves as others perceive us.... Socioemotionally, our state of being is intolerable to the extent that it contradicts how we have been led to believe our existence should be experienced. The realization of our failure to achieve expected and desired goals lies at the core o f the experience of shame. (52)
Failure to meet expectations set by others is one basis for the cultural foundation of shame. Beginning with the industrialization of America, the number of external standards has grown exponentially, creating an abundance of potential shaming situations.
Shame can become such a powerful, pervasive affective state that an individual can be seriously debilitated on a number of fironts; indeed, shame is considered a "master"
' We make no attenq)t in this study to provide a definitive answer to the debate over what kind of culture the United States is presently, a shame culture or a guilt culture, nor are we even sure that this debate has value. Many contemporary cultural anthropologists find such a clear-cut, binary distinction untenable in a post-industrial world, especially as the terms themselves have been revised and shame in particular has taken on new meaning as investigations into it have expanded. Additionally, m the process of revision, these classifications have become more interrelated and are therefore no longer mutually exclusive. (Fora seminal discussion on the problems of trying to assign a culture to one category or the other, see Gerhart Piers and Milton B. Singer's Shame and Guilt: A Psychoanalytic and a Cultural Study.)
17 emotion by Kaufinan and others for its ability to affect the whole self. Leon Wurmser, a prominent clinical psychologist and professor of psychology at Johns-Hopkins
University, writes: "Several authors have noted that shame has a much more global quality than guilt. According to Helen Lynd, '[s]hame is an experience that affects and is affected by the whole self. This whole-self involvement is one of its distinguishing characteristics and one that makes it a clue to identity"' (53).^ Thus, one can be so deeply wounded psychologically that one ceases to function effectively, falling into a state of despair that intensities one's feelings of inferiority and worthlessness. In this state, the stress of shame and its associated feelings of disintegration—an unwholeness that pierces to one's very core—can immobilize one physically, rendering one not only hopeless, but helpless as well. Once one has succumbed to this level of emotional and physical malaise and turmoil, one's mental functioning also is impaired by shame, which, in this deep- seated state, has become intemalized.
One way to distinguish between guilt and shame is to weigh the potential destructive implications of each on the self. Merle Possum and Marilyn Mason, therapists at the Family Therapy Institute in St. Paul, Minnesota, contribute to our imderstanding o f shame by detining it in experiential terms. For them, shame
is more than loss of face or embarrassment... shame is an inner sense of being completely diminished or insufticient as a person. It is the self judging the self. A moment of shame may be humiliation so painful or an indignity so profound that one feels one has been robbed o f her or his dignity or exposed as basically
^ Lynd also recognizes this whole-self involvement: "It is because of this whole-life involvement that one can speak of an overall ashamedness. Jean-Paul Sartre makes basic in shame the way one appears in the eyes of others (others as audience), rather than in one's own eyes. But he recognizes that what is exposed in shame is oneself. I am ashamed of what I am" (50). There are many examples of this dynamic in modem American literature, and this can be said of virtually all the characters included in this study. 18 inadequate, bad, or worthy of rejection. A pervasive sense of shame is the ongoing premise that one is fundamentally bad, inadequate, defective, unworthy, or not fully valid as a human being. (5)
Note that the nature of shame contains an element o f abject failure, a
characteristic not usually found in guilt: one comes to believe that he is completely
inadequate as a human being, "completely diminished or insufScient as a person."
Thus, shame is related more closely than guilt to individual competency and feelings of
powerlessness and hopelessness. Goldberg notes that there are ways to avoid guilt’s
destructive implications, which occur when one has behaved wrongfully (morally,
socially, professionally, criminally, etc.). Consequently, because one is aware of one's
guilt and the behavior producing it, one can consciously take steps to make amends and,
if necessary, restitution, thus helping to heal one's damaged psyche. However, there is no
reciprocal procedure that one can invoke to heal the hurt of shame.'* Goldberg
summarizes the problem this way: "... in contrast [to guilt and its assuagement], in
shame the person experiences the passivity, incapacity, and lack of protectedness firom
the ravages of hurt and disappointment that come firom a lack of legitimate entitlement
and result in a state of being, as Hamlet describes his world, 'weary, stale, flat and
unprofitable'" (54).^ Thus, the impact shame has on one can differ substantially firom the
* One might wonder if Willy Loman could have ameliorated the guilt evoked by his infldehty had he confessed his transgression to Linda and begun the process of amends. As Goldberg notes, one can take steps to reduce one's guilt if certain restitutive actions are taken. One must remember that, once elicited, shame reflects not so much on the act committed as on the person committing it. It not only reflects on the individual, it confirms to him or her something negative about the self. Additionally, such a situation is more damaging potentially to a shame-based individual because such a confirmation o f defect contributes further to this intemalized effect, which is not easily overcome. While one can begin to redress the guilt, the corresponding shame, which has become a state of being, remams. Therefore, while WQly may have been able to lessen somewhat his guilt, he would not have been able to fiee himself fiom the shame affect produced by his infidelity.
^ A good case could be made that Hamlet, too, is a shame-based character for a number o f reasons (origins). Individuals bound by mtemalized shame are often indecisive. Lacking self-confidence and
19 impact of guilt. Piers and Singer note that "[g]uilt accompanies transgression and the implicit threat is one of pumshment Shame accompanies failure and theimplicit- threaf is abandonment" (qtd. in Psychology o f Shame 10). "hi Piers' view the crucial distinction between guilt and shame is not that between self-criticism and criticism by others but between transgression of prohibitions and failure to reach goals or ideals" (Lynd 22).
Thus, shame is produced whenever a goal is not met because not meeting the goal indicates a significant shortcoming. This leads to feelings of weakness and inferiority, two shame-producing feeling states.
Another way to separate shame fiom guilt is to distinguish between the behaviors that evoke each. Possum and Mason, like a number of other shame theorists, address this concern by first distinguishing the term "shame" fiom the term "guilt." They say:
Guilt is the developmentally more mature ... feeling of regret one has about behavior that has violated a personal value Guilt does not reflect directly upon one's identity nor diminish one's sense of personal worth. It emanates fiom an integrated conscience and set of values. It is the reflection of a developing self. A person with guilt might say, "I feel awful seeing that I did something which violated my values." Or the guilty person might say, "I feel sorry about the consequences of my behavior." k so doing the person's values are reaffirmed. The possibility of repair exists and learning and growth are promoted. While guilt is a painful feeling of regret and responsibility for one's actions, shame is a painful feeling about oneself as a person. The possibility for repair seems foreclosed to the shameful person because shame is a matter of identity, not behavioral infiaction. There is nothing to be learned fiom it and no growth is opened by the experience because it only confirms one's negative feelings about oneself. (5-6).
healthy self-regard, these individuals are afiaid to act, fearing additional proof to their deep-seated conviction that they are abject failures. Goldberg understands the dynamics behind a shame-bound personality: "... during shame, imlike guilt, hostili^ against the self is tolerated As a result, shameful, self-aggression may paralyze the self and cause feelings of being overwhelmed and unable to control one's existence" (55). Hamlefs state of being is characterized by immobility and a sense of powerlessness at a time when decisive action is called for. Furthermore, by being paralyzed in this way, his shame intensifies, fueling his self-hatred and, in turn, his desne to take his own life.
20 However, while shame and guilt have their separate definitions, we must keep in mind their inseparable connections. For example, Lewis expands upon a point introduced earlier concerning the connection between shame and guilt;
Shame and guilt are often fused and therefore confused. This is a consequence of their common origin of modes of repairing lost affectional bonds. The clearest example of their fusion occurs when both states are evoked by a moral transgression. The two states then tend to fuse under the heading of guilt. (The dictionary confirms this observation by terming shame an acute or "emotional" sense of guilt...) But shame of oneself is likely to be operating underneath guilt for transgression. {Role o f Shame 17)
Erik Erikson reflects on this dynamic, noting that "[s]hame is an emotion insufficiently studied because in our civilization it is so early and easily absorbed by guilt" (qtd. in
Piers and Singer 21). However, Lynd emphasizes the point that guilt and shame should not be seen as mutually exclusive terms:
Shame and guilt are in no sense—either in the older or in the more recent conceptions of the experiences—antitheses, or at opposite poles firom each other. Rather, they involve Afferent focuses, modes, and stresses. Often they overlap, and it is partly for this reason that the study of shame has been subsumed under, or neglected in, the study o f guilt. (23)
In the end, though, perhaps shame is best identified through an examination of its symptoms, often the best way to confirm not only the existence of shame but also the extent to which it has pervaded one's self. Such an examination is at the heart of this study, along with a close look at each character's shame origins, if known. But more often than not in modem American literature, a character's background, especially his or her childhood experience, is sketchy at best. (There are notable exceptions, of course, among them Joe Christmas, Gail Hightower, and Joanna Burden inLight in August.) In these cases, it is imperative to study closely a character's behavior, looking carefully for those telltale behaviors that are direct manifestations o f inner shame. And these
21 characteristic behaviors of shame, once understood, become easy to spot. Underlying all shame-based symptoms, however, is a certain dispirited attitude that has become a hallmark of modem American literature. For Kaufinan, periiaps the most influential contemporary shame theorist, "[i]ntense shame is a sickness, a disease o f the spirit"{Role o f Shame 9).
n. Shame and Human Experience
For Kaufinan, "[s]hame is as central to the human experience as anxiety or suffering, yet is far more elusive in nature" {Shame 7). Heretofore, shame was more likely to be seen as a discrete response to socially inappropriate behavior, an instructive emotion that piqued the conscience and, thereby, tilted the individual back onto the straight and narrow. Shame was not viewed as a destructive or long-lasting emotional condition, and the concept of internalization was not well understood as it applied to shame affect. In a Puritan-oriented society, one might be required to wear a scarlet "A" on one's breast as a corrective measure to adultery, but no pernicious, long-term effects were anticipated. Today, however, we know better, and shame is something to which everyone is susceptible.
Shame is not only central to human experience, it is ubiquitous as well. In her
Preface to The Role o f Shame in Symptom Formation, a collection of papers addressing different aspects o f shame vis-à-vis the development and manifestation o f shame-related symptoms, Helen Lewis notes that, once one knows how and where to look for shame, it appears everywhere:
22 Once clinicians' attention is called to shame, it becomes apparent that, although it is easily ignored, shame is ubiquitous— A focus on the dynamics of the shame response reveals that it is a key factor in what Freud identified as the "archaic" or "irrational" guilt that breeds neurotic and psychotic symptoms. Shame plays a direct role in the low self-esteem that both behaviorists and psychoanalysts now agree is the hallmark of depression. Shame also plays an indirect role in obsessions and paranoia. It figures not only in these familiar diagnostic categories, but in the more recent descriptions of "narcissistic" and "borderline personalities." {Role o fShame-id)
As will be seen throughout this work, Lewis is not alone in ascribing to shame a host of psychological disorders, fiom common neurotic behaviors to pathological psychotic syndromes. Once one has a general understanding of how shame originates and subsequently manifests itself in human behavior, one can read the works of modem
American literature discussed herein from a new perspective.
At this point in the discussion one might ask, "If shame is so widespread, how does one become shamed? Does one bring shame on oneself, or is it imposed on one?" Lynd suggests that "[s]eparate, discrete acts or incidents, including those seemingly most trivial, have importance because in this moment of ^e(/^onsciousness, the self stands revealed" (49). What Lynd is suggesting—and she is not alone in making this assertion—is that an individual can be preconditioned to shame. Thus, some human beings (and fictional characters) are more susceptible to shame than others. According to
Lynd:
One does not, as in guilt, choose to engage in a specific act, a sin. Guilt frequently involves a sort of haggling anxiety, a weighing of pros and cons prolonged over a period of time. The shameful situation frequently takes one by surprise. But one is overtaken by shame because one's whole life has been a preparation for putting one in this situation. One finds oneself in a situation in which hopes and purposes are invested and in which anxiety about one's own adequacy may also be felt. In shame the inadequacy becomes manifest; the anxiety is realized. (49-50)
23 Just how an individual is preconditioned to internalize shame is discussed below in some
detail.^ In the chapters that follow, we will discuss characters whose lifo experiences
have increased their vulnerability^ to shame.
Through his hoo]siHealing the Shame That Binds You, his PBS series based on the book, and his seminars throughout foe U.S., Bradshaw "popularized" shame by bringing
it to foe attention o f a larger, more general audience. Perhaps the strongest declaration of shame's destructive, pervasive influence is made by Bradshaw, whose investigation into shame had personal as well as professional ramifications: "a toxically shamed person has an adversarial relationship with himself. Toxic shame—foe shame that binds us—is foe basis for both neurotic and character disordered syndromes of behavior" (10). Although his investigation o f shame and its effects on foe human psyche have been called derivative by some critics—indeed, Bradshaw does credit Gershen Kaufinan as foe source of his fundamental understanding of shame-related theory—Bradshaw took shame out of foe conceptual realm of psychoanalytical theory and symposia and gave it a human face. Bradshaw became aware o f his own shame as a destructive power that ruled his life: "Shame was the unconscious demon I had never acknowledged. In becoming aware of foe dynamics o f shame, I came to see that shame is one of foe major destructive forces in all human life" (vii). Other shame theorists also make foe point that the shame-based person experiences a "rupture of foe self with foe self' (10). For Bradshaw, and for foe
^ Below, in a section on interpersonal relationships and shame, I discuss the importance of healthy, loving, interpersonal relationships during childhood and describe how shame becomes intemalized in the absence of strong, functional relationships. One does not have to be physically abused or sexually molested to become shame-based. One can be neglected or abandoned by a parent or primary caregiver.
24 characters analyzed in this study, shame, mtemalized, toxic, and bitter, unknowingly becomes a state of being, something to which each is inextricably bound:
What I discovered was that shame as a healthy human emotion can be tranrformed into shame as a state o f being... [taking over one's whole identity. To have shame as an identity is to believe that one’s being is flawed, that one is defective as a human being. Once shame is tran^rm ed into an identity, it becomes toxic and dehumanizing, (vii)
When shame becomes one's identity, it has become intemalized. As such, it is hidden from awareness, making discovery difficult. Additionally, one who carries internalized shame will endeavor unconsciously to keep one's shame from oneself. As
Bradshaw says, "[a] shame-based person will guard against exposing his inner self to others, but more significantly, he will guard against exposing himself to himself' (10).
Thus, toxically shamed individuals can be desperately disturbed emotionally, manifesting a variety o f neurotic and pathological symptoms. Shame leads to self-contempt, which in turn can lead to self-destmctive behavior, including suicide or a desire to die or to be killed. Thus, while some characters express self-loathing, all of those discussed below experience an unconscious contempt for themselves that constitutes a disease of the spirit. This idea is echoed by Goldberg, who notes that shame "is at work in the self blame and self-loathing that foster low self-esteem and create depression." Goldberg also understands shame's pervasive nature, noting that "as a chronic mood, [shame] decisively sours one's everyday activities and life plans" (xiii).
Goldberg, like Bradshaw, recognizes shame's toxicity, especially when one feels that he or she is living a futile life. Goldberg suggests that, "[sjince shame is closely associated with the bitterness and animosity people direct toward themselves when they realize that they are living a futile life, it is small wonder that the patient who faces us in
25 psychotherapy feels ashamed" (xiii). Thus, another origin o f shame addressed in this
study is that of the failed individual, that character who feels ashamed of himself (or
herselQ because o f a lack o f accomplishment, including the attainment o f financial
security, social position, or professional status. (The topic of cultural scripts discussed in
the next chapter, also will be covered in this context.)
Goldberg also talks about self-doubt as a consequence o f shame:
In shame reactions the person experiences the absence o f personal power and pride. This is the crux of the problem. One feels transparent, empty, lacking in power and specialness.... [The] shameful experience casts self-doubts about one's personal adequacy and evokes feelings that I refer to as "lack of legitimate entitlement” as a person.... Without a firm sense o f autonomy and trust in one's ability to handle oneself in the world, the specter o f selfdoubt haunts each new venture. Therefere, in contrast to guilt, the person in the throes o f shame experiences a lack of power and audacity to deal with the devastation of the superego and tries to rise firom it. But one cannot hide because the whole self is caught up in the feelings of hopelessness. (54)
Thus, a person carrying intemalized shame is so riddled with self-doubt that he has no
faith in himself, no confidence that he can negotiate the world successfully. As a result, he experiences chronic anxiety because the challenges of everyday reality loom as threatening and potentially destructive.
Shame's ability to make one feel incompetent and hopeless often results in a
feeling of alienation. A number of characters addressed by the following analyses are alienated firom their society. When one feels worthless and unacceptable as a human being, two of shame's destmctive legacies, one can become alienated firom one's peers.
Kaufinan recognizes this aspect of shame:
Few strivings are as compelling as is our need to identify with someone, to feel a part of something, to belong somewhere.... yet equally powerful is the alienating affect. For shame can generate, can even altogether sever one's essential human
26 ties, that we might either feel barred from entry forever or forced to renounce the very striving to belong itself and resignedly accept an alienated existence. (Sham e 27)
In some instances, the characters have been barred from their society because of their own shame-producing behavior. In other instances, however, characters are excluded because their culture deems them imacceptable for one reason or another.
m . Meta-shame and the Diminution of Self
Another destructive element of shame is its potential to produce additional shame without external stimuli. Once shame is intemalized, it can be triggered and multiplied in a vacuum. In a sense, it is like falling into a pool of quicksand: the more one stmggles, the more futile the effort. And like quicksand, shame is hard to identify by the untrained eye. One struggles in vain against a phantom opponent, one that is self-generative, becoming more potent and ultimately more debilitating.
Possum and Mason have studied this phenomenon: "Shame begets shame. Within the shame-dominated system any experience is likely to be interpreted in such a way that it undermines the person and creates more shame. It is a cancer that grows from feeling bad about oneself to interpreting neutral or impersonal experiences in personally depreciating ways" (31). Thus, the shame-based individual develops yet another source of shame: shame about being ashamed. This internally fostered shame intensification aUenates one even further because he feels even less acceptable. Additionally, his psychological defense system becomes more engaged, denying ever more feelings. In this way, one intensifies one's own shame state, becoming less acceptable to oneself and others:
27 We observe a process which we call meta-shame, i.e., shame about shame, which buries one's self-awareness even more deeply "Being in pain about myself is a signal that I'm not like others or not acceptable. Now I have to hide the fact that I can't feel acceptable." This shame about being ashamed increases one's sense of alienation and the person moves in the direction of denying more feelings. (31)
Such a shame state contributes to a more general category of shame symptoms whose
origins are more difGcult to discern. This is understandable, given the regenerative
nature of meta-shame. As will be seen in the following chapters, there are characters
who experience shame about their shame in part because they cannot see themselves as
"good" or "normal" persons. They do not feel acceptable; therefore, they deny more
feelings.
Possum and Mason believe that, as one disowns more of the self, and denies more
feelings, "one tends to project the disowned parts onto other people." While projective
identification can be used as a defense against shame, the projection Possum and Mason
address is of another kind. Por example, shame-based parents who have disowned parts
of themselves or repressed their feelings might see "unrealistically positive qualities in
their children ... [or] develop unreasonable expectations and dependencies in order to fill
the gap created by their own denial and self-diminution" (31). It stands to reason, then,
that instances of these behaviors may be indicative of characters carrying intemalized
shame. My discussion of the generational dynamics of shame in Chapter Three with regard to Miller’s Death o f a Salesman and O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into
N ight argues precisely this point; both Willy Loman and James Tyrone ascribe to their older sons (Biff and Jamie) inflated talents and have set for them unreasonably
high expectations.
28 Shame diminishes the self in other ways, impairing mental functioning and
dividing one's attention between oneself and reality. Lewis noted those reactions in her
clinical observations:
During the encounter [with a shame-producing source], the self is acutely self-conscious, whether the encounter occurs in fantasy or in reahty. The self is thus divided in shame; it is experiencing condemnation Grom the other or firom the field [i.e., external reality], and it is simultaneously acutely aware of itself. This complicated, divided activity of the self, which is "in two places at once," and acutely self^onscious at the same time, makes it difGcult for the self to function effectively. Although there is acute self-consciousness, the self is not otherwise functioning effectively as a perceiver. Perception of the self and the surroundings [i.e., one's immediate environment] is notoriously unclear in shame.{Shame and G uilt 39)
Willy Loman exemplifies this shame dynamic. He has become acutely self-conscious, and he is no longer able to function effectively. His attention is often divided between reality and illusion, and this division manifests in conversations with imaginary persons
(The Woman and his brother Ben) in whose presence he feels ashamed. He is not experiencing dementia or other age-related physical illnesses or syndromes; instead, shame has impaired his functioning.
IV. Freud and the Neglect o f Shame
A number of shame theorists address the issue of why shame was neglected until recently and focus on Freud's investigation into and attitude toward shame.^ Early in his
^ It should be noted that the significance of shame is gaining momentum as a focus of literary study. Two recently published works by SUNY Press attest to this: Scenes o f Shame: Psychoanalysis, Shame, and Writing, edited by Joseph Adamson and Hilary Clark, and Melville, Shame, and The Evil Eye: A Psychoanalytic Reading by Joseph Adamson, hi Scenes o f Shame, the psychodynanucs of shame are explored in a number of literary and philosophical wodcs. This collection includes essays on Hawthorne, George Eliot, Lawrence, Faulkner, Sexton, and Toni Morrison.Melville, Shame, and the Evil Eye analyzes shame in Melville's work and, like my own study, constructs an analytic fiameworic based on such theorists as Leon Wurmser, Silvan Tomkins, and Donald Nathanson.
29 career as therapist and psychological theorist, Freud recognized shame's potential to
contribute to psychological disorders. However, as these contemporary theorists note,
Freud's pursuit of a complete understanding of shame and its psychological consequences
seems curtailed for some reason. For some, such as Kaufinan, Freud's concentration on
innate drives led him away firom a fuller investigation into affects. For others, including
Helen Lewis and Alice Miller, the renowned Swiss psychoanalyst, Freud's focus on drive
theory at the expense of shame and its related affective responses was a cover-up,
undertaken perhaps to protect the families of his original analysands, many of whom reported sexual abuse. Due to Freud's influence over psychotherapy during this century, it is worthwhile reviewing what some of these theorists have to say about Freud's view of shame.
Alice Miller contends that Freud, who focused on shame early in his career only to shun it completely after developing his theory about unconscious guilt and the Oedipus myth, turned away fiom his original conceptions about shame in order to deflect attention away fiom shame and its origins. Miller, undoubtedly one of Freud's harshest critics, argues that Freud had to conceal his "surprising discovery of adults' sexual abuse of their children" (a discovery made possible through the testimony of his patients) as a capitulation to the prevailing ideology of parenthood (characterized by an unyielding authoritarian domination Miller calls the "poisonous pedagogy") and to the parents who practiced it.* Thus, Miller asserts, Freud "disguised his insight with the aid o f a theory
^ Miller claims to have found "striking corroboration" to this idea that Freud developed drive theory to deflect attention away fiom what he discovered to be true. She mentions three texts: Freud and His Father, by Marianne KrüU; (2) The Best Kept Secret: Sexual Abuse in Children, by Florence Rush; and 3) Generations Apart: Adult Hostility to Youth, by Leon Sheleff.
30 that nullified this inadmissible knowledge— a theory that would preserve appearances by attributing all 'evil,' guilt, and wrongdoing to the child's fantasies, in which the parents served only as the objects of projection" (60).® Shame theory contributes to our understanding of the emotional trauma experienced by abused children and the psychological repercussions of such abuse. If Miller's contentions are true, Freud may have participated in a cover-up that delayed a fuller understanding o f this most important affect.
Like Alice Miller, Lewis is concerned about the sexual abuse suffered by many of
Freud's patients. She reexamined published case histories of other analysts including
Freud and discovered that shame played a more central part in the analysands' behavior than had been understood before. She noted that;
[M]any of Freud's hysterical patients were actually victims o f sexual abuse by father-figures. Freud found that he had 18 instances of childhood sexual abuse in his first 18 cases of hysteria But it was difGcult for him to believe that this heinous crime could be committed by so many respectable men. When he made his discovery of infantile sexuality, he abandoned his seduction theory in favor of the idea that guilt over then illicit childhood fantasies was the source of bis patients' hysteria. And it began to seem to him and to his followers as if one could not believe in actual seductions and still believe in the psychoanalytic discovery of infantile sexuality. We now know, nearly a hundred years later, that he was close to being right the first time. {Role o f Shame 4-5)
Lewis contends that Freud avoided shame when he turned his attention away fiom actual seductions to guilt over fantasies. This bothers Lewis (as it does Miller) because shame
."is what children experience when they are sexually molested by an adult. The adult has betrayed their trust and thrown them into a state of shame resulting firom their most
^ Miller also speculates on why so many psychoanalysts remain wedded to Freudian drive theory: "[I]t did not force them to question their idealized image of their parents. With the aid of Freud's drive and structural theories, they have been able to continue obeymg the commandment they intemalized in early childhood: 'Thou shall not be aware of what your parents are doing to you " (60-61).
31 profound attachments." As Lewis notes, there was no scientific knowledge of the human
attachment system during the time Freud developed his drive theory. Thus, "there was no
room in Freud's theoretical system for the shame that follows personal betrayal"{Role o f
Shame 5).
Kaufinan notes that Freud gives shame comparatively little attention in his work,
ascribing its origin first to genital visibility and then to genital deficiency: "man's raising himself firom the ground, of his assumption of an upright gait; this made his genitals, which were previously concealed, visible and in need of protection, and so provoked
feelings of shame in him." In a subsequent paper, Freud wrote: "Shame, which is considered to be a feminine characteristic par excellence but is far more a matter of convention than might be supposed, has as its purpose, we believe, concealment of genital deficiency ..." (cooled m.KaaSaiZSL, Psychology o fShame Freud is more concerned about guilt, Kaufinan contends, because, by concentrating so completely on drives, he is oriented "more toward examining the nature of guilt in relation to oedipal strivings" {Psychology o f Shame 8). Furthermore, BCaufinan argues that Freud's theory actually obscures the identification of shame. Kaufinan writes:
When the human being is conceived as gripped by imperious drives in perpetual conflict with reality and society, shame is of little consequence. Freud's blindness to shame is partially the result of his drive theory, and partially the result of the general failure of language to partition affect. Any psychological theory is limited by the contemporary language of the day, and by the particular conception of the universe existing at foe time. (8)
Kaufinan views psychoanalytic theory as a part of an evolving linguistic system, as "one language among many for describing foe domain of inner experience." In this sense, foe creators of foe characters addressed herein were working without foe advantage
32 of contemporary shame theorists and their concepts and supportinglanguage. Thus, they
did not have the necessary analytic language to describe what psychodynamics were
compelling their characters' behavior; they did have, however, the requisite powers of observation and insight to describe the behavior itself. ^®
Morrison believes that Freud avoided a more thorough analysis o f shame for other reasons. One reason had to do with good old professional competition: "It is also my impression that Freud had reason to avoid shame and move toward Oedipal guilt because of the relevance to narcissism and shame of Jung's, and particularly Adler's, interests
(inferiority feelings, masculine protest, and bisexuality/passivity)" (186).
Morrison seems more forgiving than Miller when considering the purpose of
Freud's pursuit of drive theory, noting that the conflict-drive psychology of Freud's seminal work was dominated by his idea of a primitive superego. Because of this emphasis, "anxiety, oedipal conflicts, repression and the drives were taken as the cornerstones of psychoanalytic theory, with guilt and anxiety underscored as the manifestations of conflict between the intrapsychic components. [Thus] shame was not readily assimilated into psychoanalytic conflict..." (3). Morrison says of the emphasis
Freud gave to guilt:
Freud's structural theory emphasized the importance of guilt rather than shame as a central dysphoric affect, clearly related as it was to intrapsychic conflict. This emphasis assured a delay in attention to shame as an important focus of study
Terrence Real credits Freud as being the first to link shame to depression. Freud suggested that depression was "a form of intemalized violence—of'aggression tumed against the self,' as he put it" Real notes that Freud's description of depression-related self-attacks in "Moummg and Melancholia" would be called shame by today's psychiatry. Freud writes: "The patient represents his ego to us as worthless, incapable of any achievement and morally despicable; he reproaches himself, vilifies hunself and expects to be cast out and punished " (54). Real's assertion is correct: Freud was describing a patient deeply distressed by internalized, unidentified shame affect. Like Freud, many modem American authors, including those discussed in this study, describe shame-based characters through their depiction of attitudes, behaviors, activities, and, mmany cases, experiences.
33 until the structural theory itself was modified and opened by the next generation of analysts. (5)
And Freud's perspective on shame affect was o f a sanguine nature. He saw shame
exercising a corrective influence over socially unacceptable behavior. Freud
viewed shame as a reaction formation against the wish for genital exhibitionism and expression of other sexual impulses and perversions; saw shame as socially useful, directing sexual energy away firom the self and toward tasks necessary for the preservation of the species... Freud also considered shame to be a result of anxiety, which is "objective" and social, reflecting fear of rejection and disapproval of others. (7)"
While some of these theorists' contentions about Freud are controversial and
speculative, some others regarding shame's neglect are not. One aspect of shame's neglect, however, is indisputable; little investigative attention has been paid to it historically. Goldberg addresses this point early in his preface:
A full examination of the etiology and clinical implications of shame is a neglected area of psychological investigation. ThePsychological Abstracts does not have a separate subject category for it, placing this elusive affect under the category o f guilt. In short, shame and its variants are the most seriously neglected and misunderstood emotions in contemporary society, (x)
While Goldberg does not charge Freud with intentionally obscuring shame's importance, he does note that, beginning with Freud, there has been a reticence to study shame.
Goldberg also notes that guilt has absorbed an inordinate amount of clinical attention, due in part to the extensive studies on it.^^ But Goldberg, like Miller, holds Freud
' ' Morrison elaborates on the conflict Freud identified between the self and cultural values; "Freud noted the relationship of libidinal instincts to culture and morality in the quest to maintain self-esteem. Repression, then, is a result of conflict between the libidinal instincts and cultural and ethical values and reflects the formation of an intemalized ideal' based on these values. It represents the intemalization of culture— external precepts—and formation of ethics— internal precepts. In this way, Freud continued to vacillate between external and internal factors, considering shame, along with cultural and ethical ideals, as a source of defense against the drives" (25).
Goldberg notes that his training, with its strong enqthasis on unconscious guilt resulting fiom oedipal yearnings (the traditional Freudian view o f human unhappiness), left him unprepared to treat clinically
34 accountable for shame's protracted neglect, charging that Freud neglected "the terrifying experiences of shame and despair" and substituted for shame "the monocausal role of guilt in the experience o f suffering." It should not be surprising, then, that Goldberg challenges this long-revered aspect of Freudian thought, countering: "I will demonstrate that shame and its existential consequences, rather than guilt, lie at the heart of our difhculties in understanding complex manifestations of human suffering far more often than the psychoanalytic literature suggests" (xi).
Like Goldberg, Kaufinan noticed that little attention had been paid to shame in the psychological literature, but he reached a different conclusion about its absence. Shame's neglect was due in part to language: therapists did not have adequate language with which to articulate the dynamic. Additionally, according to Kaufinan, new psychological dysfunctions replaced the older ones described by Freud and others.*^ Kaufinan summarizes these two points thusly:
The mental health field is plagued by a compelling new generation of psychological dysfunction. The neurotic organizations observed in prior years, described by Freud and subsequently elaborated by others, have largely been replaced. We no longer see such precisely organized syndromes, and perhaps we only thought we did. We could not perceive in earlier years what our language continues to mask, obscure, or deny. {Psychology o f Shame vii)
Again, Kaufinan is not suggesting that shame theory replace the accepted psychological theories of Freud and others. However, Kaufinan argues for a shift in
patients suffering fiom unidentified shame, hi these cases, the old paradigms proved ineffective, and until Goldberg acquired an understanding of shame and its pervasiveness, he remained perplexed about how to treat some of his more difGcult cases.
Such an idea might seem absurd ûutîally until one considers the fact that profound cultural transformations have taken place since Freud presented his theories, hi Chapter Two, the issue of culture and its influence on human emotions, especially shame, is discussed.
35 perspective, with greater emphasis put on affect theory/* He chronicles shame's
long neglect, saying:
Since the dawn of scientific psychology, shame has remained an obscure phenomenon. It has never been the subject of scientific inquiry in the way that sexuality, anxiety, or even aggression have. Personality theorists have never accorded shame the status of a central construct. Libido, drive, sexuality, aggression, dependency—these have been the organizing constructs of our science. Observers of psychopathology have likewise universally ignored shame in construing the sources of psychological disorder. They refer to drive conflicts, guilty impulses, interpersonal dynamics, cognitive self statements, dysfunctional family systems, but not shame.... Shame remains under taboo in contemporary society. (Psychology o f Shame 3-4)
As we have seen, the views on Freud's investigation into shame differ widely.
Reasons for his so-called neglect of this affect range fiom a lack o f information on the
human attachment system to an intentional cover-up to protect himself, his family, and
his fiiends and acquaintances. Regardless of one's point of view, Freud was, at one time,
on an investigative path that might have led him to make more profound conclusions
about the deleterious nature of shame had he continued to pursue shame affect as
vigorously as he pursued drive theory.
V. The Importance of Studying Shame in Modem American Literature
By now the profound implications that shame can have on an individual should be
fairly clear. Nevertheless, one might wonder why it is important to investigate modem
American literature fiom a perspective on shame. First of all, an investigation into one's
shame is the beginning of a revelation about the self and its history, including experiences, relationships, and reactions. An analysis of a character's shame likewise
This point is clarified in my discussion of Silvan Tomkins' affect dieoiy in the following chapter.
36 unlocks some heretofore unknown aspects o f that character and, thereby, throws new light on the narrative in which he or she dwells. Additionally, the fact that so many characters in modem American literature are shamed says something about this literature, its creators, and the culture in which it was written.
Although shame's cultural origins are many and its effects pervasive, until recently neither the American culture nor its people were aware of this insidious condition because o f its neglect and hidden nature. Furthermore, the United States was viewed primarily as a guilt culture, so psychological criticism was far more likely to consider guilt in its character analyses than shame. Nevertheless, even though
Puritanical thought and morality lost considerable influence during the late 1800s and early 1900s, shame was employed nevertheless, albeit more subtly, to force one into compliance with moral and social standards. (This issue is discussed in Chapter Two in a section devoted to Foucault'sDiscipline and Punish.) In a very real sense, shame went underground. No longer used blatantly to punish those who violated the strict moral codes established by the Puritans, shame has had a long-lasting residual effect, a kind of
Today, there are shame theorists, includmg Kaufinan, who consider the American culture a shame- based one. For Kaufinan, shame is largely hidden because "it remams under strict taboo” ( Sham e 29). Then there are those who, like Roy Grmker, find it more difficult to categorize the American culture into one category or the other. Grinker, in his "Foreword" to Piers and Singer's groundbreaking text on the psychological and cultural origms and implications o f shame and guilt, contends that both shame and guilt "are instilled in varying proportions in individuals by the forces of their culture through pressures and sanctions ..." (7). (Here, Grinker is speaking generally and not addressing the U. S. specifically. However, Grinker contends that both shame and guilt are effective tools used in the American culture not only to control behavior, but also to effect desired change. He says, "our culture puts a premium on achieving through competition to be, or to have, the best, which is conducive to internal shame or an external sense of inferiority [which is a manifestation o f intemalized shame], and at the same time imposes moral, religious, and filial responsibilities which result in a sense o f guilt" [8].) Grmker also notes that our achievement- oriented culture leads to the deployment of certain defensive emotional reactions against the shame anxiety evoked by one's real or perceived failure to meet the cultural expectations, which, in contemporary America, have become manifold, rigorous (if not neiurotic), and pervasive, covering almost every area of personal and social performance.
37 fe e lin g that continues to have a significant negative impact on the psyche while going largely undetected.
As a result, shame can no longer be avoided in the analysis of modem American literature. Even though it is largely hidden, making detection more difGcult, shame has an undeniable and significant presence in this body of literature because, first, shame had become culturally endemic (see the section on Foucault in the next chapter) and, second, the authors intuitively understood it as a profoundly important factor inhum an behavior and experience. Faulkner, for example, understood especially well shame's familial and cultural roots. Because of his insights, he, like the other writers whose works are analyzed in this dissertation, could create characters who exemplify those who are hobbled by a powerful affect hidden fix>m individual and collective consciousnesses.
More specifically, the authors demonstrate what can happen to one when the whole self feels exposed, humiliated, impotent, and hopeless, and they chronicle the fictional lives of those shattered by shame, including those who fail to reach some goal or ideal.
Wurmser, whose The Mask o f Shame includes a number of important literary examples of shame-based characters, recognizes the significant contribution that authors through the ages have made to our understanding of shame: "It was consonant with my own experience to find shame concepts central in much literature—first in all the works of Dostoyevski, then in nearly all the Greek tragedies, and much later in many o f
Shakespeare's plays" (3). Wurmser was puzzled that, while literature contained many examples of shame and writers addressed shame directly, there was little to be found on
38 shame in the psychoanalytic literature:^®
It appeared to me that this important issue was dealt with in a manner we know well from literature—that is, by decomposition. It was splintered as if viewed through a prism. The broad spectrum o f shame feelings was divided into fragments that were considered separately: narcissistic injury, embarrassment, dread of sexual issues, "social anxiety," sense of inferiority. Though not always synonymous with the shame experience, all these at least touched on it or formed some segment of this spectrum. (3)
Aided by his own clinical experiences and his study of literature, Wurmser achieved a
clear understanding of shame and its influence over human emotions and behavior.
Nevertheless, he worried that perhaps he was overvaluing the entire concept: "I therefore
put my work aside for many years. However, in the face of continued clinical experience
I became more convinced that there is another danger in psychoanalysis besides
overvaluation: The danger of neglecting whatever does not fit neatly into the traditional
system" (3). As this study bears out, shame has not been overvalued; instead, its
importance to an accurate understanding o f human emotional behavior and, by extension,
to character analysis, caimot be overestimated.
Lynd, like Wurmser, notes the obvious presence of shame in pre-twentieth century Uterature: "[t]he word shame—or talk o f being ashamed o f ourselves— does not occur as frequently in conversation today as it did, for example, in the conversations of
Tolstoy's characters" (19). Sometime during the eighteenth century, as the United States participated in the Industrial Revolution, the culture altered significantly its attitude about shame. Once discussed openly and "owned" by people, shame is buried deep in the unconscious mind and kept out of conversation. Lynd wonders if we are kept from
Wuimser's literary exan^Ies are ones m which shame is addressed more directly. Another inq>ortant reason to explore shame in modem American literature is to attenq>t to determine why shame all but disappeared on the surface to become a hidden, destructive force quite unlike the kind that appears in the work of Hawthorne. While Wurmser believes that the "affect of shame replaces the fear of external
39 confronting shame by what she calls "realistic" emphases: "[the] attempt to accept the
limitations o f ourselves and o f reality, and to live up to the standards derived from
therapy and from theories of social adjustment" (19). Lynd finds this explanation
unconvincing, however, because in her own clinical observations she has not witnessed a
diminution of shame afreet: "it is doubtful whether the sense of shame has disappeared
from actual experience to the extent that it has disappeared from our speech and from the
forefront of our consciousness.^^ It may be that the experience is no less common than at
some other periods but that it is more elusive and that we are more loath to recognize it"
(19).
VI. Hidden Shame and Its Identification
In the works addressed below, shame is almost never mentioned. There are a few,
isolated instances where the word "shame" appears in the narration; there also are rare
instances when a character acknowledges that he or she is ashamed o f a particular behavior. However, not one of the characters analyzed in the following chapters demonstrates an awareness of either the extent to which he or she has been shamed or the effects this shame has on him or her. Thus, the shame remains not only hidden from the character, but deeply internalized, where it has a silent and corrosive influence over the self. punishment by humiliation, scorn, and contempt" (69), he, unlike Foucault, does not address directly how this shift &om external coercion to internal pressure occurred. (One immediate problem with Wunnser’s assertion is that the origins of internalized shame are often unrelated to the behavior of the one shamed. This concept has only recently been understood.) Another defense against one's inner shame is shamelessness, that state wherein one continues to behave shamefully, but, rather than acknowledge the inappropriate behavior as deserving o f shame, one acts as if the behavior is both acceptable and normal.
40 Goldberg recognizes that shame oftenremains unidentified. He writes; "What
makes shame such an unfathomable experience is that people subject to shame are often
unable to identify the precise cause of their uneasy feelings. Consequently, when
experiencing shame they have a great deal of difficulty finding language to communicate
their painful experience" (7). Like others, Goldberg recognizes shame’s debilitating
potential, noting that the shame-based individual, already vulnerable and insecure,
seeks to conceal as much of his inner self as possible to avoid further injury. Often, this
internal compulsion to hide oneself firom others has a negative effect on interpersonal
relationships, hi addition, one's shame must be hidden ftom oneself. Goldberg
summarizes this process as follows: "[Djuring debilitating shame the victim experiences
a loss of connection with what is familiar and safe. He senses that his true self has now
been exposed forever. He feels a desire to hide and to get out of the interpersonal
situation or existential situation in which he finds himself' (8). Goldberg's comments
help to explain the unidentified nature of shame in the characters analyzed below. Lewis, too, recognizes how difficult it is to acknowledge shame and to comprehend its efiects on one:
Even more than guilt shame is difficult to acknowledge or even to be aware of with its full cognitive content when it is happening. Even direct measures of cognitive self-regard thus would not speak about the afiects o f pride or shame directly.... the affects o f pride and shame are particularly difficult to observe, and most particularly difficult is the affect of shame. {Shame and Guilt 105)
When one is shame-based, one may have little idea that anything is wrong within. Shame is a silent psychopathological disturbance, one that is often kept hidden fix>m the affected individual and the therapist who would like to succor him.
41 Because shame is often "masked"—that is, shame is usually presented not as shame but as another affect, such as anger or depression—it must be "unmasked." One way to unmask hidden inner shame is to unearth the origins of an individual's or a family's shame. However, in the absence o f childhood history, it is necessary to identify the shame through an analysis o f its symptoms. As we will see, this is not as difScult as it might seem: shame manifests itself in very definite, identifiable behaviors, and the authors considered in this study collectively provide a host of characters who exhibit behavior symptomatic of shame.
In a chapter on the origins and perpetuation of shame. Possum and Mason address this issue of hidden shame and its identification:
Shame presents itself in a wide range of affective states; facing shame means facing [difficult] feelings. But often genuine feelings are not available—due to defenses or repression or denial. When we meet shame, we recognize that we often are meeting the masking of affect, and realize that we need to get behind the mask to find the person. (37)
Possum and Mason go on to note that this unmasking process begins with an investigation into one's shame origins. However, as the following analyses demonstrate, when the etiology of one's shame cannot be determined, one must turn one's attention to behavior instead of background.
Vn. The Symptoms of Shame
For the characters addressed below, behavior is the more common pathway to the identification of hidden shame. This is not to say that knowing shame's origins is unimportant. Having a somewhat complete history of a character's background, especially his or her childhood, can be quite valuable to shame identification. In the
42 absence of such background information, however, shame can be identified through its
symptoms, which are discussed in this section.
The Defense System
A study o f the defenses employed by characters is one way to uncover their hidden shame. According to Morrison, "defense may be considered a metaphor for personal attempts to control, achieve distance fiom, and deal with painful experiences of shame and humiliation" (121). For Wurmser, one reason why shame has largely been neglected by psychoanalysts has to do with a lack of attention given to defenses.
Wurmser asserts that shame's neglect
lies in the incessant pull away from the centrality o f conflict and, with that, away from the moment-to-moment study of defenses. Since the superego itself is actually just one large defense structure, this relative disregard affects careful superego analysis and hence, along with much else, the study of shame as resistance. (19)
Wurmser also notes that shame has a set o f cognate feelings, including embarrassment, humiliation, shyness, and modesty, that "may themselves be used as defenses, but far more typically they serve as motive forces for defense, initiating repression, denial, projection, and so forth" (16). To Wurmser's list of cognate or related foelings Morrison adds mortification, despair, remorse, and apathy (13). Thus, when one encounters these so-called "presenting" defensive behaviors, unidentified shame may be likely behind them. (This is not to say that every expression of a cognate feeling is shame-based.
Some cognate feelings—apathy, for example—can be evoked in the absence of shame.
However, in the context of the analyses made in this dissertation, a character’s shame is always identified by more than one origin and/or symptom.)
43 Lewis notes that embarrassment, humiliation, chagrin and other shame variants are likely to be evoked by some kind of disappointment. She suggests that these variants can be classified into three main kinds; "The first involves the self in a loss of dignity or status. The second involves the self in failure of functioning, as when the self is disconcerted or embarrassed. The third common property involves a characteristic event in the field, namely, disappointment or frustration" {Shame and Guilt 68).
Furthermore, to these shame variants can be added secondary reactions to shame, including anger, anxiety, or hurt. While the outward effects of shame are often concealed, these secondary reactions may be manifested instead {Shame 10-11).
Goldberg notes these secondary reactions are often defensive in nature:
[S]econdary reactions refer to both secondary defenses and catastrophic reactions. Clinical work evinces that shameful feelings are oftentimes followed by anger, rage, resentment, jealousy, or shamelessness. Because the prolonged feeling of shame is unbearable—perhaps, one of the most painful human emotions—it leaves the victim feeling exposed and utterly helpless. Defenses against shame are fostered to help the victim recover from shame. However, the very defenses mobilized to protect the self often have nasty side effects. (68-69)
Shame Anxiety and Concealment
Defenses also can be triggered by shame anxiety, which signals the potential for impending shame. A few o f the more frequently evoked defenses are hiding and withdrawal to protect against the possibility of rejection and abandonment. Morrison, who explores shame's relationship to narcissism, notes that "[njarcissistic vulnerability is the 'underside' of exhibitionism, grandiosity, and haughtiness—the low self-esteem, self-doubt, and firagility o f self-cohesion that defines the narcissistic condition."
44 Morrison believes that shame is the primary affect that leads to narcissistic behavior, and
shame anxiety is "the readiness and sensitivity to experience shame” (14-15)/^
In tracing the word shame back to its Germanic root, Wurmser notes that the act of concealment is an essential part of its original meaning:
The word sham e is derived fiom a Germanic rootskam /skem (Old High German scama, Anglo-Saxonscamu), with the meaning "sense of shame, being shamed, disgrace (Schande)" It is traced back to the Indo-European rootkam/kemi "to cover, to veil, to hide." The prefix "s"(skam) adds the reflexive meaning—"to cover oneself." The notion ofhiding is intrinsic to and inseparable fiom the concept of shame— [T]his wish to hide forms part o f the dynamic constellation of the affect o f shame (29).
Shame anxiety thus drives one into isolation in an attempt to limit one's exposure to additional shame. As a felt experience, shame can be excruciatingly painful. According to Wurmser, shame anxiety leads
to a very specific pattern of behavior, directed at isolating the person fiom the danger situation.... Shame's aim is disappearance. This may be, most simply, in the form of hiding; most radically, in the form of dissolution (suicide); most mythically, in the fiarm of a change into another shape, an animal or a stone; most archaically in the fisrm of fieezing into complete paralysis and stupor; most fiequently, in the form of forgetting parts of one's life and one's self; and at its most differentiated, in the form of changing one's character. (84)
The shame-based person feels exquisitely exposed; therefore, concealment, in its various forms, becomes necessary, a defense of survival. Oftentimes, one wears a mask. The inner self, afiraid of its own shame, hides fiom itself. Some, however, cease to function altogether, while others choose to die. The anxiety of shame is an overpowering affect.
Morrison addresses this problem of shame identification in light of the effî)rts put forth to conceal this affect:
Thus, grandiosity and exhibitionism are responses to shame affect. Between the primary affect and these resultant behaviors are often the secondary feelings of low self-esteem and inferiority. The narcissist almost always suffers &om an inferiority con^lex, which is usually the result o f mtemalized shame.
45 [S]hame induces hiding and concealment, thus making it more difhcult to ferret out in clinical work. Patients recoil fix>m facing their shame—and the failures, senses of defect, inferiority, and passivity that engender it. Patients often express, instead, defenses against, and displaced manifestations of, shame—certain depressions, mania, rage, envy, and contempt.... Frequently it is hidden behind the clearly defensive manifestations of distress, and these are usually investigated alone—often from the perspective of intrapsychic conflict and related dynamics— without appreciation of the underlying or accompanying shame. (5)
The same could be said of the characters addressed in this study. Until recently, analyses
of these characters have fr>cused not on shame but on its various manifestations,
including certain feeling states, such as rage or depression, or on environmental
circumstances, including marital status, social class, and financial situation, without as
much as a nod in shame's direction.
Shame and Denial
Lewis notes that, while hiding is a specific defense against shame, denial also
occurs, making identification of the affect difficult for the one experiencing it. "Denial
makes shame difGcult fr>r the person experiencing it to identify even though there is a
strong affective reaction. The person often does not know what has hit him"{Shame and
Guilt 38). Because individuals have great difficulty identifying their own shame
experiences there is likely some "intrinsic connection between shame and the mechanism
of denial." Additionally, "while shame is occurring the person himself is unable to
communicate. He often says only that he feels 'lousy', or 'tense', or 'blank'"{Shame and
Guilt 196).^^ Even though shame is accompanied by an affective response, one will deny
Although Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms is not included in this study, it is instructive to note that Frederick Henry tells Catherine that he "feels lousy" about her becoming pregnant Although he does not elaborate, he is ashamed of the fact that she is pregnant with his child out of wedlock. He also suffers from additional unidentified shame because he is considered a deserter by the Italian Army. However, Henry is unable to identify shame as the source of his dispiritedness.
46 the shame experience (i.e., the feeling of it) by engaging in one or more defensive behaviors. In this way shame is kept hidden from oneself indefinitely.
Lewis presents another kind of denial that operates to keep shame unidentified or hidden to the self. Lewis calls this denial pattern "by-passed" shame, describing it this way:
The person is aware of the cognitive content of shame-connected events, but experiences only a "wince," blow," or "jolt." In this pattern of bypassed shame, the person's experience proceeds smoodily, except for a peripheral, nonspecific disturbance in awareness, which serves mainly to note the shame potential in the circumstance. The ideation of by-passed shame involves doubt about the selfs image from the "other’s" viewpoint. There is frequently an accompaniment of overt hostility along with this ideation, and sometimes clear retaliatory feeling. (Shame and Guilt 197)
This concept is difficult to comprehend, and an example is periiaps the best way to clarify it. In The Night o fthe Iguana. Larry Shatmon has a sexual relationship with Charlotte
Goodall, who, at sixteen, is the youngest member o f his tour group and the surrogate daughter of the older women in the group, including its unofficial leader, Miss Fellowes.
When Miss Fellowes and the others learn of the liaison, they are incensed, and demand that Shannon quit the tour immediately. For his part, Shaimon by-passes his shame.
Although he is jolted by the women's collective reaction and aware of his inappropriate behavior (the "cognitive content of shame-connected events"), he denies his shame and refuses to assume responsibility for the part he plays in the tour’s problems. He attempts to shift blame onto Miss Fellowes, and he is quite concerned about the damage his own image has suffered. As a part of his defense against his by-passed shame, he becomes overtly hostile toward Miss Fellowes, whom he believes is the primary origin o f all his problems.
47 The Binding Effect o f Shame
fCaufinan contends that, ultimately, shame leads inevitably to alienation and
isolation because, feeling fundamentally deficient and even worthless, the shame-based
individual believes himself to be scrutinized by all. (This is one aspect o f inner shame
that makes Foucault's concept of continual surveillance so fiightening.) "In the midst of
shame, the attention turns inward, thereby generating the torment of self-consciousness.
Sudden, unexpected exposure coupled with binding inner scmtiny characterize the
essential nature of the affect of shame." Eye contact with others becomes intolerable.
Ofientimes, one will hang one's head and find it difficult to speak. And because
exposure binds the speech of a shame-based person, one cannot articulate one's shame
feelings to others. In a very real sense, shame cuts out the tongue. In addition, when one
feels exposed, one's attention turns inward. Suddenly one scrutinizes oneself, becoming the harshest of critics. Of this condition Kaufinan says, "[t]he excmciating observation of the self that results, this torment of self-consciousness, becomes so acute as to create a binding, almost paralyzing effect" {Psychology o fShame 18).
Shame-based Syndromes
A number of psychoanalysts, including Kaufinan, believe strongly that shame plays a vital role in the development o f pathological syndromes because of its centrality to the sense of identity and its potential to disturb the self and disrupt its fimctioning.
Kaufinan has observed six general classes of shame-based syndromes: (1) compulsive;
(2) schizoid, depressive, and paranoid; (3) phobic; (4) sexual dysfimction; (5) splitting syndromes; and (6) sociopathic and psychopathic syndromes. In this section, we will
48 look more closely at compulsive syndromes, which, collectively, are manifested frequently in the characters discussed herein.
Compulsive syndromes can be divided into three primary classes: physical abuse, sexual abuse, and addictive disorders. These syndromes are rooted in afTect dynamics.
Although individuals engage in compulsive behaviors in an attempt to reduce their shame, these disorders inevitably reproduce it. Thus, one becomes bound to the compulsion by shame, the very affect one tries to escape through the compulsive behavior. In this way one becomes bound to the behavior by his own inner shame, which is intensified (reproduced) in the process. This is what Bradshaw calls a shame bind; it is an emotional quicksand that sucks one deeper.
Real also acknowledges that the defenses one chooses to inhibit or mitigate shame afford temporary relief while breeding more shame. He notes that this pattern is called a
"shame cycle" by addiction experts. Furthermore:
The covertly depressed man's defensive maneuvers or addictions can be experienced by the man as shameful in themselves or else they can create difficulties in his life that intensify his sense of inferiority, leading in either case to an increased craving for the defenses.... Addictions do to shame what saltwater does to thirst. The defenses used in covert depression tend to grow, providing ever decreasing amounts of relief while requiring ever increasing amounts of indulgence. (79)
One way in which abuse is perpetuated in adults is through reenactment of governing scenes, original childhood scenes of the abusive, shame-based parent that forever remain with the individual. Such scenes of abuse
may lead to a compulsive reenactment of abuse, creating a shame-based family system. Abuse may be reenacted, however, in various forms and with varying targets: repetitive abuse may be directed toward self, toward spouse, or toward
49 one's own children. Invariably, there is also intense secondary shame about being an abusive parent or spouse, which further fuels the cycle. (jPsychology o f Shame 123)
Kaufinan notes that abused individuals may reenact their governing scenes by entering
into relationships that repeat the original pattern of abuse. We see this exemplified by those women who continue to establish relationships with men who subsequently abuse them. "Abused women seek out such a relationship because they feel compelled to reenact their original governing scene" (123-24).
Compulsive disorders also include addictive disorders, such as alcohol abuse and sex addiction. While individuals engage in compulsive behaviors in an attempt to reduce shame, they actually reproduce it. Hence, these disorders are shame-based. Kaufinan notes that practically all objects have the potential to become compulsively desired.
Examples include addiction not only to alcohol and other drugs, but also to gambling, work, exercise, relationships, and excitement. The addictive process has a distinctive pattern: repetition, resistance to change, compulsion.^®
It is important to note that addiction itself generates shame because the addicted individual feels humiliated both by the behavior and one's inability to renounce it.
Consciously one may believe that one has control over the addiction, but at an unconscious level one knows the reverse is true. The addict feels powerless over and defeated by the addiction. One is deeply ashamed, growing disgusted over one's inability
Unmet interpersonal needs (e.g., love, nurturance, acceptance) are sometimes filled with substances that act as substitutes. Sometimes diese substances become addictive. For example, "an alcoholic who has a relationship with his or her bottle origmally may have learned to substitute something else for a human relationship. Dependence on a sedative for mtense negative affect was that substitute. Critical failures in the human environment caused those vital needs to become bound by shame, resulting in overwhelming negative affect" (Kaufinan, Psychology o fShame 126).
50 to change the situation. Eventually, the addict experiences self-loathing and deep despair, feelings that generate even more shame (Psychology o f Shame 126). Addicts become stuck in an ever-intensifying shame cycle that becomes increasingly difficult to confront. This is one reason why withdrawal and isolation are often observed in the later stages of addiction.
There is in affect theory something called affect promiscuity, which is, essentially, an addiction to a particular affect, such as excitement, danger, or even anger.
For example, an individual who becomes addicted to a high level of excitement must engage in activities that result in ever greater thrills. When faced with a lull in the action, such thrill seekers are compelled to seek out new situations that will provide excitement, including searching for new sexual partners. When affect promiscuity becomes a part of one’s sexual experience, one is compelled into sexual promiscuity as a way of trying to satiate one's lust for excitement. Thus, one's quest for excitement dominates one's being.
Tomkins expresses the compulsion in these terms:
By affect promiscuity we mean such an intensification of any affect that objects for affect investment are sought indiscriminately. If I must cry, then I will seek out tragic objects. If I must experience terror, I will court danger. If I must express anger, I will pick fights. If I must feel ashamed, I will expose myself to certain defeat. If I must feel self-contempt, I will seek humiliators, provoke contempt or do what is disgusting. Sexual promiscuity is but one vehicle of affect promiscuity. (Psychology o f Shame 131)
Thus, affect dynamics, which places shame at the center of most addictive disorders, account for the development o f both sexual and alcohol addictions, which become attempts to minimize shame.
51 Shame and Depression
Depression and shame are closely linked. Depression is often created when an individual sees himself as inferior or defective or feels that all his efforts are in vain.
Such an outlook leads one to conclude that he is a failure and his situation is hopeless. In such a state, one's self-worth is imperiled, and shame is produced. "While low self-esteem represents a broader set of affective and cognitive experiences than does shame, shame is prominent amongst those feelings of low self-esteem. It is probably appropriate, therefore, to consider that low self-esteem (as well as the helplessness) so central to Bibring's view of depression may be built upon a bedrock o f shame."
According to Morrison many, if not most instances of depression reflect helplessness and
"shattered" self-esteem (113).
It should be noted here that depression also may result ftom a feeling of helplessness in early childhood. Such helplessness often results when a child suffers parental loss related to abuse, neglect, or abandonment (including death). Often accompanying helplessness and depression is a sense of lowered self-esteem and, with that, the advent of inner shame and its variant affects. A number of characters addressed in this study have experienced parental loss o f one kind or another and, therefore, low self-esteem, helplessness, depression and shame.
Other Manifestations o f Shame
To this point, this chapter has addressed three primary areas o f shame symptomology: the defense system, shame anxiety, and shame-based syndromes, particularly compulsive disorders. Now we turn our attention to other manifestations
52 of shame, including rage, contempt, and the concepts of "realistic" shame and the false
self.
Realistic Sham e
Realistic shame, also known as external shame, serves as yet another pointer to unidentified inner shame. Realistic shame is consciously created to shield oneself firom the more powerful internalized shame, with its persistent internal critic, which harshly judges every decision, action, and word, and near-constant anxiety. Thus, the shame-based individual may actively create a situation in his outer (realistic or external) life that provokes shame, humiliation, or another shame variant and, thus, diverts his attention away firom the more devastating and deeper feelings associated with the internalized shame affect (Wurmser 46-47). Therefore, what we might be likely to label self-defeating behavior may actually be attempts to create realistic shame, a defensive response to internalized shame. Wurmser also notes a variation of reahstic shame, suggesting that some individuals "turn shame firom a passive experience of humiliation into the active fijrm of humiliating others and try to make everyone appear ridiculous"
(47).
Shame and Rage
Rage is another indicator of internalized shame. Morrison contends that
"underlying many expressions of rage is a feeling of shame—a feeling that reflects a sense of failure or inadequacy so intolerable that it leads to a flailing out, an attempt to rid the self of the despised subjective experience" (13-14). Sometimes a shame-based individual will respond to an offense, including an unintentional one, in a rageful manner
53 because he feels exposed and vulnerable to additional shame (Kaufinan 5). It is
worthwhile emphasizing that rage is often a shame-based response to either failure or
feelings of inferiority and, thus, not only a response to the injury or abuse delivered by
another.
Shame and Contempt
Shame-based individuals use contempt as a way of transferring, or "relocating," their shame to another. Contempt, like rage, can be employed as an attempt to rid the self of painful shame feelings. Wurmser suggests that "contempt [is] the form of aggression intrinsic to shame affects," while Morrison notes that self-esteem is restored when one converts one's shame into contempt for another through the processoiprojective identification. According to Morrison:
In essence, subjective shame, over failure, inferiority, or defect, is disavowed or repressed and is "placed" into another, who must "accept" and "contain" the projection. [PI doesn't require a participatory other. It often occurs without the other's knowledge.] Therefore, the object of contempt must bear a certain similarity to the subject, at least with respect to the source of the projected shame, and must be willing to interact with the subject on the basis of the implicit contempt. From this perspective, then, contempt can be seen as an interactive extemalization of the shame experience, and thus, ultimately as a defense against it. (14)
Shame and the False Self
Lewis says that shame is about the whole self To explain this assertion, she notes that when one is not immersed in one's shame, one is able to process specific feelings, such as regret over a failure. However, when one is in a state of shame, shame involves the whole self, making it difficult to find a solution "short of sweeping replacement of the self by another, better one" {Shame and Guilt 40). Bradshaw contends that, because toxic
54 shame is so unbearable—one feels terminally defective and deficient—one may wish to create a false self:
Toxic shame is unbearable and always necessitates a cover-up, a false self. Since one feels his true self is defective and flawed, one needs a false self which is not defective and flawed. Once one becomes a false self, one ceases to exist psychologically. To be a false self is to cease being an authentic human being. The process of false self-formation is what Alice Miller calls "soul murder." As a false self, one tries to be more than human or less than human, (viii)
Examples of this include Blanche DuBois and Amanda Wingfield, who create false selves that tend to be larger than life. Each has constructed for herself a grandiose history, more myth than material fact, that becomes an idealized illusion. Because each feels the shame evoked by personal failure and defect, each tries to cover up this flawed self with a more acceptable, false one. Virtually all shame-based characters do this to some degree because each is disgusted with some aspect of his or her self. That is why narcissistic responses are so prevalent among those individuals carrying unidentified shame: the need to create a new and better self is compelling.
These are some of the more important symptoms that can be identified in shame-based characters. In Chapters Three through Six, additional shame symptoms, as well as yet undisclosed shame origins will be identified through more in-depth analyses of particular characters. From this overview, it should be apparent that shame is a primary affect o f the first magnitude, one that has the power to influence behavior, alter lives, even affect families for generations. In a very real sense, modem American literature is about shame, for the culture's denial of it has only made it more potent and, hence, destructive, hi the next chapter, we consider certain shame dynamics, including the psychodynamic process of internalization. Once internalized, shame is kept hidden
55 from the self and others fi)r a number of reasons, all o f which are powerful, effective, and largely defensive.
56 CHAPTER2
TOMPKINS, FOUCAULT, AND CONTEMPORARY THEORISTS:
SHAME DYNAMICS AND THE PROCESS OF INTERNALIZATION
[S]hame refers to humiliation so painful, embarrassment so deep, and a sense of being so completely dimmisbed that one feels be or she will disappear into a pile of asbes. Shame involves the entire self and self-worth o f a human being.
Merle Fossum and Marilyn Mason, Facing Shame
In the last chapter, the discussion focused on what shame is and how it is distinguished from guilt, why it has been neglected, why it is an important topic of study for students of modem American literature, why it is very often hidden from the self and others, and how to identify it through its symptomatic responses, hi this chapter, the discussion is centered more on shame theory; shame dynamics (including those related to interpersonal relationships); the affective states of shame; and the internalization of shame, including Foucault's ideas on the internal application of shame as a means of control.
I. The Phenomenology o f Shame
Kaufinan calls shame a primary affect, which is to accord it great importance in the realm of human psychology. When describing shame's influence over one's
57 development, he is disturbingly direct;
Shame is the affect of inferiority. No other affect is more central to the development of identity. None is closer to the experienced self, nor more disturbing. Shame is felt as an inner torment. It is the most poignant experience of the self by the self, whether felt in the humiliation o f cowardice, or in the sense of failure to cope successfully with a challenge. Shame is a wound made firom the inside, dividing us both firom ourselves and others. {Psychology o fShame 17)
Silvan Tomkins, whose affect theory profoundly influenced Kaufinan’s own conclusions about shame, likewise minces no words when describing shame’s deleterious impact on the human psyche: "[SJhame is the affect of indignity, of defeat, of transgression and of alienation.... shame is felt as an inner torment, a sickness of the soul.
It does not matter whether the humiliated one has been shamed by derisive laughter or whether he mocks himself. In either event he feels himself naked, defeated, alienated, lacking in dignity or worth" {Psychology o fShame 17).
Kaufinan notes that the shame-based individual feels exposed, as if he were transparent, and his very thought, feeling, and prior experience were known to everyone.
Related to this poignant vulnerability is the fact that shame can be an entirely internal experience as it needs no external trigger once it becomes internalized. Kaufinan explains the phenomenon this way:
Phenomenologically, to feel shame is to feelseen in a painfully diminished sense. Shame reveals the inner self, exposing it to view. The self feels exposed both to itself and to anyone else present. That exposure can be of the selfto the self alone, or it can be of the self to others. Central to an understanding of the alienating affect is that shame can be an entirely internal experience. No one else need be present in order for shame to be felt, but when others are present shame is an impediment to further communication. {Psychology o fShame 17)
Lewis notices some of the same phenomenological aspects of shame: "Shame makes us want to hide. We avert our gaze or hang our heads. Experimental psychologists
58 studying emotions have evidence suggesting that gaze aversion connotes shame"{Role o f
Shame 1). Shame increases our vulnerability^ to additional shame, so we hide, or we run,
or we conceal our inner self behind defenses marshaled to limit our exposure. Thus, the
shame-based person is fettered by his shame anxiety, ahaid to reveal his innermost self to
himself and to others for fear that the self again will be found deficient or defective.
Wurmser extends shame's phenomenology to the realm of inner conflict and the
"immense complexities of such conflict." By focusing on internal conflict, Wurmser is
better able to account for the "broad spectrum of shame foelings." For him "only a
conflict psychology, one based in the study o f clashing forces or contradictory parts of
the personality, can do justice to the great firequency and variety of shame affects and
shame conflicts" (15).
Adler contributed to shame's phenomenology more or less indirectly. Adler's
work on inferiority feelings and the inferiority complex "reflects an increased awareness
of the importance of shame-related phenomena. His concept of inferiority represents one
of the first attempts to accord shame a central role in the development of personality"
(Kaufinan, Psychology o f Shame 8). Adler understood the effects o f shame better than
Freud did; however, lacking a knowledge o f affect theory and an accurate language with which to interpret his observations and findings, Adler could not comprehend fully shame's power to produce psychopathological disturbances.
Feelings of inferiority are central to shame phenomena because the shame-based individual believes himself to be an inferior being, defective, incompetent, impotent and worthless. In the 1930s, Franz Alexander reinterpreted the concept of inferiority within psychoanalytic theory. For him:
59 p]nferiority is "a self-accusatioa based on a comparison, on the simple fact that one feels weaker than another person." Although his purpose is to distinguish between inferiority and guilt, Alexander concludes by suggesting that these feelings represent two different types of shame, each with its own remedy, aggressive/competitive behavior and atonement.^ (Psychology o f Shame 8)
Karen Homey contributes to anunderstanding of shame's phenomenology by
discussing shame in the context of her concepts of "neurotic pride" and "the pride
system." In fact, she relates shame directly to pride: "The two typical reactions to hurt
pride are shame and humiliation. We will feel ashamed if we do, think, or feel something
that violates our pride. And we will feel humiliated if others do something that hurts our
pride, or fail to do what our pride requires of them"(Psychology o f Shame 8-9).
Kaufinan notes that Homey's "concept of pride is not a positive one; pride is the enemy
of love, inseparably linked with self-hate and self-contempt." And, as Adler explains, when one is humiliated by another, one may react in an aggressive manner, either directing his hostility toward the offending other or, if that is too threatening, an innocent other.^ Lewis addresses this specific behavior, saying "[sjhame evokes a 'turning of the
' Although Alexander believed this kind of behavior to be remedial, in reality it is more likely to produce additional shame and to bury the original shame ever deeper into the unconscious, making it even more unlikely that one's shame will be acknowledged.
~ A real-life example of this concept of hiuniliation, a shame variant, and aggressive retaliatory response is Luke Woodham, a sixteen-year-old firom Pearl, Missmsippi, who, in October of 1997, killed his mother before going to his high school and killing two female classmates. In his videotaped confession of his mother’s murder, he tearfully told investigators that his mother never loved him and that she repeatedly told him that he was "fat, stupid and lazy" and would "never amoimt to anything." W oodham also suffered the unidentified shame o f a ruptured interpersonal relationship with a significant other (see section below). Lewis addresses the experience of severed mterpersonal relationships this way; "[Sjhame involves a failure of the central attachment bond. This failure evokes rage, as does the painful experience of an attachment that has been lost because one is unable to live up to the standards of an admired imago [image, often established by a significant other]" (Role o f Shame 19). (Shame also played a role in other shocking, highly publicized school shootings, includhig the one that took place on April 20,1999 at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. The shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who killed 12 students and a teacher before taking their own lives, were ostracized and taimted by members o f the school's popular cliques. While reprehensible, Harris and Klebold's aggressive actions were undoubtedly the result of humiliation sustained over a period of time. To be humiliated before one's peers is to experience a strong negative affective response.)
60 tables'- Evoked hostility' presses toward triumph over or humiliatioii of the other, that is,
to the vicarious experience of the other's shame. But the other is also beloved or
admired, so that guilt is evoked for aggressive wishes" {Role o f Shame 19). Thus, some
characters are prevented by their guilt 6om directing their hostility at the offending other.
n. Affect Theory
In his work on shame dynamics, Kaufinan examines shame firom the perspective of affect theory as developed by Silvan Tomkins.^ Kaufinan is convinced that "[h]uman development is rooted in affect dynamics because affect is the primary iimate biological motivating mechanism We must attend first to affect and its vicissitudes, and doing so is a very different way of organizing perceived psychological phenomena"{Psychology o f Shame viii). Kaufinan strongly believes that affect theory should be positioned closer to the center of psychopathology:
Disorders o f self-esteem and disorders of mood have resisted effective therapeutic intervention as well as precise theoretical conceptualization, because we have largely failed to grasp the primary role of affect and its primacy over other subsystems within the self. Compulsive, addictive, borderline, and narcissistic syndromes, which continue to elude effective intervention, are rooted inaffect dynamics in general and shame dynamics in particular. {Psychology o f Shame 113-14)
It should be noted that there are a few affective states related to shame, including embarrassment (Bradshaw revises the spelling to "em-bare-ass-ment" to convey shame's related feeling of poignant exposure and vulnerability), shyness, humiliation, inferiority feelings and low self-esteem, a sense of degradation, and narcissistic responses. Wurmser defines these as follows: "shyness, bashfulness, and modesty are character traits that express an attitude o f shame. Embarrassment is a mild form of shame proper. And the sense ofhumiliation is just a strong form o f such shame; humiliation itself is a shame- inducing situation. Disgrace, dishonor, degradation, and debasement are terms closely related to, if not largely synonymous with, humiliation; even the situations themselves that evoke such feelings are often called 'shame' (e.g., 'ifs a crying shame,' 'for shamel')" (51).
61 Kaufinan. calls for a reexamination of psychopathology in the light o f affect theory.
Psychopathological syndromes need to be reconsidered fix>m the perspective of shame
because "[sjhame ... plays a vital role [in the development of these syndromes], because
no other affect is more central to the sense of identity and none is more disturbing to the
self' (Psychology o fShame 115}. Kaufinan believes that the theories of the primary schools of psychological thought, including psychoanalytic, object-relational, interpersonal, family systems, and cognitive behavioral, have largely missed this idea of the primacy o f affect, which he contends is primary over all other sub-systems within the self. "Affect theory partitions the domain of inner experience in a decidedly new manner.
From the perspective of affect theory, shame is an innate affect Shame amplifies our experience, giving texture and meaning to the experienced self' (Psychology o f Shame
57).
Any argument asserting the primacy of affect theory must confiront the significant influence of Freud and his theories based on instinctual drives. Kaufinan recognizes this challenge, noting the conceptual difference between a self motivated by sexuality and aggression and a self motivated by affect and scene:
Freud's original concept o f libido subsumed both affect and drive without distinguishing either. Libido subsequently gave way to the drive concept, but affect remained obscured. Personality and psychology still were conceived as determined by the innate patterning of "instinctual drives"—sexuality and aggression. Later came an inquiry into the impact of relationship experiences, predominantly within the family. Working an ocean apart, Harry S. Sullivan and W.R.D. Fairbaim reversed the primacy of the drives. Each argued that the pursuit of satisfying, secure relationships mattered more than the gratification of drives all psychodynamic theories remain caught in a fundamental dualism: drive versus relationship. (Psychology o fShame 60-61)
62 Kaufinan credits Tomkins with the partitioning o f affect theory and drive theory.
Contending that neither relationships nor drives are primary, Tomkins strives to prove
that affect is the "primary innate biological motivating mechanism." To Tomkins, the
affect system and drive system are distinct but interrelated motivators that "empower and
direct both behavior and personality, but the drives must borrow their power firom affect"
{Psychology o f Shame 61).
Like Kaufinan, Goldberg is convinced that affect theory has a significant role in
personality development and disorders. He notes that empirical evidence now exists
which supports Tomkins' contention that infants have the capacity to organize their own
experiences. Goldberg accepts Tomkins' thesis that "affects, rather than instinctual drives present at birth, are the primary organizing forces in human personality" (28).
m . Shame and Interpersonal Relationships
Beginning with infancy, human beings have a basic need for relationships with others. An infant's primary emotional need is its relationship with a significant other, usually its mother or some other primary caregiver. In a relationship, it is critically important that we feel that the significant person to whom we are attached wants the relationship as much as we do. Few would argue Kaufinan's assertion that "[forming and maintaining a mutually satisfying relationship with a significant other is a fundamental interpersonal need central to human maturation" {Psychology o fShame 66).
A child needs to know that he or she is wanted and loved; otherwise, the child will not know with any certainty that he or she is special. Kaufinan emphasizes the importance of
63 mutuality, especially between parent and child: "The condition of mutuality—mutual
interest and enjoyment—conveys to each that the relationship is genuine and valued.
More importantly, the child experiences that the relationship is actually wanted by the
parent" (67). It should be noted that, in many worics of modem American literature,
including every one addressed in this study, interpersonal relationships between child and
adult lack such mutuality. Mutually satisfying relationships are virtually nonexistent in
much of the literature of American modernism, suggesting the pervasive influence of
shame.
Through this mutuality o f response in a healthy relationship trust is built. At the
same time, a deepening emotional bond is formed that encourages openness and
vulnerability. Kaufinan calls this bond an "interpersonal bridge," "a vehicle to facilitate mutual understanding, growth, and change" {Shame 12-14). When the interpersonal bridge is broken—through parental abuse, neglect, or actual abandonment—these vital processes are disrupted and the child becomes convinced that he or she is not only unwanted, but defective and worthless (worth less than others). Shame is generated because the child assumes responsibility for the failure of the relationship, even when the parent's behavior is clearly wrong (e.g., sexual or physical abuse or abandonment). The child is convinced that something must be wrong with him or her, otherwise the parent would love and care for the child. Kaufinan concludes:
When these fundamental conditions [of a genuine and mutual relationship between parent and child] are missing and dysfunctional relationship patterns predominate, the child becomes entangled in a web of profound uncertainty. The conditions essential for basic securify are absent, leaving the child feeling unwanted. If the pattern o f rejection persists, the child will eventually feel lacking in some essential way, deficient. This is shame. {Psychology o fShame 68).
64 Note the word "missing" here. Abandonment elicits the same response in a child as abuse. There is no trust or mutuality.
Once hidden shame is engendered, the individual is susceptible to a host of shame symptoms. Goldberg understands the importance of this relationship dynamic:
Without this emotional nurturance ... [children] experience the world as persecutory and regard parts of themselves as unacceptable. In short, people who are subjected in childhood to an unresponsive or distorted mirroring relationship with significant people in their life will be handic^ped to a greater or lesser degree in the capacity to experience their inner being fireely, creatively, and courageously. (33)
Furthermore, when a parent is disappointed in the child because of its gender, physical appearance, mental capacity, and so on, "[rjesentment toward the child will inevitably find expression, however secret, leaving the child feeling responsible for not belonging"
{Psychology o f Shame 67).
Thus, if a child is to enter the world with a feeling of confidence and goodwill, he must develop a sense of "basic trust" that exceeds feelings of anxiety and mistrust.
Goldberg notes that "[wjhen this basic trust is present the child is willing to make bridges of mutuality with others. When mistrust has been a prominent theme in the child's life, the child will not surrender the primary defenses of shame as vigilance to the need for the safe and famihar" (37-38).'*
When a child fails to experience a relationship with his mother or father that is based on unconditional love, care, and acceptance, shame is ofien produced. Regardless
" It might be useful to reflect for a moment on a character who seems unusually vigilant, for vigilanceis a sure sign of shame. Oftentimes, a sense of unease acconçanies the vigilant state. Joe Christmas{Light in August), for exan^le, is such a character. He is always on guard. He is suspicious, private, and easily offended. He may be the most shame-based character in modem American literature in part because he has never experienced the kind of interpersonal relationship with a significant adult that builds trust and allows for mutuality o f response. Thus, Joe lives in a state of distrust and constant vigilance.
65 of the parents' words, the child intuits the depth of feeling each parent has for the child.
When a child is not convinced by the parents' actions that he is wanted, then, of course, he feels not only unwanted, but unloved as well.^ It is this sense of rejection that ultimately leads to shame and its manifold symptoms (Shame 46). Any significant disruption to an important relationship, especially during childhood, is likely shame producing.
It goes without saying that parental abuse and neglect are significant disruptions to a relationship. Abuse often leads to a state o f contaminated identity because generated inner shame can be thought of as an "inner sense o f badness." This inner sense of badness develops after a period of imprinting, when the child, who must endure a protracted period of dependency, is subjected to the abuses of a dysfunctional parent. In such situations:
Safety fluctuates, often capriciously, with danger. Love alternates with contempt. The child remains in an excruciatingly confusing and precarious position. In such instances, both as a result of the boundary failure and as an unconscious coping strategy, the child will take the feelings fiiat the parent is not handling responsibly into his being. Along with whatever other feeling-states may be involved—anger, pain, lust, fear—it is inevitable that one o f the feeling-states transmitted to children in such traumatic moments will be the feeling of shame. (Real 205-6)
Thus, boundary failures often lead to a sense of badness and defect. Quite realistically.
^ Morrison notes that he is not alone in recognizing shame's relationshq) to unlovability. Thrane, Wurmser, and Chassuguet-Smirgel all contend that shame is "a reflection of a sense o f unlovableness." Chassuguet-Smirgel asserts that "loss o f the objects [a significant other, usually a parent or guardian] love is a primary source o f narcissistic injury, experienced as shame" (60). In noting the connection between shame and unlovability, Wurmser calls unlovability "the triad of weakness, defectiveness, and dirtiness" (98). To feel unlovable is to feel unwanted and unworthy. A pervasive sense of failure and defectiveness is part of shame's lasting reflection.
66 one is doomed from the begmning. "By developing a contaminated, stigmatized identity, the child victim takes the evil of the abuser into herself..." (Real 206).®
Other Relational Origins o f Shame
Intimacy is another relational area having shame-producing potential. "Sexual functioning is disrupted by the slightest onset of shame, along with other negative affects, and sexual identity itself becomes both molded and distorted by shame." Another aspect of intimacy vulnerable to shame in American culture, especially among men, has to do with crying and touching. "Expressions of affection, tenderness and touching/holding eventually become taboo among males in American culture.... The way to create a so-called 'macho' personality is through shaming any individual for crying and touching/holding, while simultaneously rewarding expressions of anger, contempt, and competitiveness" {Psychology o fShame 44-45).
Nowhere in the works of modem American literature considered in this study is healthy intimacy modeled. (However, the potential of a normal, emotionally intimate— and therefore "therapeutic" in terms of recovering from shame's destmctive affects— relationship exists in Williams's The Night o f the Iguana, discussed in Chapter Five.)
Instead, relationships can be defined in degrees of dysfimctionality rather than normalcy.
^ It should be understood that the parent who abuses and thus traumatizes a child is m a state of shamelessness. "If the injurer felt appropriate shame, he would contain his harmful behavior. The shame a parent does not consciously feel will be absorbed, along with other unconscious feelings, by the child" (Real 206). Yet there is an irony here, for the one shamed can, conversely, behave in a shameless way; "The paradox is that at the same time the child intemalizes carried shame, he also takes in the offender's rage, his shamelessness. All traumatic acts are sünultaneously disen^wering and falsely enqxrwering" (Real 207). Thus, the abusmg caregiver models through his abuse a shameless way of being that, all too often, is replicated by the child once he reaches adulthood. Now he is in control and, his shame internalized and denied, he views his abuse not as inappropriate or traumatizmg, but as reasonable and instmctive.
67 Thus, one general characteristic o f these works is that none contains a single adult
relationship which displays sustained normal intimacy.
The number of other, relational origins of shame are manifold and include acute
guilt, competitive defeat, sexual rebuff, social rejection, invasion of personal privacy, and
ridicule. Lewis notes that shame can result when one compares oneself unfavorably to an
internalized ego-ideal. In such a case, there is "an implied framework of negative
comparison with others"(Shame and Guilt 40). Shame results when there is a
discrepancy between what one is or does and what one expects o f oneself (the "ego
ideal") (Wurmser 45). Goldberg contends that "[s]hame values are, in short, ego-ideal
assignments. The diminution of an idealized self-image results in a reaction of shame"
(55). When one is so influenced (i.e., compares negatively to another), one feels like a
failure in the presence of esteemed others. Feeling inferior, the shame-based individual
finds himself contemptible, an object of self-ridicule. This attitude may be extended to those with whom one compares unfavorably. And because internalized shame can be provoked and experienced by the self, it can be experienced many times in a single day in the absence of an external instigative source.
Bradshaw contends that toxic shame is generational, passed from one generation to the next:
Our families are where we first learn about ourselves. Our core identity comes first from the mirroring eyes of our primary caretakers. Our destiny depended to a large extent on the health of our caretakers.... The chief component in the family as a system is the marriage. If the marriage is healthy and functional, the family will be healthy and functional. If the marriage is dysfunctional, then the family is dysfunctional. (29-30)
68 Feeling-states are passed along. The child absorbs the parent's rage, shame, even hate. In
this way, individuals "carry" a family's shame. Thus, when shame-based people marry,
their marriage becomes grounded in their "shame-core." "The major outcome of this will
be a lack of intimacy. It is difScult to let someone get close to you if you feel defective
and flawed as a human being" OBradshaw 25).
What we have seen, then, of the origins and perpetuation of shame in families can be categorized into three distinct elements: (1) external shaming events; (2) inherited generational shame; and (3) maintained shame. External shaming events include those that sever the bonds of mutuality in interpersonal relationships. Such events include abandonment, abuse, and neglect. Inherited generational shame is passed on to family members unknowingly when the shaming events and the feelings they invoke are denied.
Maintained shame is the perpetuation of internalized shame through unconscious, often self-destructive behaviors that set one up for additional shame. For example, a married individual who engages in extramarital afiairs is maintaining his or her inner shame.
Until one faces and openly addresses one's shame, one cannot achieve self-acceptance
(Fossum and Mason 39). This is why so many shame-riddled characters in modem
American literature lead tragic lives: they do not acknowledge their inner shame.
Central to these works are characters who have experienced considerable shame as a result of ruptured relationships. Because of inadequate or inappropriate interpersonal relationships with parents or other significant adults, a number o f these characters are affected by unidentified shame and its manifestations. Additionally, their "basic sense of self' is vulnerable to additional shame evoked by other relational factors. These works are connected to one another, then, by the relational difficulties experienced by their
69 characters and to other modem American writings that are also bereft o fsignificant relationships grounded in mutual trust, respect, and unconditional love.
IV. Cultural Origins of Shame
In the previous section we discussed those origins of shame that are primarily relational in nature. This section addresses those origins o f shame that emanate from the culture itself. One area o f potential shame-generating origins is that of cultural expectations and values. The particular origins within this area include the emphasis on achievement and success, certain cultural scripts that one must negotiate successfully
(including self-sufficiency, popularity, and conformity), performance-based esteem, cultural criticism of imperfection and failure, social weakness and perceived inferiority.
Other social dimensions o f shame include nonacceptance of social standards (the
"outcast"), social expectations of the family, parenting performance, racism, social position, and financial circumstances (especially poverty).
Cultural expectations and values are gradually internalized over time until one is in their thrall unconsciously. "[SJhame represents failure and defect in relation to culture and ethics and their created and fantasized ideals and behavior, structure, and self-regard ..." (Real 25). Individuals internalize not only their culture's moral and ethical values, but also its collective views on success, social standing, family behavior and performance, and conformi^. Thus, a set of internalized ideals is formed, against which one’s performance is measured. When one is deficient in comparison to the ideal, shame is generated.
70 In Man and Superman, Bernard Shaw weighs in on this idea of shame and cultural standards and expectations; "We live in an atmosphere of shame. We are ashamed of everything that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinions, of our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins" (qtd. in Wurmser 61). When the culture's values and expectations become the measure of the man, supplanting such internal valuations as self-worth and contentment, it follows that one may become self-conscious. As Shaw notes, one can become ashamed of any aspect of his life, including his children, his vocation, his assets, and, most destructively, his own self. Additionally, we will deny that which we believe is incongruous with or unacceptable to our culture. We will deny that which is real about us, that which is our truth, and erect a more acceptable façade—the false (but culturally satisfactory) self.
Another shame-related problem with culturally defined performance expectations is self-consciousness. Kaufinan writes: "The pressure of performance expectations is disabling because anticipating success or failure can activate binding self-consciousness.
The self becomes immobilized under scrutiny.... Binding self-consciousness invariably disrupts the learning of any skill" {Psychology o f Shame 43).
At this point, one might ask: "What is the relationship between shame that has an interpersonal (internal) origin and shame that has a cultural (external) one?" One does not need to experience interpersonal shame (e.g., a ruptured relationship) to experience culturally produced shame. Just as there are no necessary preconditions for the evocation of cultural shame, there are no necessary preconditions for the evocation of interpersonal shame. It should be noted, however, that those who have experienced shame as a result
71 of relationship problems, particularly abandonment, neglect, or rejection as a child, often
are more susceptible to additional shame (of any origin) because of the impact such
experiences have had on the ego.
Shame, therefore, has both an internal and an external (social/cultural) quality.
The internal quality relates to one's own ideals and how one measures up to them. The
external or social/cultural component has to do with measuring up to group ideals.
Morrison notes that Thrane disagreed with the anthropological notion that shame reflects
exclusively condemnation by others, which would make it more superficial, less
intrapsychic, than guilt. Like Broucek, Thrane indicated that shame always implies
self-recognition, or self-consciousness and self-awareness, not only in terms of group
identification or wished for identification, but also with regard to deeply embraced group
ideals (55). Thus, one can become ashamed if he does not feel (the intrapsychic
component) that he is living his life according to the ideals embraced by his social group.
The shame is generated through one's own awareness that he is out of sync with the
group's expectations, even when they are unstated.
Morrison and the other psychoanalysts cited above are saying essentially the same thing about what is sometimes called cultural fusion, whereby a person intemalizes the ideals of a society as well as its ideals for him. If one rejects these social ideals, or lives in a manner that does not reflect them, then that individual will experience shame (if only unconsciously) because he is not in harmony (unity) with the social order and is seen as living outside it. This is tacit rejection, and that leads to a feeling of failure and its counterpart, shame.
72 Goldberg is another shame theorist who recognizes the significant shame potential in falling short of societal expectations:
[T]he description o f suffering I am referring to ... constitutes the distress of shame. The suffering is derived from our reflection on our human condition and the realization that we are falling short o f some expected desired state of existence. This is to say, organisms experience pain, but pain does not cause suffering until it is translated into a category of meaning. This latter category is derived from assumptions and expectations conveyed to us by others. Often we do not know what we are experiencing until we can see ourselves as others perceive us.... Socioemotionally, our state of being is intolerable to the extent that it contradicts how we have been led to believe our existence should be experienced. The realization of our failure to achieve expected and desired goals lies at the core of the experience of shame. (52)
American Cultural Scripts
What Goldberg describes Kaufinan considers a cultural script, one of three central scripts in American culture that continue "to activate shame, and thereby mold the self."
The scripts are: (I) to compete for success, (2) to be independent and self-sufficient, and
(3) to be popular and conform. These scripts play a significant role in the generation of shame because, as Kaufinan notes, "[t]he role of culture in molding personality is no less crucial than the role of the family or peer group; it is only less visible"(Psychology o f
Shame 45-46).
The success script is deeply ingrained in the American psyche and "rooted in mythic American images of the self-made man and woman. These archetypal figures are dominant in the literature of this nation and in the 'American Dream,' which is handed down from generation to generation: 'you can be anything you want to be if you only try hard enough'" (Psychology o f Shame 46). American culture thrives on success and performance, the standards of which are established by the culture. Kaufinan notes that.
73 beginning in childhood, we are encouraged to be competitive and, through such endeavors, successful:
Achievement becomes the measure o f self-esteem, of one's intrinsic worth of adequacy. All must strive to be successful and success is measured by accomplishments. When external performance becomes the unfortunate measure of self-esteem, the success script generates anxiety in the fijrm of fear of failure because success is always partly out of one's control Failure to attain the culture's prize, the American Dream in its various forms, now activates shame. Failure becomes the mark of infbriority. {Psychology o f Shame 46)
Real extends the concept of the success script when he discusses
"performance-based esteem." American culture prizes performance, and it is not just a one-time occurrence. One's high-level performance must continue if cultural expectations are to be met. "Traditional masculinity rests on such an insecure foundation of wonder, smugness, or dread, depending on one's position on the ladder. It instills in our sons [and daughters] not healthy but performance-based esteem" (181). Thus, in
American culture, children are not given unconditional regard. Instead, acceptance is qualified based on performance. "What we offer boys [and girls] in our culture is highly conditional, performance-based esteem, not an essential sense of worth that comes firom within" (182).
The self-sufficiency script requires one to be independent, competent, and self-reliant. "To need is seen as being inadequate, shameful." Poverty, charity, and dependency on others are viewed as social weaknesses, faults regarded as shameful in our culture. "Poverty in particular has been viewed as a disgrace firom antiquity" (Wurmser
33).
The popularity and conformity script, on the other hand, insiures that those who exercise their individuality too vigorously will be reined in by shame, "hidividuality is
74 neither recognized nor valued because our culture prizes popularity and it also prizes conformity. The consequence is that beingdifferent fix>m others becomes shameful. To avoid shame, individuals must avoid being different, or seen as different The awareness o f difference itself translates into feeling deficient, lesser" (Psychology o f
Shame 46-47). This shame o f being different extends to ethnic, racial, and religious subgroups because they do not fall within the standards of the mainstream.
In conclusion, shame can be evoked by a host o f cultural (external) as well as interpersonal (internal) origins. Perhaps the most impressive aspect of shame’s origins is their number. Shame can manifest in so many ways and in so many situations that it is virtually unavoidable. More troubling still is the fact that much of shame remains intemaUzed and unidentified within the individual where, like an undetected cancer, it continues to eat away at one’s irmer core, destroying one’s self-esteem, confidence, sense of well-being, hope and, in the worst cases, willingness to live.
V. Internalization of Shame
Regarding this study’s discussion of shame, perhaps no concept is more important to grasp than that of internalization. That all of the characters addressed herein have internalized their shame is a basic thesis of the study. As we have seen, shame almost always originates interpersonally, primarily in significant interpersonal relationships where abuse or neglect has occurred. However, according to Kaufinan, shame can become "internalized so that the self is able to activate shame without an inducing interpersonal event, hiterpersonally induced shame develops into internally induced
75 shame. Through this internalizing process, shame can spread throughout the self, ultimately shaping our emerging identity" (Shame 8). The difference between shame that has not been internalized and shame that has is o f a twofold nature: when internalized, shame lasts much longer and its damaging effects become more profound. Before internalization, shame is experienced as a rather short-lived feeling that usually carries no residual, long-term effect. One feels the shame, faces the behavior responsible for it, and moves on. On the other hand, once shame is internalized, it can be triggered internally and its effects felt indefinitely. As Kaufinan notes, our identity—"that vital sense of who we are as individuals, embracing our worth, our adequacy, and our very dignity as human beings"—can be obliterated by internally induced protracted shame, "leaving us feeling naked, defeated as a person and intolerably alone" (Shame 8). According to Bradshaw, when an emotion is internalized, it "stops fimctioning in the manner of an emotion and becomes a characterological style" (10).
How, then, does one come to have internal shame? Kaufinan has identified three distinct aspects of shame's internalization: (1) we internalize specific attitudes about ourselves; (2) we also internalize how we are treated by significant others and we "learn to treat ourselves accordingly;" (3) this second aspect "forms the beginning basis for our relationship with ourselves"(Shame 41). So, if a child is severely emotionally neglected by his mother, he is likely to neglect his own self and develop a negative image of himself. The relationship he establishes with himself will be a reflection of the relationship he has with his mother. If the hallmark of that mother-child relationship is
76 neglect, then the hallmark of the child's relationship with his core self also will be
neglect/
A child will develop a distorted sense of self when a negative imprint is made on
his impressionable psyche. Bradshaw addresses this concept of the distorted concept of
self, noting that, once shame has been internalized, nothing about the self is okay: "You
feel flawed and inferior; you have the sense of being a failure. There is no way you can
share your inner self because you are an object of contempt to yourself. When you are
contemptible to yourself you are no longer in you" (Bradshaw 13). Joe Christmas is but
one of many characters discussed herein who holds himself in contempf a sure sign of
internalized shame.
Goldberg extends our discussion on the internalization of shame, introducing the
concept of the negative inner voice, also known as the internal critic. For Goldberg,
shame becomes internalized when significant shame experiences are inculcated and then
transcribed by the self into defining interpretive scripts, "which translate the scenes and
the plot of one's life, demonstrating that one is an incompetent and unworthy person— "
These scripts, then, "castigate and devalue the ashamed by means of a contemptuous
negative inner voice." Like Kaufinan, Bradshaw and other shame theorists, Goldberg is
convinced that shame affect has its earliest origins in interpersonal relationships with parents and significant others, and once shame becomes intemahzed its deleterious
effects can be triggered either internally or externally:
This voice has been scripted and internalized fiom among the myriad of interactions with parents and significant figures in one's past. When one is
^ It is quite possible to define "dysfunctional" m tenus of a poor relationship with one's self. The internal self creates an identity by internalizing experiences with others. When the experiences are negative, so is one's relationship with oneself. 77 shamed as an adult, one is emotionally drawn back into the childhood scenes, imbued with interpretative scripts and a negative inner voice that warns the ashamed that self-respect, competence, and pride are not his lot in life. (40)
In this way, one is quite literally scripted for failure by one's internalized shame and its
Harpy-like internal critic, which spews out an incessant string of negative messages that slowly but inexorably erode one's self-worth. Internalized shame, therefore, is sustained by interpretive scripts and the negative inner voice. Living in a state of shame can be a living hell, especially when one has little or no idea of the origin of one's discontent.
Kauhnan talks about "negative imprmting"—the process of making a negative imprint on one's impressionable psyche—an idea resembling Goldberg's interpretive scripts, which also carry negative messages about the self. Kaufinan notes that images of a blaming parent or some other significant person can be internalized. Additionally, interaction patterns can become internalized in the form of images of these interactions.
From these images and interaction patterns, we internalize specific ways of treating ourselves. We also internalize whatK aufm an calls identification images based on observations of individuals most vital to our survival. (These images can be derived fi'om an identification that is shame-based or respect-based.) These internal identification images serve as guiding images for the internal functioning of the self, playing "an excessively controlling role in the inner life, encompassing more than the parent had ever intended to control." These images are eventually transformed into an auditory voice—
Goldberg's negative irmer voice—that can countermand the selfs own voice. Kaufinan summarizes the concept this way:
These [identification] images are mainly rooted in our unconscious, the originating source for them being experientially erased. Phenomenologically, an
78 identification image eventually comes to be experienced as an auditory voice inside that remains distinct from the selfs own voice. Usually the visual or imagery aspect of the image becomes unconscious, though on occasion it may erupt directly, even disturbingly into consciousness. (Shame 43)
Kaufinan, in a later work. The Psychology o fShame: Theory and Treatment o f
Shame-Based Syndromes, emphasizes the importance of one's own internal imagery and its experiential fi>rmation:
The process by which the self intemalizes, and so reproduces, its own experience is central to how the self actually fimctions and develops. The self unfolds, evolves, and becomes shaped through ongoing interaction with the interpersonal environment, and through the way it stores, reproduces, elaborates, and transcends that experience.... It is through imagery (encompassing visual, auditory, and kinesthetic dimensions) that the self internalizes experience. What is internalized are images or scenes that have become imprinted with affect. (58-59)
Wurmser introduces into the dialogue on internalization the related concept of introjection. While Wurmser views shame from the perspective of object relations, he nevertheless conceptualizes the internalization of shame in much the same way as
Kaufinan and Goldberg do. For Wurmser, shame is always object-related—that is, shame has its origins in a relationship with the object or "other:"
An extended and exaggerated sense of shame or guilt remains in relation to one's images o f external objects or as they become parts of the self (as they are internalized, introjected). Such objects may become universalized into all of mankind, God, or some hallucinated being. Most important, this object pole is perpetuated as part of one's superego, what we might call one's "inner eye" or the observing eye of the conscience. (44)
Wurmser describes the object pole as "the factor in front of which one is ashamed" and the subject pole as "the aspect of which one is ashamed." For example, when a child wets the bed, the child's mother is the object pole and the actual bed wetting and the mess it makes is the subject pole.
79 Introjectioa is that process whereby one takes into oneself the judgment and punishment of others. One literally becomes an object to oneself. Bradshaw describes the powerful pain that results;
To feel shame is to feel seen in an exposed and diminished way. When you're an object to yourself, you turn your eyes inward, watching and scrutinizing every minute detail of behavior. This internal critical observation is excruciating. It generates a tormenting self-consciousness which Kaufinan describes as, "creating a binding and paralyzing effect upon the self." This paralyzing internal monitoring causes withdrawal, passivity and inaction. (13)
One's "outer shame reverberates, and is massively amplified by irmer shame, by the same condemnation by [his] conscience as that meted out by [his] accuser." Thus, when a shame-based character commits a shameful act, the shame he feels is greatly intensified by his inner (internalized) shame. What is an insignificant, common shame-producing event for one without irmer shame—say, forgetting to zip up one's trouser fly or wearing mismatched socks—becomes a significant sham ing event for a shame-based individual because the "expectations, criticism, and punishment inherent in shame are now vested in the conscious and unconscious parts of the conscience—the superego—instead of the outside world" (Wurmser 45).
Lynd also addresses this idea of the internal critic or the negative inner voice, where one becomes an object to one's critical "self." She notes that shame experiences are linked to an exposure of the most intimate, sensitive, and vulnerable aspects of the self that "[t]he exposure may be to others but, whether others are or are not involved, it is always ... exposure to one's own eyes" (27-28). As Lynd points out, there also is the fear
80 of exposure to others.® When one has behaved in a shameM manner, or, through no
fault of one's own, is shamed, then one has to deploy defenses against the painful
acknowledgement of the shame. Many of the characters included in this study create
illusions that serve as effective ploys to keep shame at bay: Hightower has his daily
daydream, Amanda Wingfield and Blanche DuBois fantasize about a rich plantation life,
Thomas Sutpen's own plantation, a dream made real, is propped up by myth, illusion,
and deceit, and Willy Loman exaggerates his success.
Nevertheless, Lynd contends that "it is the exposure of oneself to oneself that is
crucial" (30). Lynd credits Dostoevski as having a keen awareness of the hidden aspects
of shame, saying that he "recognized that the deepest shame is exposure to oneself even
though no one else may pay any attention to or even know of it" (13). This exposure to
oneself is at the heart of shame, according to Lynd:
In reviewing Stendhal's Diaries. Auden expressed surprise that Stendhal found it hard to admit certain things to himself and asked, "How can admitting anything to oneself be daring?" In raising this remarkable question Auden reflects the extent to which many people at present have become insensitive to the experience of shame and to the deep ambiguities in human nature in which it is rooted. (32)
Regardless of what internalization is and how it is defined by the various psychotherapists and shame theorists, it functions to keep the piercing pain of shame beyond our awareness. This is why inner shame remains hidden shame. The role of repression and denial—two ubiquitous shame defenses—is all about keeping us in the dark about our shame. Keeping us apart firom our shame and its associated pain, however, takes a toll as Bradshaw knows:
^ la the following section, we will see how this fear of bemg shamed before another relates to Foucault's thesis in Discipline and Punish. The fear of being shamed is a powerful force in keeping one in check, forcing one mto conformity.
81 The pain and suffering of shame generate automatic and unconscious defenses. Freud called these defenses by various names—denial, idealization of parents, repression of emotions and dissociation from emotions. What is important to note is that we can't know what we can't know. Denial, idealization, repression, dissociation once formed are unconscious survival mechanisms. Because they are unconscious, we lose touch with the shame, hurt and pain they cover up.We cannot heal what we cannot feel. So without recovery, our toxic shame gets carried for generations. (Bradshaw 32)
Thus, if we do not acknowledge our shame, bringing it into our conscious mind and deliberately dealing with it, we not only continue to suffer shame's effects, we also pass it on to others. We cannot know what we do not know; we cannot heal what we do not feel. The characters encompassed by this study do not know what is causing their unease. One simply believes that he or she is "bad." Another attributes his or her predicament to others. Still another feels that his or her troubles are related to bad luck.
None attributes his or her troubles to shame because none is aware of his or her shame.
VI. Foucault and the Internalization of Shame
In Discipline and Punish^ Foucault describes how, beginning early in the
Industrial Period, control over individuals began to shifr from an external application of control to an internal application of control. At the same time, another shifr, related to and inseparable from this shifr in the form of control, took place; the cultural shifr from the external application of shame (i.e., using shame as a form of social punishment in a publicly conspicuous way) to the internal application of shame (i.e., experiencing internalized shame as part o f a new system of continual surveillance of the self by the self). While shame is not Foucault's primary focus, to be successful the new process of control via self-surveillance and external orientation (for one's values and directions)
82 depends on the internalization of unidentified shame, which, as we saw above, can be a potent power in shaping human behavior.
A Fusion o f New Values: Observation, Evaluation, and Control
Foucault suggests that, through the internalization of this shame-based system of discipline he describes, the self continually monitors its behavior and compares it to what society wants it to be. This idea is related to Morrison's concept of cultural fusion, the unconscious internalization of a culture's values and expectations. For Foucault, the new values he speaks o f are evaluative and subtly controlling; they are a set of standards by which one is measured and kept in place, a necessary objective in a complex, technology- and production-oriented culture. The period of modernism is marked by this new value system, a system of knowledge and power and their application. One has to learn these new values, Foucault contends, or be beaten by them. If one does not subscribe to these values, or meet them satisfactorily, one experiences shame from within.
To observe is to measure and thus to evaluate. Under constant external observation, men began to internalize these observations and their meanings (a set of measuring criteria by which their worth is judged in a commodified culture). Eventually, man became constantly self-evaluative, lessening the need for costly continual external controls. Such constant self-evaluation led not only to heightened self-consciousness, but to feelings of inferiority and shame, often the end result of desperation bom o f defeat and hopelessness (e.g., "I am inferior according to this
83 measurement of my performance," or "I am worthless in their eyes"). Foucault explains this new method o f observation and control as fijUows:
A meticulous observation of detail, and at the same time a political awareness of these small things, for the control and use o f men, emerge through the classical age bearing with them a whole set of techniques, a whole corpus o f methods and knowledge, descriptions, plans and data. And from such trifles, no doubt, the man of modem humanism was bom. (141)
As part of this control through observation and measurement, society had to organize strictly into "cells," "places," and "ranks." These new disciplines Foucault identifies
"create complex spaces ... that provide fixed positions ... and indicate values; they guarantee the obedience of individuals ..." (148). These disciplines, with their built-in, culturally defined system of social measurement and obedience, have an inherent shame component as part of their enforcement process. Shame can be used as a propulsive force, fueling one's ascent from one class (a socially defined space) to another less shameful one.
A Shift in Shame Experience
At this point it might be useful to ask, "What happens to shame in the modem period?" We already know that the experience of shame changes dramatically diuing industrialization, moving from an extemally imposed to an intemally felt experience. But what prompted this shift, and what are the implications?
During the Preindustrialized and early hidustrialized periods, there existed an overt Puritan influence on behavior. However, this changed during the late hidustrialized period, which coincides with the modem period, as the disciplines Foucault identifies are employed. Foucault says that industrialization ("the great workshops and factories of the
84 late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries") required a new type o f surveillance: "what was now needed was an intense, continuous supervision. It ran right through the labor process; it did not bear—or not only—on production... it also took into account the activity of the men, their skill, the way they set about their tasks, their promptness, their zeal, their behavior" (174). This new kind of surveillance—direct and constant observation of one's behavior—put one into a mode of ongoing evaluation and control.
After awhile, the individual intemalizes this surveillance, turning it against himself.
It is during this time that cultural values and expectations become internalized, and an individual's internal critic continually evaluates one's performance (moral and vocational) against cultural standards. Once this "cultural fusion" is complete, shame becomes an intemally felt experience whenever one fails to meet extemal values and expectations. Shame, therefore, is used less frequently in an overt way to force compliance. Because of this, the extemal application of shame to correct moral lapses in behavior disappears almost entirely from the cultural landscape. (It seems reasonable to conclude that the new system of control has less to do with morality than with conformity to the rules of production [the mechanics of productivity] and consumerism.) This is why shame in modem American literature is virtually hidden, even though a significant number of characters are shame-based.
Surveillance and the Internalization o f the "Gaze"
While Foucault's thesis is not founded on shame, throughout his discussion it is implied and, in a few instances, explicitly identified. For example, when speaking about coercion through a kind of observation that makes one "clearly visible," Foucault is
85 talking about the transparent state a shame-based person feels. He states: "The exercise
of discipline presupposes a mechanism that coerces by means of observation; an
apparatus in which the techniques that make it possible to see induce effects o f power,
and in which, conversely, the means of coercion make those on whom they are applied
clearly visible" (170-71). Foucault is not talking expressly about shame and social and
economic success and failure. However, he might as well be. The idea of appearing not
only visible, but visible to others who might see one as not only flawed but as a failure, is
a terribly powerful force. (It might be the strongest human motivator in a society where shame and guilt function normally.) These disciplines that Foucault talks about, with their social ranks, economic barriers, and "containers," are a form of subjection and exploitation. Even "successful" individuals are manipulated by them. Where is their freedom if everything they do is motivated by extemal standards set by others? Shame— the result of either being something that the culture looks down upon (such as "poor white trash") or of becoming something that smacks of failure and deficiency (such as a salesman who cannot make a quota)—is an incredibly potent behavioral motivator.’
According to Foucault, "[t]he perfect disciplinary apparatus would make it possible for a single gaze to see everything constantly" (173). Once shame becomes internalized, that is exactly how one feels: constantly under surveillance. And this is
^ Foucault talks about a "normalizing gaze," a constant kind of observation that coerces one into compliance with a set of extemal standards. Such a gaze establishes over others "a visibility through which one differentiates them and judges them" (184).
Foucault contends that the new discipline we have been discussing is further sustained by what he calls "calculated gazes." This idea need not be taken literally (although today's technology does make it possible to establish a constant electronic gaze). A gaze can be many things, including such physical attributes as standards of performance set by one's culture. When the exercise of control is established and maintained by such insidious and pervasive measures, the "gaze" becomes internalized, an ever-present internal eye
86 not illusory. One is under constant observation—by one’s own negative internal critic.
Ours is a society that fosters shame intemahzation, in part because it is such a powerful control in keeping people in line with cultural goals.
Foucault continues his examination of the effects of such subtle, sophisticated and continuous surveillance:
Hierarchized, continuous and functional surveillance may not be one of the great technical "inventions” of the eighteenth century, but its insidious extension owed its importance to the mechanisms of power that it brought with it. By means of such surveillance, disciplinary power became an "integrated" system, linked from the inside to the economy and to the aims of the mechanism in which it was practiced. It was organized as a multiple, automatic and anonymous power; fr>r although surveillance rests on individuals, its functioning is that of a network of relations from top to bottom, but also to a certain extent from bottom to top and laterally.... The power in the hierarchized surveillance of the disciplines is not possessed as a thing, or transferred as a property; it functions like a piece of machinery.... This enables the disciplinary power to be both absolutely indiscreet, since it is everywhere and always alert, since by its very principle it leaves no zone of shade and constantly supervises the very individuals who are entrusted with the task of supervising; and absolutely "discreet,” for it functions permanently and largely in silence. (176-77)
The idea here is that this surveillance has been seamlessly joined to our culture in such a way that it functions automatically, beyond human awareness. But the result is an unconscious acknowledgement that one is under constant scrutiny and in danger of being
"found out." There is no "shade," nowhere to hide, no way that one can escape observation, which, again, is the equivalent of evaluation, with its threat of criticism, punishment, and exclusion. And, as mentioned above, this near-constant evaluation creates an environment in which one is incessantly comparing ("How am I doing?") and
looking over one's shoulder at all one does—and even thinks. Foucault's "physics of power" only seems physical, material. But these "barriers," while they have their material counterparts in extemal reality, are erected within one's mind. That is where the real control lies.
87 being compared ('Tm not measuring up"), an experience that leads to feelings of
insecurity, inadequacy, unworthiness, distrust and eventually shame. This is an
environment in which shame grows subtly, insidiously. A traumatic event is not
necessary. Since the beginning of the modem period, this is a cultural component of
shame to which everyone has been exposed.
Compliance and the Sham^ul Class
The idea of, or the assumption that a "shameful" class exists for every endeavor,
profession or vocation, and even behavior is an anxiety-producing circumstance. No one wants to be classified as a "loser," to be relegated to a position of inferiority because that
is shame. For example, Thomas Sutpen discovered that he was a member of the shameful class and separated fiom those above him by an invisible yet impenetrable wall.
So humiliating was dus discovery that he left his family immediately and never had contact with them again. Joe Christmas was of a "bad" ethnic class and was ostracized for it. Rejected by whites and blacks alike, he chose death over the constant rejection and ineffable shame of the perpetual outcast. As a member of the morally bad class, Blanche
DuBois was driven out of town utterly humiliated. And James Tyrone sacrificed his potential for financial security, a decision that doomed him to be considered a mediocre talent, a bad evaluation that shamed him significantly. Each of these characters has experienced shame as a result of being in a "bad" or "shameful" class, some through no fault of their own, others because of decisions they made.
88 Shame and Conform ity
The "hierarchizing penalty" Foucault addresses «cercises "a constant pressure to conform to the same model.... [s]o that they might all be like one another" (182).
Whenever an individual departs from the model of acceptability established by the
"authority" for a particular society, group, profession, field, organization, or institution, there is both an extemal and an internal pressure exerted on him to return to the normative model. In. effect, one is compared into compliance. Those who are seen as deficient in some way are exposed to ridicule and exclusion, with the result that the accompanying felt shame forces them back into comphance with the accepted standard.
Foucault calls "régime of disciplinary power" the art of punishing, and, as the instrument of punishment, shame is at the very heart of the process.
Ours is a culture in which conformity is valued over individuahty. For Foucault, the apphcation of discipline "refers individual actions to a whole that is at once a field of comparison, a space o f differentiation and the principle of a rule to be followed." This rule fimctions
as a minimal threshold, as an average to be respected or as an optimum towards which one must move. It measures in quantitative terms [e.g., how many widgets produced, how many shoes sold] and hierarchizes in terms of value the abiUties, the level, the "nature" of individuals. It introduces, through this "value-giving" measure, the constraint of a conformity that must be achieved. (182-83)
Thus, one is compared to a standard, really a set of standards, and evaluated according to a scale. One is assessed and positioned thusly. If one is simply "average," he is prodded along the scale toward optimizing his behavior/production, the avenue to social/ professional acceptability. One is valued by his productive behavior, partly a measure of his conformity to set standards. One's value is not determined by oneself, but by the
89 "disciplinary régime" of the culture, which demands conformity. To be found outside of
the standards is to be found wanting. The rule, then, this "m inim al threshold" of
acceptance, also determines the value of an individual to his society.
Society/culture is critical of those who fall outside the "normal" range: "The
perpetual penalty that traverses all points and supervises every instant in the disciplinary
institutions compares, differentiates, hierarchizes, homogenizes, excludes, hi short, it
normalizes" (183). For those who refuse to be "normalized," there is exclusion, ridicule
and shame. For those who conform, there is resentment, anger, frustration, and the
shame that accompanies compliance to the will of another. One has sacrificed oneself
and, in so doing, lost oneself.
In summary, perhaps the most profound of Foucault's observations is the
internalization of a culture's standards, the process Morrison calls cultural fusion, and the
establishment of an internal critical observer to maintain continual surveillance of the
selfs performance in accordance with the external standards. While Foucault's focus is primarily on the external controls of the new disciplines, including observation, evaluation, and normalization, he is describing, nevertheless, the gradual process of changing the cultural orientation of shame from an external one to an internal one. This internalization of shame may be the most significant psychological event in the modem period. It is certainly a profoundly important aspect of modem American literature.
90 CHAPTERS
THE GENERATIONAL NATURE OF SHAME:
THE LOMANS AND THE TYRONES
This was not the way his life was supposed to have evolved—he was bom to be great and should be appreciated without having to work hard at painting, at relationships, or at work.
Andrew Morrison, Shame: The Underside o f Narcissism
A s discussed in an earlier chapter, shame may become generational; that is, it may
be passed on from one member of a family to another, often from parent to child. We see
this process, or at least its results, quite clearly in both the Lomans and the Tyrones. Both
Miller and O'Neill had firsthand experience with generational shame. Willy Loman was
partially representative of Miller's Uncle Manny, who committed suicide after failing to
fulfill his long-held dream of establishing a business for his sons. Long Day's Journey
Into Night is an autobiographical play, and O'Neill, like Edmund Tyrone, was buffeted
about by the ever-changing and over-charged emotions of shame-based family members.^
' la The Cambridge Companion to Arthur Miller, Matthew Roudane notes that there are a number of similarities between Willy Loman and Manny Newman, one of Miller's uncles. Roudane also notes that, while Miller had multiple sources for Willy, Manny, a traveling salesman who very much wanted to establish a business for his sons, was probably Miller’s most influential soiurce (68-71). And in her essay "Trying to Write the Family Play; Autobiography and the Dramatic Imagination, ' Jean Chothia comments on O'Neill's engagement with autobiography and argues that his late plays, including D}ng Day's Journey Into Night, likely include his own agonized emotional experience (193-94).
91 Neither writer needed to know shame by its name—each knew the affect intimately by its
effects, those responses to shame that manifest as destructive behaviors which poison
relationships and damage one's psyche.
It should be noted that when these writers penned their plays— Death o f a
Salesman was first published in 1949, while Long Day's Journey Into Night was written
in 1941 (but not published until 1956)—little attention was being paid to hum an affects
as such by psychologists and sociologists. As noted in Chapter Two, W. R. D. Fairbaim
had begun looking into the importance of interpersonal relationships during the 1940s,
but, like other psychoanalysts of the period, he did not focus on the psychodynamics of
specific affects per se. Thus, when these two plays were written, neither Miller nor
O'Neill had access to affect theory and its analytic concepts. Correspondingly, they did not have the language we have today to describe the painful, disruptive experience o f
internalized shame. Nevertheless, the behavior that resulted fi’om the intemalization of this affect—behavior that both Miller and O'Neill not only witnessed, but also represented in these plays—is unmistakable at the end of the millennium thanks to the psychoanalysts and sociologists who put into words the processes that, collectively, compose shame theory and the writers who, like Miller and O'Neill, created characters who exemplify the various manifestations of the affective responses.
O'Neill does not make much o f culture-based shame in Long Day's Journey Into
Night. Although a few critics do make some assumptions about the Irish-American
92 experience and its possible connection to O'Neill and the play's characters/ the play
itself does not contain much direct evidence that any one of the Tyrones has been
profoundly affected by cultural shame of an ethnic or religious origin. What we do know
from the text, though, is that every significant relationship in this family (husband-wife,
father-son/son, mother-son/son, brother-brother) has been ruptured. Certainly we can
speculate on extra-textual origins of shame, including those of an Irish-American nature,
but the most important origins o f the Tyrones’ shame are right before our eyes, identified
by the characters' own deeply felt expressions o f hurt, anger, resentment, hopelessness,
remorse, and sadness. In the end, then. Long Day's Journey Into Night is about a family
whose considerable distress is generated from within, making it all the more tragic. As
O'Neill writes in his dedication, it is a play about broken relationships, of "old sorrow,
written in tears and blood ... for all the four haunted Tyrones."
While the Loman family also can be characterized as a family in distress, its
internal shame is compounded by Willy's perception of himself as a profound failure.
^ For exanqile, John Henry Raleigh's analysis of the Tyrones begins in a cultural context Raleigh, with the help o f Kerby Miller, one of Raleigh’s critical resources, describes both the origin and the symptoms of Irish-American cultural shame when he writes: "Even in the twentieth century and even with success many Irish Americans never overcame deep-seated feelings of mferiority and msecurity.... Miller expresses the problems of many of the financially successful Irish: 'Generally, such conflicts were internalized, mitigated through religious devotion or later expressed in autobiographical fiction such as O'Neill'sLong D ay’s Journey Into Night' However, Miller goes on, the conflicts often assumed self-destructive dimensions, which although they rarely eventuated in actual suicides often issued in chronic drmking "' (205-6). Thus, while these profound, culturally related feelings of inferiority and insecurity had been intemalized by many Irish Americans, this aspect of Irish Americansham e was not O'Neill's primary focus in the play. Rather, he chose to focus on the interpersonal shame origins of the Tyrones, something with which he was all too familiar.
93 James Tyrone, at least, bas been successful financially, and while he regrets at times his decision to exchange the development of his artistic talent for financial security, he has the solace of knowing that he will not be retired to the poorhouse. Furthermore,although
Tyrone is disappointed that he did not develop his acting skills further by accepting more challenging roles, he was viewed by the theater-going public as a successful actor. But
Willy has no such success on which to fall. Because he has adopted a culturally defined image of success that he has not been able to reach, he experiences considerable shame that is o f an external nature. This externally derived shame, then, is behind Willy's drive to make his sons, particularly Biff, follow the same dream that has alluded Willy his entire adult life. He has an urgent need to experience some success, even if it comes to him vicariously through his sons. While James Tyrone is, like Willy, disappointed in his sons' lack of accomplishment, his disappointment does not seem to be as compelling as
Willy's in terms o f the evocation o f shame. As a result, although James would like to see
Jamie work harder as an actor, he is not as obsessed with Jamie's future as Willy is with
Biffs. While James would like to see Jamie become financially independent, he does not need to rely on Jamie's success to compensate for a lack of his own. And this may be the primary difference in the two families' shame experience. For the Tyrones, ruptured relationships are the primary source of their binding shame. For the Lomans, however, to the shame produced by ruptured relationships is added the shame that evolves firom
Willy's feelings o f vast failure and his destructive responses to this affect. Although
Willy is arguably no less competent a father than James Tyrone and just as hard working, his perception of failure likely exceeds Tyrone's own.
94 The following discussion begins with Willy Loman, one o f the most shame-based
characters in all of modem American literature. Thanks toWilliams’s inclusion of a few
defining events in Willy's childhood, his unidentified shame can be traced to its early
origins, as can BifiPs and Happy's. However, the bulk o f the discussion is given to the
numerous manifestations of shame that can be identified through the application of shame
psychology. Following the analysiso îDeath o fa Salesman, the Tyrone family is considered along much the same lines. This discussion reveals that many of the same
shame dynamics playing out in the Loman family also occur in the Tyrone family.
Death o f a Salesman: How Shame Can Lead to Division and Death
Willy Loman has endmed many shame-provoking experiences. He was: twice-abandoned as a child, first by his father and then by his older brother, Ben; caught being unfaithful to his wife by his son. Biff; broke and unable to make ends meet; borrowing money fi’om his neighbor, Charley, on a weekly basis; fired firom his job; and ashamed that neither Biff nor Happy has been able to meet the expectations he had for them. He feels overlooked, unimportant, and insignificant. Additionally, he feels trapped by an inescapable scmtiny by particular individuals as well as by nameless others, a perception that carries its own vast shame potential. His is a full, involimtary exposure to critical examination, and this is devastating to one who already feels defective. Morrison notes that narcissistic vulnerability and shame sensitivity fuel the impulse to withdraw and isolate in an attempt to lessen the liabUity to further shame and humiliation (174). Willy wants to limit his exposure. He is physically tired, but his exhaustion also has a psychological component. As a shame-based character, his entire
95 existence is carried on in great distress. As Lewis notes, "[s]hame affect involves the
whole self. This global target of hostility makes it difQcult to find a solution short of
sweeping replacement of the self by another, better one" (Shame and Guilt 40).
Sometimes, replacement is accomplished through exaggeration,overestimating one's
performance and importance. Or, aggressive, competitive behavior might become a
compensatory response to deep inner shame. When these and other shame-related
defenses fail, however, one may commit suicide as a way to accomplish a "sweeping
replacement" o f the self. This, then, was Willy's final alternative after exhausting his
other shame defenses.
Yet Willy is not the only shame-based member of his family. An argument can
be made that the entire Loman family is dysfunctional in part, if not primarily, because of
shame. One of the most prevalent and profound childhood shame-producing events is the
rupture of a significant interpersonal relationship, and this is exactly what Willy
experiences as a young child when his father abandons the family to seek his fortune in
Alaska. Willy never sees his father again. As a result of the shame he experiences and the effects it has on him, he believes unconsciously that, in the absence of his father’s guidance, he lacks the wherewithal to succeed as father and breadwinner. Biff is correct when he says in the "Requiem" that Willy "never knew who he was" and that "He had the wrong dreams. All, all, wrong" (Death o f a Salesman 136; subsequent citations refer to this edition).
Willy believes that he has failed on a number of fironts, and his profound adult-related shame has three primary origins; his perceived vocational failure, his parental ineptitude, and the discovery of his infidelity. As noted in Chapter Two,
96 fCaufinan identifies three cultural "scripts" that, if not negotiated successfully, can lead to
shame. One of these scripts relates to social weakness and a failure to be self-sufhcient.
Part of Willy's problem is that he has confused the concept of success with the act of
making money, and his precarious financial situation only intensifies his shame in respect
to the self-sufficiency script. He "borrows" money fiom Charley weekly, and this, too, is
a humiliating experience. However, beyond the shame-related consequences of his
poverty lies an even more devastating origin of his deep inner shame: the poignant
feeling of failure that pervades one's sense o f self when one feels utterly helpless.
Further compoimding Willy's shame is his belief that he has nothing to offer to his
sons. Willy feels that he has failed Biff in particular (although he could not bring himself to admit it), and that if he were a better father. Biff would want to stay around. Part of
Willy's dream is starting a business for the boys. As he has not done this, he feels he has failed them, and he views Biffs return to Texas as another personal failure. When Willy confesses to Charley "I got nothin' to give him ... (43; act 1), the meaning is ambiguous.
Willy does not have any cash to give him; he also believes that he does not have more important things to give, like the secret of success, which, to Willy, means the key to making money and acquiring social prestige. The irony here is that Willy is right—he does not have anything to give to Biff. Willy is imable to admit to his own shortcomings and to make amends for his mistakes, including his affairs and his filling Biff with false hope and pride, which led to Biffs arrogant attitude and inability to negotiate adult life.
This is an example of how Willy's steadfast denials of reality and his narcissistic defenses eliminate not only the possibility o f reconciliation, but also the recognition of his inner shame.
97 Willy has to fight continuously against his inner belief that he has failed vocationally. He does this by mounting a steady narcissistic defense. One minute he is the best salesman that ever lived: "I never have to wait in line to see a buyer. 'Willy
Loman is here!' That's all they have to know, and I go right through" (33; act 1). He exaggerates his performance and influence. He tells his sons that he met the mayor of
Providence and "they know me up and down New England. The finest people.... I can park my car in any street in New England, and the cops protect it like their own" (31; act
I). A moment later, however, he recognizes his declining production and importance:
"You know, the trouble is, Linda, people don't seem to take to me.... They seem to laugh at me.... I don't know the reason for it, but they just pass me by. I'm not noticed" (36; act
1). In moments such as these, he relaxes his narcissistic defense, and this allows him to make a more honest appraisal of himself. Whenever he conducts such self-appraisals, it is inevitable that he will compare himself to others and find himself wanting: "But I gotta be at it ten, twelve hours a day. Other men—I don't know—they do it easier" (37; act I).
However, because such a realization is not only painful, but shame-intensifying as well,
Willy can experience only so many "honest" moments before erecting again the walls of denial.^
^ The subject of denial and narcissistic defense in response to truth and reality raises the issue of self-empowennent and self-realization as it relates to WOly. Jeanne Johnsey, in an essay addressing Willy's attempts to achieve identic, wants to ascribe to Willy the act of self-empowerment and, thereby, a moment of self-realization. Johnsey recalls the exchange between Biff and Willy when Biff tells Willy that he has been exaggerating both his importance and his success, that he is really just "a dime a dozen." Willy rejects this evaluation, countering, "I am not a dime a dozenl I am Willy Loman and you are Biff Loman!" To Johnsey, this is "an act of self-empowerment—however momentary it may seem in terms of external, objective reality" (102). She goes on to assert that such a declaration is transformative "in terms of self-realization." Actually, there is nothing transformative about Willy's outburst, and he does not experience a moment of self-enqxrwerment. Instead, stung by Biffs assessment of Willy's worth (in the marketplace of New York commerce), his shame is piqued and his narcissistic response (grandiosity) is marshaled.
98 Andrew Morrison recognizes that personal and professional failures produce not
only disappointment, but shame and humiliation as well. Morrison reviews the case of
one of his clients who, like Willy, "felt a deep sense of failure and an emerging sense of
shame ... [over] his disappointments and shame at his personal, marital, and work
failures." Morrison goes on to note that ”[h]e [the client] associated to his precarious
financial situation. It's unfair that I should be poor and needy—I should be financially
secure, and I wish it were so. I feel vulnerable, humiliated to feel so precarious
(171). Although Willy cannot articulate his shame so clearly, this is what he experiences.
Because he feels so humiliated and incompetent, he continues to ask others about the
"secret" to leading a successful life.
When discussing the issue of professional failure in the context o f Willy Loman,
it is necessary to assess the role the culture plays in Willy's career and his evaluation
of it. While a number o f critics address the issue of culture and the role it plays in
Willy's life—in the decisions he makes and the difficulties he encounters—none
recognize the shame potential embedded in the culture's very standards and ideals.
For example, William Aames casts Willy as a victim of society, "one of those 'who
landed in the ash can'" (97), and Jeremy Hawthorn contends that Willy is
destroyed by his unwillingness to see "intolerable and contradictory [external] pressures from society, family or work" (93) as anything other than normal and manageable. Neither critic notes, however, that Willy ascribes his failures to himself and
not to the culture or to societal or famihal circumstances or pressures (much less to the burden of shame).
99 Some critics, including C. W. E. Bigsby and Gerald Weales, believe that Willy had the power to accept or reject the imposition of cultural standards. Had Bigsby been famüiar with shame theory, he might not assert that ”[t]he irony o f Willy's life is that he has accepted other people's estimations of his value. He has the power to construct himself as he has the skill to fashion wood ..." (101). Willy does not have such power.
Shame-based individuals are convinced that they are worthless, incompetent, and incapable of success; therefore, they are often unable to envision themselves as fully realized persons. Such a negative self evaluation prevents them from constructing for themselves an ideal image that originates from within. Weales insists more correctly that each of Miller's heroes "is involved... in a struggle that results from his acceptance or rejection of an image that is the product of his society's values and prejudices ..." (74).
While the acceptance or rejection is not in Willy's case a willful decision, it is true that he becomes a slave to a culturally determined image of success that becomes, for him, an origin of considerable shame. He is, in efrect, caught in a cultural shame bind, a kind of societal catch-22: lacking the wherewithal to meet or exceed the culture's success ideal, he experiences shame every time he compares himself to the social standard; on the other hand, were he to give up his pursuit of this particular idea of success, he would experience the shame of the outsider, disparaged because of his rejection of his culture's values and standards. Either way, he loses. (This is, o f course, part o f BifFs dilemma.)
Matthew Roudane also notes that Willy apparently endorses certain cultural values relating to identity and success. However, Roudane's analysis of Willy is in the
100 context of tragedy,^ for he asserts that Willy is opposed not by cultural standards and
expectations but by a force superior to them: an adversarial universe. In discussing the myth of the American Dream and associated cultural fables as they relate to Death o f a
Salesman, Roudane suggests that "it is an endorsement foisted upon him less by personal choice than by a malevolent universe whose hostility mocks his every pursuit" (61). This somewhat naturalistic interpretation of Willy's fate overlooks the very details of his experiences and the real problems that arise from them, including a series of shame-producing events that increased his vulnerability to cultural evaluation and self-condemnation. While the universe may indeed by malevolent, we can identify specific circumstances that finrther jeopardize Willy's chances of leading a secure and successful life.
* A number of critics have Joined the debate over whether Willy Loman is a tragic or a pathetic character. While this chapter does not have as one of its objectives a resolution to this debate, the application of shame theory may shed some light on the matter. For exan^le, Aames denies Willy the status of tragic hero, calling him a "pathetic, limited man.... [one who] has no more control over his mind than over the wire recorder he accidentally switches on m Howard Wagner’s ofBce. WQly is, simply, a man breaking down" (95-96). What Aames may not understand, however, is that Willy's self-delusion is the product of grandiosity, a manifestation of intemalized shame. Lying, like conceit, vanity, and pride, is a narcissistic response to shame affect. Granted, this may not make Willy less pathetic, but it does offer a psychological explanation for his behavior. Furthermore, the fact that Willy's profound shame operates beyond (or below) his consciousness could be considered, in fact, a superior force with which he has to contend. Surely he has no more control over it than he does a "malevolent universe." Miller himself thought he was creating a tragic character victûnûed by his culture's obsession with a narrowly defined "law of success." (And M. H. Abrams seems to agree, for in his X Glossary o f Literary Terms, he weighs in on the subject, asserting that Death o f a Salesman is a modem tragedy, relying "for its tragic seriousness on the degree to which Willy Loman, m his bewildered defeat by life, is representative of the ordinary man whose aspirations reflect the false values of a commercial sociefy' [176].) Alice Griffin, who sees Willy as more tragic than pathetic, says that "Death o f a Salesman has been described as a tragedy of the common man,' in which the hero's error in judgment lies in his unquestioning commitment to a career of selling himself. In Miller's opinion a tragic figure must be committed: the hero's commitment to his course' is one of 'intensity, the human passion to surpass his given boimds, die fanatic insistence upon his self-conceived role'" (44). The only problem with Miller's opinion is, while Willy may believe that he is pursuing a self-conceived role, he is really pursuing a culturally imposed one, and that makes a difference.
101 Many critics note that Willy yearns to receive a positive evaluation from the
outside world. When he does not, his own self-assessment is colored by the humiliation
of failure, a point made by Qun Wang in an essay addressing ethical values and
individuality in the context of the play. While Wang does not draw upon shame theory
for his conclusions, he comes closest to an accurate understanding of the forces
underlying Willy Loman's "psychological derangement." He suggests that Willy
experiences "some kind of moral struggle," which Wang defines as aninabili^ to
develop his own set of ideals. Wang, in apparent concord with those critics who note
Willy's external orientation, argues that Willy defines "identity in terms of his social
success and embraces public recognition as the only judgment of the validity of his
actions— [Willy believes] that he cannot live by any identity other than that designated to him by society" (98).
This is a reasonable explanation to a point. In commenting on the social aspect of the play. Miller noted that Willy has broken "the law which says that a failure in society and business has no right to live.... [T]o fail is no longer to belong to society" (qtd. in
Griffin 36).^ Willy does define himself (his identity and his ideals) according to
^ la the introduction to volume one oThe f Collected Plays o fArthur Miller, Canning notes that Miller considered the plays "his responses to the constantly changing society around him. Attempting to tell truths that would lessen the isolation of individuals, he sought to demonstrate that many of the problems or anxieties believed by people to be unique are shared with others" (71). Some feminist critics, however, take issue with Miller here, charging that his female characters in Death o f a Salesman represent either inaccurate male constructions or, worse, sexually exploited mdividuals bound to the male success script. For more information on this perspective, see Charlotte Canning's "Is This a Play About Women?: A Feminist Reading of Death o f a Salesman.” (Roudane notes that, for many feminist critics, the play "presents a grammar of space thatmargmalizes Linda Loman and, by extension, all women, who seem othered, banished to the periphery of a patriarchal world" [61]. Although Willy does exercise a dommating control over Linda, his behavior has less to do with traditional patriarchal authori^ than with the narcissistically inspired urge to achieve control over another in an environment that seems largely uncontrollable. In a subsequent chapter we explore the psychodynamics of a sadomasochistic relationship.
102 externally derived standards. Miller calls it the "law of success;" Gershen Kaufinan calls it the success script. Because an externally derived identic often conflicts with one's own desires (in Willy's case, these had something to do with working with his hands, an identity that resonates in Biffs own ideals), one cannot give oneself fully to those culturally defined standards. Thus, one is not likely to succeed, and, as a result, one experiences the shame evoked when one fails to meet the requirements o f the success script. Wang correctly notes that, in the end, Willy becomes a stranger to himself because he "is mesmerized by thoughts' that do not reflect his true interests in life ..." (98).
In addition to the shame he experiences over failing to meet certain cultural expectations (including âiancial security and a prestigious company position), WiUy also considers himself a parental failure. Outwardly, he wonders why Biff has not "taken hold" of anything; however, internally, Willy believes that he is to blame for Biffs seeming lack of motivation. Early in the play, an animated, defensive Willy tells Linda,
"not finding yourself at the age of thirty-four is a disgrace.... Biff is a lazy bum!" (16; act
1). Willy has certain expectations for Biff—expectations that grow out of Willy's urgent need to experience vicariously outward success—and they are narrow at the same
For now, suffice it to say that the dommeering partner, by en^loying a narcissistic defense to shame, is reacting to a governing scene in which he felt powerless and vulnerable. In the case of the controlling or abusive spouse, he is attenq>ting to acqune a feeling of power in order to feel less vulnerable to other people or situations over which he is powerless. By grounding their interpretation m a social context, feminist critics overlook the profound implications o f shame dynamics which, in a highly stratified and specialized post-industrial culture, become not only a relevant idea, but a required theory to a full understanding of characterization.)
103 time they are nebulous.^ (While he imphes that personal success is all about making
money in the business world, his advice is superficial and largely unhelpful: "[T]he man
who makes an ^pearance in the business world, the man who creates personal interest, is
the man who gets ahead. Be liked and you wül never want" [33; act I].) Biff, however,
has no interest in Willy's idea of success, and, as a result, he disappoints his father. This
disappointment is exacerbated when Willy meets Bernard in Charley's ofiBce and comes
face to face with Bernard's professional success. Bernard's success is one more reflection
on Willy's failure, in this instance as a father. Willy is "pained" to learn Bernard is
traveling to Washington to argue a case before the Supreme Court because Bernard's
success contradicts everything Willy taught his sons ("Bernard can get the best marks in
school, y'understand, but when he gets out in the business world, ^understand, you are
going to be five times ahead o f him" [33]) and throws B iffs struggles and, thereby,
Willy's parental inadequacies, into stark rehef
While Willy yearns to help Biff in some way, he feels powerless to do so. Willy has lost all his confidence (as has BifQ, and he no longer believes that he has what it
^ Morrison notes that such "rigid preconceptions of authoritarian expectations" cannot be attained fully and, thus, lead to feelings of shame and failure. Morrison sees a connection between ego ideal and shame. He sees shame resulting &om a failure of one to meet another's ideals: "In describing the patients' lack of conviction in their own worth, and a concern with what other people will think of them, the authors [Cohen et al, who, in 1954, published a landmark paper on manic-depressive illness that includes a 'view of the manic attack as a defense against the realization of failure'] are calling attention essentially to shame and narcissistic vulnerability. The rigid preconceptions of authoritarian expectations, which they strive to meet but can never attain, leads to a vulnerability to feelings of failure and shame" (174). Biff could not meet his father's expectations, m part because of Willy's contradictory and negative messages and instructions, which favored success over honesty, personality over hard work, and superfîciahty over substance. Willy did not know the secret of success, yet he fully expected Biff to reach his (Willy's) idea of it. Such a situation is bound to fail, leaving all involved parties ashamed. This, then, is the stage of shame that Biff has reached. He is exceptionally sensitive to Willy's behavior toward him and comments about him, and he believes that he has become unacceptable to Willy and, thus, unlovable. (Willy feels exactly the same way regarding Biff. Each feels alienated from the other by these shame-related responses.)
104 takes to succeed as a father or as a breadwinner, hi this state, he sees himself as a failure
in every area of his life, including his illusory meetings with his brother Ben. When he
imagines Ben for the first time, he says: "Ben! I've been waiting for you for so long!
What's the answer? How did you do it?" (47; act 2). In a later hallucinative visit with
Ben, he again asks, "Oh, Ben, how did you do it?" (85; act 2), and while talking to
Bernard he asks, "what—what's the secret?" (93; act 2). His shame is so deeply intemalized and, thus, pervasive that he even imagines Ben shaming him: "With one gadget he [Ben and Willy's father] made more in a week than a man like you could make in a lifetime" (49; act 2). In this way, Willy shames himself, confirming the self-perpetuating nature of the affect and the use of imagery to sustain it.
Willy's daydreams are a fascinating phenomenon. To a shame theorist, they represent another portal into Willy's affective functioning. Helen Lewis notes that shame may produce what she calls an "internal auditory colloquy." For Lewis, shame is a wordless state played out in imagery. Willy's daydreams about the woman and his brother Ben represent this concept of imagery that contains a shaming element. Lewis suggests that the whole self is condemned by the "other" in these internal auditory colloquies (37). While Ben's condemnation of Willy, while oblique, is fairly obvious, the woman's is not, suggesting perhaps that Willy's unconscious mind views his relationship with her ambiguously. Surely he realizes the affair was morally wrong, but he may not see the woman herself as condemnatory as Ben. He may idealize her, seeing her as one of a very few people in his life who saw him as something other than a failure.
Willy's relationship with the woman is not the only thing he idealizes. Because he has reached the point where his chronic shame anxiety makes him feel constantly
105 exposed to external scrutiny, he is compelled to idealize other aspects of himself and his
reality. While Hawthorn may not know it, he is describing how idealization is used as a
defense against shame when he notes that Willy "attempts to paper over reality with the
myth [of success]. He allows the dreams necessary to his work to start to take over his
whole person” (qtd. in Griffin 43).
Miller also noted that Willy "cannot bear reality, and ... he keeps changing his
ideas of i t ..." (qtd. in Griffin 43). To live in reality is to experience his chronic shame.
Thus, in response, he creates an idealized reality that contradicts the painfiil truths on
which his life is constmcted. This is what Hawthorn means by papering over reality (i.e.,
Willy's own) with the myth (of the American Dream). Willy does not measure up to the
myth's criteria, and he views himself as a failure because of that. Failure to meet the
criteria of the success script breeds shame. And the longer one fails at it, the more
pronounced the shame becomes. (This may be what happened to Miller's uncle Manny,
who also killed himself later in life after failing to establish a business for his boys.)
It should be noted that, while many critics debate the nature and significance of
Willy's "daydreams," none have coimected them to shame affect. Daniel Schneider's
"psychodynamic analysis" of the play is interesting in part because it demonstrates quite
clearly how the application o f shame theory elaborates upon another's analysis. When
addressing W illy's hallucinations or flashbacks, Schneider correctly contends they represent the return of repressed events (and, presumably, the feelings associated with them). "Here is the inrush of the unconscious self, unknowingly compromised and buried; it is the return Jung so terrifyingly characterized as 'with knife in hand.'
Weakened by fatigue and oppressed by his lengthening catalogue of failures, Willy
106 becomes increasingly vulnerable and disorganized" (qtd. in Wilson 79-80). Here, the end results are correctly identified—Willy becomes exceptionally vulnerable (as a result of his exquisite shame anxiety)—but the psychodynamic to which Willy’s decline is ascribed is not fiiUy rendered. Willy’s mental state is due in part to repression; however, it also is symptomatic o f his pervasive shame, against which he has had to marshal a constant psychological defense. Furthermore, his litany of failures, especially those related to interpersonal relationships, are origins o f the shame affect. Willy is quite literally dying of shame.^
Shame also plays a significant role in the central conflict of the play, which arises out of Biffs knowledge o f Willy's adultery. For Biff, his father’s infidelity is not just a violation of wedding vows, it is an act of betrayal against his mother and, almost as importantly, the family. Such a betrayal ruptures the bond between father and son and produces shame in both. For Willy, such a sudden and unexpected exposure to his shameful behavior is quite profound, in part because it is incongruous with his previous image o f himself as a responsible father adored by his sons.
After Willy asks Bernard why Biff never caught on to a vocation that provided steady employment and a good income, Willy tells Bernard confidentially, "His life ended after that Ebbets Field game. From the age of seventeen nothing good ever happened to him" (92; act 2). At this point, Willy seems intent on discovering why Biff has lived his life as he has, and he again asks Bernard, "Why did he lay down!" (93).
^ Harold Bloom suggests that the play might have beea better titled "The Dying o f a Salesman because Willy is dying throughout" [5]. As this chapter makes clear, WOly has suffered the effects of pervasive intemalized shame from the time he was a young chOd, and m a very real sense he has been slowly dying.
107 After Bernard and Willy puzzle over Biffs refusal to go to summer school to make up the math course he needed to graduate, Bernard asks: "What happened in Boston, Willy?"
(94). This is, o f course, a key question, and after Bernard asks it "Willy looks at him as at an intruder," fijr the origin of Willy’s deepest, most poignant existential shame lies in
Boston. Willy’s behavior broke the interpersonal bridge or bond discussed in Chapter
Two. As a consequence. Biff experiences the hurt and humiliation evoked by signiftcant shame because Willy’s promiscuity violates the trusty faith and love that heretofore cemented the parent-child bond. In effect. Biff views Willy’s infidelity as a form of abandonment, and their relationship is never the same again. Furthermore, Willy’s deeply felt shame and the various affects accompanying it, including humiliation and embarrassment, contributes further to his denial of all shame, which became too immense to confiront. Thus, instead of admitting to his mistake, apologizing to Linda and his sons, and beginning the long amendatory process, Willy behaves as if nothing ever happened.
In this way, the effects his mistakes have on Biff go unacknowledged—both to himself and to Biff—and Biffs shortcomings become the focus of Willy’s ire (another defensive reaction). Thus, the real victim. Biff, becomes the perpetual family scapegoat, forever the lightening rod for his father’s shame-based anger, guilt, and fiustrations and his mother’s fear and worry.
When B iff discovers that Willy has a woman with him in the hotel room, Willy cannot dodge the impact and the implications of this impropriety. He is suddenly and unexpectedly confironted by his shame because denial, Willy’s usual ploy, is not a viable defense at that instant. Willy’s in^propriate behavior is exposed to his son, who reacts with utter disgust: "Don’t touch me, you—liar!... you fake! You phony little fake! You
108 faket” (121; act 2). As a result o f this sudden, unexpected exposure and subsequent rebuff, Willy's own self-regard is diminished because he knows that Biff can no longer hold him in high reg ard /
Rather than live with this diminished self-regard, Willy directs his animosity toward the one whom he mistakenly believes is responsible for it—B iff Instead of admitting to his duplicity and accepting the consequences of it, he banishes from his house the primary victim because Biff becomes representative of Willy's shame and the self condemnation that attends it. Biff is aware of Willy's animosity—"Everything I say there's a twist of mockery on his face. I can't get near him" (21 ; act 1)—and he believes he knows its origin. Although B iff is probably unaware of the shame dynamics at play in his relationship with Willy, he does recognize that Willy's changing behavior and scornful attitude are not entirely his fault: "There's one or two other things depressing him. Happy" (21). Thus, while Biff cannot name shame as the underlying cause of his father's negative attitude, he is aware of the effects it has had on their relationship.
What needs to be recognized regarding this most important incident is the complexity and intensity of this shame dynamic and the way it manifests itself in both characters. One element of this complex interaction is the concept of the "judging other."
Lewis contributes to our understanding of this complicated, tortured relationship when she notes that shame often requires a judging other. Lewis explains that, in order to feel
^ Brenda Murphy suggests that die audience's credulity is strained by BifPs reaction to Willy's infidelity. Although Miller tones down BifPs womanizing (Murphy characterizes this behavior as "depersonalization of women") in script rewrites, he is presented nevertheless as a young man of sexual experience. Murphy finds it hard to believe that such a character would be "emotionally shattered when confronted with the occasional dalliance of his travelling-salesman fadier," (52) a clear indication that she has no idea of the profound implications such a discovery has on the father-son relationship, including the creation of a deep, poignant shame that alters the nature of the relationship forever.
109 shame, one must be conscious o f another who considers one's behavior inappropriate:
"The 'other* is at least indirectly implicated as the source o f shame, since the
consciousness o f something dishonoring, ridiculous or indecorous about oneself requires
the existence o f what [William] James called a 'judging companion ' But the self must
accept the 'other's' standard ofjudgment if shame is to be felt" (Shame and Guilt 64).
This idea raises two issues. First, because shame is so difficult to admit to, the
culpable party tries to make the wimess share the responsibility for the shame, if only
indirectly. While W illy could not articulate this process (primarily because he is not
consciously aware o f it), he does practice it. By projecting his animosity onto Bifili he is
making Biff responsible for his (Willy's) shame-evoking behavior. Second, it is fairly
safe to assume that prior to Biffs discovery o f Willy's infidelity, W illy experienced little
if any shame consciously over it. As Willy did not exhibit remorse before that night (at
least none that we know oQ, he obviously was not riddled with shame. In the absence of
a judging other with whom the offending party concurs about the moral impropriety of
the deed, the offender, according to Lewis, escapes shame, hi this case, Willy surely
recognizes Biffs opprobrium and concurs with it, for if he did not he would not engage in denial, projection, and bitter criticism. What can be more shameful to a father than being caught in the act o f adidtery by his son?
Understandably, some critics want to ascribe Willy's relational problems with Biff to guilt alone. (This is a logical interpretation when one does not privilege affect theory and the primacy o f shame and its variant feelings.) For example, Bigsby contends that
"Biff and Willy's relationship is bedeviled by guilt" (102), which is true to an extent, but he misses entirely the role shame plays in the degradation of their relationship. Alice
110 Griffin, too, believes that Willy "suffers guilt that the shock o f the affair destroyed Biff'
(36). Surely Willy feels guilty about his infidelity, but, as discussed above, it was not
until Willy's promiscuous behavior was observed by his son (the witness) that he
experienced the profound shame that results when the interpersonal bond between father
and son is broken irrevocably.^
Biffs discovery o f Willy's infidelity produces another shame response. Lewis
notes that a retaliatory rage is often directed at the witness, and we see this dynamic
occurring between Willy and Biff. According to Lewis: "Shame evokes retaliatory rage
at the 'othef or at the witness, but since it is shame-rage, hostility is quickly directed back upon the self by guilt... [because] hostility evoked in shame is trapped against the self both by the passivity o f the self and by the person's value for the 'other"' {Shame and
G uilt 198). Thus, when Willy criticizes Biff soundly, which he often does, it is an act of retaliatory rage originating in the shame affect evoked by Biffs discovery of Willy's adultery. However, as Lewis notes, because Biff is esteemed by his father, the anger
Willy directs at Biff quickly reflects back on Willy, the shame-based offender. As one can see, this dynamic becomes a cycle, a repetitive behavior that neither individual understands nor knows how to circumvent. It becomes part and parcel of the overarching
^ Daniel Schneider is another critic whose omission or unawareness of shame theory leads him down the well-worn Freudian path of the Oedipal con^lex. Schneider ascribes Biffs "collapse" to this complex as follows: "The father has been sexless in being godlike, and dus image is now destroyed.... [TJhis is a variation of the Oedipal theme: the father has played god (for instance, m 'fîxmg* th^gs for the growing boys when they ran into trouble ...) and then fails to measure up to godhood" (qtd. in Wilson 80). Kaufinan and other shame theorists assert that broken interpersonal relationsh^s between parent and child are sources of significant shame. Biff discovers that his father is having sex with a woman other than Biffs mother, and that discovery affects every relationship m the family, even though only Willy and Biff know about the infidelity. Biffs collapse is shame-related; the Oedipal conçlex plays little or no role in Willy’s behavior and the profound negative effect it has on his son.
I l l shame dynamic that rules the relationship. Both Bifif and Willy are in the thrall of unidentiGed shame, which continually undermines their relationship. Thus, Willy knows that he has behaved in a way that is unworthy, especially in the context of his relationship with and importance to Bifif He has let both Bifif and himself down. Willy has, in Lynd's words, "done something unworthy of one's previous idea o f one's own excellence," an act of shame compounded by the contempt of a judging other about whom the offender cares deeply (24).
One constant in a shame-bound family is contradiction, hi addition to being the family scapegoat. Biff also is designated the family hero. Instead o f taking responsibihty for their own lives, and the failures and disappointments each experiences, the Lomans look to Bifif to save the family and, thus, each one individually. Morrison addresses this dynamic, noting that it occurs in families that can be "viewed as isolated and feeling inferior and different from others, with the patients assigned a central role in the family's quest for a higher social position" (173). At the same time they are imploring Bifif to rescue Willy, Happy ascribes Willy's problems to Bifif and "the fact that you're not settled, that you're still kind of up in the a ir..." (21; act 1), while Linda accuses him of turning his back on Willy and, therefore, doing nothing to ease his suffering (60; act I), an accusation that only exacerbates Biffs inner shame.
Like Linda Loman, some critics find Biff responsible for Willy's life. Murphy suggests that, because of the inadequate nature of the love Biff offers to Willy, he is partly responsible for Willy’s suicide [because "B iffs form of love would leave his father to a bleak, perhaps poverty-stricken foture, with only the feckless Hap to depend on" (52).] Such a misinterpretation of behavior is quite likely when one does not understand the shame dynamics that are operative between Biff and Willy, particularly the damage Willy's infidelity has done to the interpersonal bond between foem. Murphy, obviously sympathetic to Willy, thinks Idee Linda Loman: she wants to place Willy's life in Biffs hands. Were Biff to remain in New York and become another store clerk, that would mark the beginning of the death of his own soul. Additionally, because such, a business-oriented pursuit is counter to everythmg Biff believes, he would experience the evocation o f chronic, continual shame because he would not be following the ideals he has firmly begun to establish for himself.
112 However, Willy and B iff are not the only Lomans who experience relational difficulties. Happy's troubled relationships with women are superficial and primarily
sexual. In fact, he is a compulsive sex addict who uses sex as a defense against his own inner shame and the depression it spawns: "I get that [beautiful woman] anytime I want.
Biff. Whenever I feel disgusted. The only trouble is, it gets like bowling or something. I just keep knockin' them over and it doesn't mean anything." He yearns fi)r a more substantial, long-term relationship—"I would [like to find 'somebody with substance']!
Somebody with character, with resistance! Like Mom, y* know?" (25; act 1)— but he cannot, because his relationships with women are based not only on an obsessive-compulsive disorder, but also on a passive-aggressive response to failure.
When he is passed over for promotion, he punishes the successful candidate by seducing his girffiiend: "I don't know what gets into me, maybe I just have an overdeveloped sense of competition or something, but I went and ruined her, and furthermore I can't get rid of her. And he's the third executive I've done that to" (25). While it is true that Happy does not know what gets into him, his behavior clearly is a shame-based reaction to deep-seated feelings of inferiority. Like his father and his brother. Happy suffers from low self-esteem and an overall feeling of worthlessness, and his response to shame-evoking situations is characteristic of one who carries internalized shame, a shame that originated largely because he was the forgotten child.
" Morrison notes that, in a family affected by unidentified shame, the children often have superficial relationships as adults, even though they seem to be at ease m social situations. Additionally, "[w]hile they had a few dependent relationships, they offered very little in return. They frequently had feelings of inferiority and great need and ofren feared abandonment by family or their few friends. They were anxious at the thought of being alone and often felt very empty" (Morrison 173).
113 Happy may be, then, the most overlooked character in the play regarding the
dynamic of shame and neglect. He constantly seeks Willy's approval but rarely, if ever,
gets it. Willy is so fixated on Biff and his athletic success that Happy is virtually
forgotten. Early in Act One, as he lies on his back and pedals his feet. Happy says to
Willy, "I'm losing weight, you notice. Pop?", to which Willy responds, "Jumping rope is
good too" (29; act 1). Clearly Willy's response lacks the focused attention and
enthusiastic regard Happy needs to feel loved and accepted. A few minutes later. Happy
says exactly the same thing and receives no response from Willy. Later in the same act
Hap says, "I lost weight. Pop, you notice?", but Willy never does. Happy never receives
the approbation and attention that Biff does, and so he is forever needy; however, his
interpersonal needs are bound by shame, and he never feels fiilfilled. His deep insecurity
is defended against by engaging in compulsive sex, and as a result his desire to
experience a substantial, longer-lasting relationship becomes more remote with each
afiair. His emotional insatiability, once bound to shame, fuels his compulsive behavior,
which in turn intensifies his inner shame. Thus, Happy, like Willy and Biff, is caught in
a shame cycle that can only worsen.
However, not all critics see it this way. Schneider, for example, persists in his
belief that guilt is Happy's primary problem, an interpretive error easily made when
applying Freudian concepts to this shame-bound family. Schneider errs by believing that the "tragedy is concerned with a hidden motivation—the guilt of a younger son for hating his older brother. W illy envies the rich and mysterious Ben; Hap envies Biff. Willy’s
failure is in the defeat o f his effort to overtake Ben by becoming a successful salesman"
(qtd. in Wilson 80-81). While Willy may envy Ben, there is no sign of jealousy in the
114 drama. Having had no adult male guidance to show him how to negotiate life, he
implores Ben to give him some help ("Ben, how should I teach them?"). Willy's failure is
not the result o f failing to surpass Ben's wealth. Willy, lacking an inner-defined ideal to
which to aspire, chose a standard cultural one: the American Dream. It was to this
cultural ideal that he compared himself, and, by finding himself incompetent and
unworthy, his feelings of internalized shame intensified.
Like Willy, B iff is plagued by shame produced as a result o f not meeting external
ideals. B iff feels that he has failed to measure up to society's expectations for him: "No,
I'm mixed up very bad. Maybe I oughta get married. Maybe I oughta get stuck on
something. Maybe that's my trouble. I'm like a boy. I'm not married. I'm not in
business, I just—I'm like a boy. Are you content. Hap? You're a success, aren't you?
Are you content?" (23) Biffs western wanderings are symptomatic of the idea of
"homelessness" raised by Kaufinan and others. As Biff does not fit into the standard
image of the American Dream, he is thus an outcast of sorts, one who fails to meet
successfully the requirements of certain cultural expectations (including Kaufinan's
cultural scripts). Thus, a part of him feels insecure, defective, rejected. He thinks, "I don't fit anywhere." As a result, he blames himself, concluding that he is either
incompetent, stupid or both: "... every time I come back here I know that all I've done is to waste my life" (22-23). Although he does not want to live his life as Willy has lived his, Biffs negative self-evaluation originates in shame, the shame evoked when one does not measure up to the "other's" standards.
BiH* compares himself to what he thinks are acceptable social ideals: marriage, business, material success. What he really wants, however, is to be content with himself,
115 with who he is. Willy and Hap will not let that happen, and they deny him the
opportunity to think outside of their own narrowly defined stereotypes. Biff confesses to
Linda: "I just can't take hold. Mom. I can't take hold of some kind of a life" (54). Later,
however, in a heated argument with Willy, he says: "And I never got anywhere because you blew me so full o f hot air I could never stand taking orders fi’om anybody! That's whose fault it is!... I had to be boss big shot in two weeks, and I'm through with it!" (131; act 2).
This idea finds fuller expression a little later in the play. While cooling his heels in Bill Ohvefs waiting room. Biff realizes that he has no business asking OUver for money because Biff is "not the man somebody lends that kind of money to" (105; act 2).
Biff through Willy's encouragement, had come to believe that he had once been a salesman for Oliver, an experience that might have quahfied him as a competent retailer of sporting goods. However, as he waited, he discovered his self-deception, for what he had been was a shipping clerk. At that moment, he reaUzes "what a ridiculous he my whole hfe has been!" (104).
Possum and Mason address this issue of shame in respect to parental expectations and dependencies and the need to project onto the child an aura o f specialness and entitlement. Willy has disowned much of his confidence and drive to succeed, projecting them onto Happy and, in particular. Biff He reUes on them to become the business success he never was. Possum and Mason have identified this phenomenon, noting: "A child takes on the parental projection that he or she is more special than other people, which becomes the seed for feeling alienated and unlike others" (31). By convincing Biff that he is superior to others, Willy has imposed on him an exaggerated sense of
116 entitleinent that is undeserved. As an adult. B iff cannot figure out why others do not see
his greatness and regale him with the finits of success. Eventually, he comes to realize
that his inability to "catch on" is tiie result of Willy's exaggerated evaluation of him,
which ultimately leads to failure and the shame it evokes.
However, unlike Willy and Happy, Biff fortunately achieves a degree of
self-awareness, and this enables him to see himself and his experiences more accurately
and clearly. He comes to understand that he has been affected by Willy's grandiosity,
which has prevented Biff fiom achieving a realistic perspective about life. (Because Biff
expected to be "boss big shot" at once, he never saw the need to prepare himself for
anything). In a very real sense, Willy's internalized shame and the defenses he employs
against it, including denial and grandiosity, have inhibited significantly Biffs emotional
growth and development- And even though B iff is seen by his family as the one who
cannot catch on, he exhibits the greatest self-awareness;
I stopped in the middle of that building and I saw—the sky. I saw the things that I love in this world. The work and the food and time to sit and smoke. And I looked at the pen and said to myself, what the hell am I grabbing this for? Why am I trying to become what I don't want to be? What am I doing in an office, making a contemptuous, begging fool of myself, when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am! Why can't I say that, Willy? (132)
Biff cannot say "I know who I am" because W illy has projected all of his hopes and dreams onto him, thus depriving him of his own life. Biffs ability to express his
Muiphy argues that Biff was "not origihaliy intended to be a moral coimterforce to Willy" in spite o f Miller’s disappointment that BifPs "self-realization... is not a weightier counterbalance to Willy's disaster in the audience's mmd" (51).
117 authentic aspirations is further suppressed by his own inner shame, which binds the spirit, saps the strength, and immobilizes mental and emotional faculties. Additionally, BifPs most significant adult relationship—his relationship with his father remains broken after seventeen years. Thus, Willy's legacy is one of shame, profoundly affecting both his sons.
Compounding the above mentioned shame states and shame-related behaviors is the process of self-sabotage, something in which Biff engages often. A shame-based individual may engage in self-destructive behavior as a way of sabotaging plans that, unconsciously, the individual feels incapable of executing successfully. Shame-based individuals are full o f feelings of inferiority and worthlessness; therefore, they rarely feel competent. Believing themselves to be incapable of success, such people often find ways to sabotage themselves, thus continuing their history of failures.
Biff serves as a literary paradigm for this behavior. The most obvious example of his self-sabotaging behavior is when he steals Bill Oliver’s fountain pen after waiting all day to see the man for whom he once worked. Although we know that Biffs kleptomania is an obsessive-compulsive behavior that most likely has its primary origin in shame, in his theft of Oliver’s pen Biff is derailing for certain any remote possibihty he has of borrowing money from his former employer. And while this act might appear impulsive, it is more likely the intent of his unconscious mind to protect him from the additional shame that would be evoked by Oliver’s outright rejection of Biff and Happy’s inane idea.
With the recognition that his whole life has been a lie. Biff became aware that he did not have the credentials for a substantial loan, and with this awareness came the very real potential of additional shame evoked by rejection. Then: "The next thing I know I'm in
118 his ofiBce— I can't explain it. I—^Hap, I took his fountain pen" (104). O f course Biff
cannot explain it. His unidentified shame, that primary affect pervading his very self and
influencing his behavior in profound ways, triggers a defense, in this case the theft of the
pen, closing the door forever on the possibili^ of a business association with Oliver, the
only real, if tenuous, connection B iff has to the business world.
In spite o f this heritage o f generational and realistic shame. Biffs dogged
determination to recî^ture his iimer direction suggests that he will one day turn things
around. Such a positive outlook is harder to imagine for Happy. After Willy's burial
service. Happy declares: "I'm not licked that easily. I'm staying right in this city, and I'm gonna beat this racket!... I'm goima show you and everybody else that Willy Loman did not die in vain. He had a good dream. It's the only dream you can have—to come out number-one man. He fought it out here, and this is where I'm goima win it for him"
(138-39; requiem). Thus Happy, the forgotten child, assumes the shame-begotten role
Biffhas just sloughed off, confusing honor with futility; for, had Willy been able to reach the level of self-awareness B iff attains, he would not have allowed Happy to pursue such a false and destructive course. Even after death, the overlooked son seeks the father's attention, and as bound as he is to his own internalized shame, it is unlikely that Happy will ever be able to say the last words Biff directs at him: "I know who I am, kid" (138).
In a very real sense, all the Loman men are fatherless. Biff and Happy are fatherless in the sense that, as a shame-based individual, Willy cannot bring a fully functional and present self to a relationship and, therefore, the character with whom the boys interrelate is debilitated and distracted by his deep-seated emotional problems. This inability to establish a meaningful, loving relationship with his sons is implied in this
119 comment: ”... sometimes Fm afîraid that Fm not teaching them the right kind of—Ben, how should I teach them?" (52) Unquestionably, Willy also wants to teach them how to lead a successful vocational life, but, unconsciously, he wants them to have what he did not: a successful relationship with their father. Unfortunately, Willy does not have a clue about establishing such a relationship, and that leads to further âustration and shame.
When he tells Bernard "I got nothing to give him" (93; act 2), he might think he is talking about money when, deep in his heart, he is talking about love. This is one reason why
Willy cannot take his life imtil he believes unquestioningly that Biff loves him. That is the one good thing W illy can take to the grave, one thing at which he succeeded: "Biff— he likes me!" (133; act 2) For the moment, he is relieved o f the shame he feels as a defective, incomplete father. Perhaps this is why he chooses to die at that time: he departs life feeling not only loved, but adequate as well. This is a feeling Willy has not felt often.
Because the Loman men cannot pinpoint shame as a cause of their psychological distress, there is little hope that one of them will recover firom this most pernicious and powerfixl affect. However, the Lomans are not the only family we find in modem
American literature so afflicted. The Tyrones, too, are deeply influenced by their shame, and we now turn our attention to them.
Lons Day's Joumev Into Nisht: Living in the Shadow o f Shame
Although O'Neill was not familiar with the psychodynamics of affect theory, he does create characters who experience the internal alienation of self. Kurt Eisen notes that, while Brecht "counted O'Neill among the 'Aristotelian' dramatists who wished the
120 audience to identify deeply with the hero and to achieve a cathartic spiritual cleansing...
O'Neill saw himself also as departing from Aristotelian notions of tragedy by
emphasizing the internal alienation of the self as the most forceful image o f the tragic
available to the modem dramatist" (3). What O'Neill might not have understood,
however, was the role shame plays in this internal alienation.
And while O'Neill, like Miller, did not need to have an understanding o f affect
theory to write plays comprising shame-bound families, knowledge o f this theory can be
indispensable in analyzing the Tyrones. To demonstrate how a lack of knowledge of
shame theory can lead to an incomplete analysis o f the play, consider the following
statement made by Peter Brooks:*^ "The desire to express all seems a fundamental
characteristic of the melodramatic mode. Nothing is spared because nothing is left
unsaid; the characters stand on stage and utter the unspeakable, give voice to their
deepest feelings, dramatize through their heightened and polarized words and gestures the
whole lesson of their relationship" (qtd. in Eisen 126). Because each member of the
While a number of O'Neill scholars have written about the Tyrone family and its tribulations, none has informed his or her analysis with affect theory. However, some have identffîed what are clearly shame-related syn^toms, including defensive behavior and strained interpersonal relationships, while others have examined potential causes of their discontent including cultural factors. For an analysis of the origins and symptoms contributing to Irish American cultural shame, see John Heiuy Raleigh's discussion in The Critical Response to Eugene O'Neill. (Raleigh notes that many Irish Americans experienced deep-seated feelings o f inferiority and insecurity in the U.S., feelings that are clearly responses to significant shame.) For a discussion of the Tyrone family in the context of social displacement and idealization of the past, see Laurin Porter's "Modem and Postmodern Wastelands; Long Day's Journey Into Night and Sheperd's Buried Child." (Although Porter does not use the language of shame theory, she nevertheless delineates a number of die shame defenses employed by the Tyrones.) Kurt Eisen explores the homeless nature—both literal and metaphorical—o f the Tyrone's existence inThe Inner Strength o f Opposites: ONeilTs Novelistic Drama and the Melodramatic Imagination. (While Eisen is correct to suggest that the Tyrones long for "an identity built on a strong sense of connection to place and to a stable family architecture," he misses the pomt when he asserts that "their sense of family is built on a general mistrust of home as a concept..." (128). It is not their concept of home that is the primary problem; instead, it is their own individual interior psychical architecture, eroded as it is at the foundation by undisclosed negative affect, that prevents the normal connection to home and family.)
121 Tyrone family is affected by internalized shame, what is said is largely the voice o f
defensive response—contempt, blame, projection, grandiosity—which conceals shame
and its variants fiom conscious awareness. While it may seem that nothing is left unsaid,
because what is said is so often a reaction to or a defense against shame, we do not
usually hear how a character feels about himself or herself beyond the destructive aura of
shame. Shame pervades one's personality and becomes its principal speaker, shoving
aside other aspects of one's self and rendering them speechless. Thus, instead of having
the whole lesson o f their relationship, we have the remains o f relationships extensively
damaged by shame affect.
Relationships are, nevertheless, the center of the play's dramatic conflict, and any
serious analysis of the play must consider the characters involved. As in any
shame-based, dysfunctional family, teasing apart the tangled threads of emotional conflict
is a difficult and tedious job; however, a start must be made, and so we begin with Mary.
While a portion of Mary's shame has as its origin her addiction to morphine, there are
other, earlier causes as well, including neglect, abandonment, and parental failure. She
Of all the critics reviewed in the context oZ Journey, only Michael Hinden mentions shame in his analysis of Mary; "In light of her situation, Mary’s professed code of blamelessness is largely a cover for her sense of shame." Hinden notes that Mary atten^ts, sometimes obliquely, sometimes overtly, to shift blame away from herself for a number of th^gs, mcluding her drug use. Hinden is correct when he says that "Mary’s attacks on the family seem to be spurred by her own defensiveness. Even in the midst of self-accusation, she cannot help deflecting guilt upon others" (42). Hmden also is correct when he notes that, by making everything another’s fault, she "is a dangerous, destructive presence m the family. We can imagine her telling Jamie over the years that he is not accountable for his brother’s death, while on each occasion riddling him with guilt [and shame].’’ While Hinden recognizes that Mary acts particularly spiteful toward Jam ie, he does not connect her attitude to the contempt synq>tomatic of shame. Jamie gmdgingly becomes the critical other, the one whom she most fears "because he is always the Erst to guess her condition when she resorts to drogs." By simply being a witness to his mother’s addiction, Jamie, too, is shamed. "Although she does not desire this result, her rejection of Jamie effectively has destroyed him" (43). The interpersonal bond is broken; the relationship is damaged irreparably.
122 experiences additional shame related to her family (including her sons' educational
failures, lack of success, and dissipative behavior) and its social and material status,
that Mary is the primary catalyst of the family's emotional upheaval, she is an attempted
suicide and other humiliating incidents, and a deep, abiding guilt complex over some profound, unresolved issues, such as her son Eugene's death and her resumption of morphine use. While it is unfair and inaccurate to charge indisputable part ofiL^^
When we first meet Mary, she is beset by acute shame anxiety. She has resumed her morphine use after an extended stay in a sanitarium, and her obvious anxiety suggests that she is terribly afiraid that her husband and sons will discover her relapse, which she realizes will come as a great disappointment to them. Her primary fear, then, is a response to the anticipated humiliation that will be evoked by such a discovery, and the resulting shame comes more firom within than without. Given Mary's long history of drug addiction, her present relapse looms as a final indignity, virtually ensuring that her dependence on morphine will only increase. This is a classic example of a shame cycle that, since her son Eugene's death, she has tried to ameliorate through medication.
However, such self-medicating measures, while effective momentarily, evoke additional shame, binding her more tightly to this affective state.
As the "central addictive figure within the family,” Steven Bloom wants to make Mary primarily responsible for the family's problems: "family members, die spouse and children, wait to see and assess how the problem drinker will act or speak and respond in likewise m anner in order to maintain harmony" (162). While it is true that the alcoholic's family members "walk on eggshells" so as not to provoke a nas^ scene. Bloom underestimates the effects shame has on James and his sons, who would attack one another regardless o f Mary's behavior. Bloom is quite correct, however, when he notes diat the three Tyrone men "continually deny responsibility^ for their own lives ..." (164).
123 At the same time that Mary is overtly anxious over her renewedm orphine use, she either denies her addiction or attempts to recast the problems it has caused her and her family in other terms. For example, she blames her social isolation on her husband
James's frugality, and not her fear of further exposure to humiliation andsham e B y transferring ownership of her problem to James, she is free to reinterpret it to meet her needs, creating an image of material deprivation that meshes well with her defensive scheme.
An example of this behavior occurs later in Act One, after Mary observes the
Chatfields in their new Mercedes. She laments that, while the Chatftelds enjoy a beautiful new car, she has to suffer their "secondhand Packard." According to her way of thinking, the "Chatftelds and people like them stand for something.... They have decent, presentable homes they don't have to be ashamed of. They have ftriends who entertain them and whom they entertain. They're not cut off from everyone"(Long Day's Journey
Into N ight 44, act 1; subsequent citations refer to this edition). Addressing her son
Edmund, Mary provides us with an example o f this transference process:
I've never felt it was my home. It was wrong from the start. Everything was done in the cheapest way. Your father would never spend the money to make it right. It's just as well we haven't any friends here. I'd be ashamed to have them step in the door— You've never had a chance to meet decent people here. I know you both would have been so different if you'd been able to associate with nice girls instead of—you'd never have disgraced yourselves as you have, so that now no respectable parents will let their daughters be seen witii you. (44)
Like the Rev. Gail Hightower in Faulkner's L ight in August (discussed in the following chapter), Mary has to create fiction to conceal the truth and the shame it evokes. She has no friends, her story goes, because she would be ashamed to have them visit her house.
Interestingly enough, she is ashamed of her shabby house and her sons' behavior, but
124 neither problem is directly responsible for her isolation. Edmund attempts to inject some
objectivity into her explanation, saying; "Anyway, you've got to be fair. Mama. It may
have been all his fault in the beginning, but you know that later on, even if he'd wanted
to, we couldn't have had people here—" (45; act 1). He means that they could not have
entertained guests while Mary was on morphine, an implication that causes Mary to
wince. She responds, lips quivering: "Don't. I cant bear having you remind me" (45).
While not an outright denial, this response is intended to close the door on any discussion
of her drug abuse and problems related to it. Her shame is immense, as is the pain related
to it. Out of necessity, she creates a fiction, partially founded on fact, the intent of which
is to deflect additional sham e away firom her.
Mary also attempts to locate the origin of shame she experiences over her sons'
dissipative behavior in James's parsimony. She contends that Jamie and Edmund would
not have disgraced themselves (through drinking, gambling and whoring) had they been
able to meet the daughters o f "respectable parents," social introductions made impossible,
Mary likes to beheve, by their penurious father. While James does share some
responsibility for his sons' excessive drinking, it has little to do with fiugality. As we will see below, Mary is embarrassed by Jamie's and Edmund's behavior and their lack of
accomplishments; however, she is unwilling to consider her contribution to their shortcomings because such a consideration might evoke additional shame. Therefore, she blames her sons' failures on her husband's fougality in an attempt to escape further humiliation.
125 Mary also pretends to resent the town and its inhabitants: "I’ve always hated this town and everyone in it" (44). What she envies most is not her neighbors' wealth and material possessions but their acceptability to one another. She is isolated, lonely, and Mendless, largely because she finds herself unacceptable. As we have learned, shame-based individuals are unacceptable to themselves, and this se lfrejection makes it virtually impossible for them to attempt to form fiiendships. To do so is to risk further rejection and the profound shame that attends it. Thus, even though the shame-based person is in dire need o f fiiends who can love, accept, and nurture her, she is least able to initiate contact with others. Furthermore, Mary is not only alone, but stranded as well:
"How could I leave? There is nowhere I could go. Who would I go see? I have no friends" (83; act 2, scene 2). A few minutes later she laments: "There is no one 1 can invite to drive with m e.... if there was a friend's house where I could drop in and laugh and gossip awhile. But, of course, there isn't. There never has been" (85-86). Like other female characters who have internalized their shame (including Blanche DuBois), Mary is emotionally homeless.
Before looking more deeply into the primary shame-evoking issue in Mary's resent-day life—her drug addiction—let us first examine how Mary uses shame consciously to suppress others' suspicions about her renewed use. Early in Scene One of
Act Two, Jamie, who has just entered the house for lunch after a morning of yard work, chastises Edmund for not keeping a closer eye on Mary, who earlier withdrew to the second floor under the pretense of napping. Jamie is on edge because he fears that his mother is abusing drugs again, and he is pressuring Edmund for information about their mother's morning activities. Concerned and frustrated, he lashes out at Edmund: "You
126 damned fool! Why did you leave her alone so long? Why didn't you stick around?"
Edmund responds, saying: "Because she accused me—and you and Papa—of spying on
her all the time and not trusting her. She made me feel ashamed. I know how rotten it
must be for her. And she promised on her sacred word, o f honor—"(57; act 2, scene 1).
By questioning Edmund's trust, she piques his shame and, thereby, suppresses the
verbalization of his concerns. In this instance, her use o f shame, that potent, well-used
Tyrone family cudgel, becomes a momentarily effective weapon.
It is because of her shame anxiety that Mary alternates between denial and
admission throughout most of the play. While waiting for Tyrone to come into the house
for lunch, Jamie casts a "cynically appraising glance" at his mother's face and hands, a
look that prompts her to say, "Why do you stare like that?" Jamie insists she knows why
he stares at her so, but Mary feigns ignorance, "her face set again in an expression of
blank, stubborn denial; 'I don't know what you're talking about" (63; act 2, scene 1). A
few minutes later, after Tyrone tells her that he has been a fool to believe in her, she
responds: "Oh, you can't believe that of me! You mustn't believe that, James!... I tried so
hard! Please believe—! (69) Then, a moment later, another denial: "I don't know what
you're talking about. Have the strength to keep on what?" (70) The presence of shame
causes Mary to deny the obvious over and over again in an attempt to avoid her family's
humiliating rebuke.
However, whenever Mary can achieve a moment o f honesty about her abuse, her
shame becomes obvious. For example, late in Act Three, Mary has just learned from
Edmund that he has to go to a sanatorium for his tuberculosis. She is deeply dismayed, and her initial response is to blame her husband who, she asserts, wants to separate her
127 from Edmund. When Edmund demurs, noting that she fared well during his numerous
absences, she confesses: "You might have guessed, dear, that after I knew you knew—
about me—I had to be glad whenever you were where you couldn't see me" (119).
Here her shame is {^parent, and again the concept of hiding comes into play. As long as
her abuse and its effects are not directly observed, her shame is not evoked as intensely.
As Helen Lynd notes, shame often requires a witness, and that is why many alcoholics
and drug addicts use in seclusion or in the presence o f other alcoholics or addicts.
Unconsciously, the drug abuser is infused with shame, so he tries to maintain a low
profile to avoid having his shame raised to a conscious level. This is what Mary admits
to Edmund.
Shortly after Mary's confession, Edmund, in a moment of exasperation, condemns
her bitterly, "It's pretty hard to take at times, having a dope fiend for a mother!" When
Edmund's anger, which has been long repressed, finally erupts, it carries a full load of
shame, and the fallout is predictable. Mary is stunned. "She winces—all life seeming to
drain firom her face, leaving it with the appearance o f a plaster cast" (120). She does not
recover firom this criticism; instead, she retreats upstairs to take more morphine, the thought of suicide obviously on her mind: "I hope, sometime, without meaning it, I will take an overdose" (121). Like Willy Loman's, her shame has become intolerable, and she entertains the idea o f ending her life.
Just minutes after Edmund's hurried departure, James enters the house carrying a bottle of whisky. Mary, mired deeply in shame, tells James that Edmimd is going to die and it is her fault. "And it will be my fault. I should never have borne him. It would have been better for his sake. I could never hurt him then. He wouldn't have had to
128 know his mother was a dope fîend—and hate her!" (122) Because her shame is so pervasive at the moment, she believes her addiction and the problems it has caused the family are responsible for Edmund's illness, which she does not believe he v,ill survive.
Like so many shame-based individuals, Mary comes to believe not only that she is despised by her family, but also that she is responsible for all the bad things they experience. Her shame moves her to the epicenter of guilt, much of which is undeserved.
And, caught in a shame cycle as she is, she falls deeper into a drug fog, beyond pain and the eyes of condemnation and despair. Thus, during times o f considerable stress, she practices the very behavior that piques her internalized shame most poignantly. This is the paradigmatic shame-bind of the addict, one that is exceptionally difBcult to break.
A number o f critics address Mary's drug addiction, offering competing conclusions for her compulsive behavior. However, none connect the abuse to shame affect. For example, Michael Manheim comes close to understanding the idea of substitute addictions when he writes: "O'Neill seems to present it [her religious faith] as a genuine means for Mary’s recovery.... Her statement about her religious faith appears to flow naturally firom her most open and honest attempt to understand her addiction. But it reflects a dependence on a religious figure that suggests the workings of the drug itself
(209-10). It is true that some recovering addicts become dependent on religion, exchanging one kind of spirit for another. (This is a point Carl Jung made in a letter to
Bill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous.) And Mary's religious proclivity seems more obsessive than sincere, suggesting a defensive response to hidden shame.
Manheim concludes that Mary's religious interests contradict her drug addiction—"her clearest moment reflects another crucial contradiction" (210)—which is to misunderstand
129 the nature of compulsive behavior, especially as it relates to unidentified shame. Eisen
also addresses Mary's drug addiction, correctly asserting that she moves "back into the
past in search o f a putative lost self—trying, that is, to free herself from the oppressive
present by slipping into an idealized, virginal p ast..." (131). Thus, the lost "true self' to
which she refers is a central construct in the idealized illusion to which she retreats as a
way of escaping the shame evoked by her "oppressive present."
Before leaving the topic of Mary's addiction to discuss other origins o f her shame,
it should be noted that her resumption of morphine use ushers in another shame origin;
the failure to live up to her commitments to herself and others. Near the end of Act One,
Mary attempts to counter Edmund's growing suspicions that she has begim abusing
morphine again, saying: "But I suppose you're remembering I've promised before on my word of honor." When Edmund responds "No!" Mary continues with a "resigned helplessness:" "I'm not blaming you, dear. How can you help it? How can any one of us
forget?" (48; act 1) Mary recognizes the pain her addiction has caused her family, and she is keenly aware o f the devastating effect her resumption of use will have on Edmund and the others. As we know, she will deny the truth for hours to come, but, on an unconscious level, she is already ashamed that she has let herself and her family down one more time.
While the shame Mary experiences over her drug abuse is significant, there are other origins to this affect. For example, shame can attend situations in which a loved
This is exactly what Hightower does in Light in August. However, instead o f relying on drugs or alcohol to induce a mind-altered state, he achieves his idealized vision of the past through a kmd of self-induced trance enacted daily. While Hightower’s retreat to an idealized past is acconq>bshed through ritualistic procedure, Mary's is accomplished irregularly and erratically through drug addiction, which is clearly a compulsive behavior symptomatic of hidden shame.
130 one is threatened in some way and we cannot do anything about it. Goldberg notes that;
Ironically, most of the hurtful shame that we are usually involved in comes firom our inability to protect those we care about, including ourselves.... hidividuals harbor feelings of shame when they feel like a helpless observer of a grievous event. The inability to avert illness in one's self or to change the morbid fate of those one cares about leaves a person feeling impotent. (43-44)
In response to Edmund's illness, Mary feels utterly helpless, and her helplessness
becomes another precondition for shame. As the pain of these multiple shame origins is
both intense and pervasive, she escapes temporarily into the mind-fog of morphine.
Mary also experiences shame over her lack of achievement beyond the purely
domestic. We are given a hint about this origin of her shame early in Act Two when
Mary, engaged in a rather critical discussion of her husband with Jamie and Edmund,
suddenly adopts a "detached, impersonal tone" and defends Tyrone:
But 1 suppose life has made him like that, and he can't help it. None o f us can help the things life has done to us. They're done before you realize it, and once they're done they make you do other things until at last everything comes between you and what you'd like to be, and you've lost your true self forever. (61)^^
While her sons find her words strange, they represent an accurate self-appraisal o f her
life, especially regarding professional or vocational accomplishments. Mary does believe that she has become separated firom a part of her self, and, unbeknownst to her, she
experiences considerable shame because of it. Not to behave according to one's innermost desires, drives, and values is to move toward a shame-evoking state. The older one becomes, the more imperative the urge to fulfill one's most revered needs. If one is somehow blocked firom moving toward at least a partial fulfillment of these needs, then one becomes susceptible to such shame-based feelings as depression, despair, and even
For Mary, "true se lf may be what psychoanalysts refer to as the ego ideal (discussed in Chapter One). 131 hopelessness. This is the state at which Mary has arrived; this is the despair she not only
articulates but acts out in the final scene of the play. Her profound hopelessness is rooted
inextricably in her deep shame.
Early in Act Three, a detached and abandoned Mary—her husband and sons,
having confirmed their suspicions of her renewed drug use, deserted her after lunch—
shares a drink of whiskey with the second girl, Cathleen, and tells her rather
confessionally: "I even dreamed of becoming a nun.... I never felt at home in the
theater— It has always stood between me and—" (102). A moment later, she says: "I
had two dreams. To be a nun, that was the more beautifiil one. To become a concert
pianist, that was the other." She pauses to regard her hands, which have been gnarled by
arthritis. Then continues: "I haven't touched a piano in so many years. I couldn't play
with such crippled fingers, even if I wanted to. For a time after my marriage 1 tried to
keep up my music. But it was hopeless. One-night stands, cheap hotels, dirty trains,
leaving children, never having a home^—" (104). Here, Mary comes face-to-face with
reality and its finality: even if she wanted to play the piano again, she could not. Thus,
her long-held dream (which, along with other goals and expectations, composed her ego
ideal) to be a concert pianist came to an end, accompanied by the shame evoked by
failiure to meet her ego ideal.
It is important to note that, even during such a moment of conscious recognition, the attendant shame must be denied in order to circumvent additional humiliation and the despair that accompanies it. This is why Mary blames her failure to pursue ardently the piano on James and his itinerant lifestyle. While it is certainly true that life on the road presented obstacles to her pursuit of music, it was her choice to accompany James firom
132 town to town. However, instead of owning up to her choices and their subsequent consequences, an admission that implies responsibility for one's decisions, Mary locates responsibility for her failure and disappointments in James and his decisions, which she then attacks. This is an obvious shame defense, one that she no doubt has used successfully for quite some time. In this way, Mary avoids not only the responsibility for those decisions she most regrets, but the remorse and shame that attends them.
Still another source of Mary's unidentified shame is her sons. She has been disgraced by their behavior, and she does fear that, due to their notorious reputations, relationships with respectable young women have become virtually impossible. Such a circumstance is exceptionally troubling because she has endured so many difficulties in other areas o f life. So much of her life lay in ruin that she yearns for one stable aspect on which she can depend, and this aspect is her sons. She has remained patient for years, holding out hope that one, or both, would mature into a young man of whom she could be proud and on whom she could depend. Instead, both Jamie and Edmund continue to live lives of noisome dissipation, and Edmund's tuberculosis awakes old fears of disease and death.
Jamie becomes the larger target of her criticism because she holds him responsible for Edmund's drinking, a behavior she links to his lack of motivation: "He'll never be content until he makes Edmimd as hopeless a failure as he is" (109; act 3). A moment later, she adds: "Who would have thought Jamie would grow up to disgrace us"
(110). Disappointment by one's children is a potent source of shame, especially when the children's behavior brings humiliation upon the family. Mary loves her sons dearly, but their dissipative pursuits intensify her internalized shame.
133 O'Neill's dramatization of the corrosive effects of unidentified shame reaches its
culmination in the final mania scene. Mary views herself as a destructive element in the
lives of her husband and children, an inveterate dope fiend who fills her home with despair. What is crucial to recognize, however, is that Mary's depression is firmly established in shame. Morrison confirms this conclusion, noting that:
[Bibring's] very emphasis on helplessness is a view of the self perceived as weak and unworthy, self-experiences that clearly generate shame. Blows to self-esteem, which result in feelings o f weakness, in&riority, and failure, also lead to shame.... Similarly, feelings o f unworthiness, insecurity, defect, passivity, and hatefulness are causes of shame. (112)
Mary perceives herself as a composite of all these feelings, failures, and weaknesses, a perception that intensifies her shame to the point that she can no longer tolerate a conscious awareness of self. This leads to a drug-induced manic response.
According to Morrison, "denial of shame is a primary mechanism of mania,"
(122) so it is reasonable to assume that Mary's manic episode is an attempt to deny the immense shame that threatens to overwhelm her. Additionally, manic episodes have been linked to shame-based depression, from which Mary suffers. Morrison notes that:
The prototypical manic episode represents a defense against depression over these experienced failures. However, our perspective on shame vulnerability suggests a deeper set of feelings, which themselves oscillate with, or generate, the manifest depression and despair.... I believe that shame most frequently underlies the depression of narcissistic vulnerability. It reflects the passive failure to attain ideals, uncontained grandiosity, and the conviction of a defective self.... It is this shame-based depression, then, which triggers the defensive manic attack in constitutionally vulnerable patients, as well as many of the suicides of middle and later life. (176)
By play's end, Mary, again in the thrall of morphine addiction, is in unquestionable jeopardy of succumbing to shame-based depression. Her manic episode is prototypical, a last-ditch defense against shame evoked by a lifetime of failures and disappointments.
134 For the moment, Mary's mania may be the only thing separating her fix>m a suicide
attempt, which she has tried in the past. Furthermore, it makes perfect sense that she
imagines herself back in the convent where her dreams o f becoming a pianist and a nun
still survive: "You must not try to touch me. You must not try to hold me. It isn't right,
when I am hoping to be a nun" (174; act 4). For the time being, she has created that ideal
virginal image o f herself that is free of shame and its related feeling states of despair,
hopelessness, and depression. In this manic moment, she does not see herself as
defective, and she is not divided from what she calls her "true self." By revising her life
in this way, she reconstitutes the promise of her youth, and the convent is a safe haven
from the profound humiliation of her present reality.^*
As if Mary's pervasive, unidentified shame were not enough, James Tyrone
carries his own abundant shame, which, like Mary's, has multiple origins, the earliest of
which is abandonment. Mary tells her sons, as Tyrone later confirms, that "[h]is father
deserted his mother and their six children a year or so after they came to America" (117;
three). A short while later, in Act Four, James recounts his childhood experience:
My mother was left, a stranger in a strange land, with four small children, me and a sister a little older and two younger than me. My two older brothers had moved to other parts. They couldn't help. They were hard put to it to keep themselves alive. There was no damned romance in our poverty. Twice we were evicted from the miserable hovel we called home, with my mother's few sticks of furniture thrown out in the street, and my mother and sisters crying. I cried, too, though I tried hard not to, because I was the man o f the family. At ten years old.... It was in those days I learned to be a miser. (147-48)
18 Of this final scene, Jean Chothia suggests that, by being completely unaware of her family's presence, Mary demonstrates "how thoroughly they are eliminated from her consciousness" (195). Through her drug abuse and manic behavior, Mary is unintentionally neglectful. She weakens further the already fiayed bonds connecting her to James and her sons. This is, however, characteristic o f one whose shame anxiety has reached crisis proportions.
135 Omitted here is James's description o f the hard labor, long hours, and deplorable
conditions he endured as a child who went without further education because he had to
help support the family. But their poverty, attended by the public humiliation of eviction,
was a primary origin o f James's shame. (It is no wonder that James "learned to be a
miser." For him, poverty is tightly bound to shame.)
Another source o f shame related to Tyrone's childhood is his curtailed education.
Bhs father's absence forced Him out o f the classroom and into the file factory, an experience that might have been ameliorated had his two older brothers remained at home to assume their share of the familial responsibilities. Like Willy Loman, James
Tyrone is first abandoned by his father and, shortly thereafter, by his older brothers, forcing him into a hard life of work and responsibility at an early age. It is no wonder, then, that both men chose to follow a conservative fiscal policy. If either one were to make a significant financial gamble, he not only would be risking his own livelihood, but that of his dependents as well. (It is for this reason that Ben Loman's financial success is diminished: he had no responsibilities and thus nothing to lose. Ben is not the big wiimer he considers himself to be.)
James’s shame over his poor education manifests as contempt for Jamie's and
Edmund's. For James, who learned to act in Shakespearean theater, all that is fit to know can be found in Shakespeare: "Why can't you remember your Shakespeare and forget the third raters. You'll find what you're trying to say in him—as you'll find everything else worth saying" (131 ; act 4). A little later in the same discussion with Edmund, he admits that he has never heard of Baudelaire and charges that Dante Gabriel Rossetti was "a dope fiend." Then, he offers this boozy invective:
136 Where you get your taste in authors—that damned library o f yours! Voltaire, Rousseau, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Ibsen! Atheists, fools, and madmen! And your poets! This Dowson, and this Baudelaire, and Swinburne and Oscar Wilde, and Whitman and Poe! Whore mongers and degenerates! Pah! When I've got three good sets of Shakespeare there ... you could read. (135)
James is insecure about his knowledge o f literature, and this evokes shame, which he
counters with contempt. He suffers foom low self-esteem, and this causes him to be
contemptuous of that with which he is not familiar.
Before turning to other origins and symptoms of Tyrone's shame, it is important to note that his father probably took his own life out o f shame for abandoning his family
in America. Addressing Edmund, who had just recalled the time he attempted to commit suicide, Tyrone says o f his father "He mistook rat poison for flour, or sugar, or something. There was gossip it wasn't by mistake but that's a lie. No one in my family"
(147). This is an ironic dismissal o f the gossip, of course, as Edmund has just mentioned his own suicide attempt. And, even though Tyrone has considerable contempt for his father—"I hope he's roasting in hell"—he denies the possibility that he committed suicide because of the stigma attached to it. Nevertheless, it is quite reasonable to assume that the father did commit suicide and, thus, died as a direct result of his shame, for abandoning one's family under any circumstance is sure to evoke this affect in debilitating portions.
Another source of James's shame is his inadequacy as a parent. Mary, exemplifying the blaming that takes place in a shame-boimd family, charges that James is responsible for their sons' alcoholism: "You brought him up to be a boozer. Since he first opened his eyes, he's seen you drinking" (110; act 3). Edmund seconds her, adding,
"Anyway it's true. You did the same thing with me" (111). While Tyrone does not
137 respond directly to these assertions, he does not deny them because he knows that they
are true. Earlier in the play, Mary broadened the scope of the blame beyond Jamie's and
Edmund's alcohol abuse to include general behavior. She asks James if he has been nagging Jamie, then remonstrates: "You shouldn't treat him with such contempt all the time. He's not to blame. If he'd been brought up in a real home. I'm sure he would have been different" (81; act 2, scene 2). hi this way, Mary attempts to make James responsible fiir all of the boys' shortcomings, a process that further undermines his self esteem, leaving him feeling ever more defective.
One o f the greatest sources of Tyrone's shame, however, is his failure to explore fully his artistic talents. Because of his great anxiety about poverty, he sacrificed his career for the easy money o f a successful play, with its repetitive, unchallenging role on which he would squander his acting skills. In Act Four, he sums up his disappointing professional life in these few words:
That God-damned play I bought for a song and made such a great success in—a great money success—it ruined me with its promise of an easy fortune I'd become a slave to the damned thing and did try other plays, [but] it was too late. They had identified me with that one part, and didn't want me in anything else.... I'd lost the great talent I once had through years of easy repetition, never learning a new part, never really working hard. (150; act 4)
Like Mary, James lives a compromised life. While Mary surrendered her dream of becoming a nun and pianist to what she thought was true love, James exchanged his opportunity to develop his iimate acting talent for easy money. Both experience the poignant disappointment of personal failure. As Goldberg notes, "[t]he realization of our failure to achieve expected and desired goals lies at the core of the experience o f shame"
(52). By squandering his talent to make his fortune, James is left to wonder:
138 What the hell was it I wanted to buy, I wonder, that was worth—well, no matter— On my solemn oath, Edmund, Fd gladly face not having an acre of land to call my own, nor a penny in the bank—Fd be willing to have no home but the poorhouse in my old age if I could look back now on having been the fine artist I might have been. (150-51)
Thus, like his wife, he realizes that he has failed himself, and with this recognition comes a shame that, while unidentified, is inreversible.^^
James is firequently humiliated by one family member or another. One issue that recurs throughout the play is the alleged harm his parsimony has caused Mary and
Edmund. When Jamie suspects that Edmund might have tuberculosis, he lays the blame on his father: "Poor kid! Goddamn it! It might never have happened if you'd sent him to a real doctor when he first got sick" (30; act 1). hi this instance, Jamie has become the critical other, and his condemnation of his father’s miserliness coupled with his charge that it has contributed to Edmund's poor health evokes shame. Moments later, after their conversation has turned to concern over Mary and the possibility that she might be using morphine again, Jamie again finds reason to blame his father. This time, however, it is about Mary’s addiction, the fault of which Jamie wants to lay at James's door: "The bastard of a doctor was [to blame for Mary's addiction]! From what Mama's said, he was another cheap quack like Hardy! You wouldn’t pay for a first-rate [doctor]" (39).
Tyrone's lament is echoed by Tennessee Williams in his essay "The Catastrophe of Success:" "It is never altogether too late, unless you embrace the Bitch Goddess, as William James called her, with both arms and find in her smothering caresses exactly what the homesick little boy in you always wanted, absolute protection and utter effortlessness. SecuriQr is a kind of death, I think, and it can come to you in a storm of royalty checks beside a kidney-shaped pool m Beverly Hills or anywhere at all that is removed &om the conditions that made you an artist, if thafs what you are or were mtended to be." Hinden notes obvious similarities between James Tyrone and O'Neill's father, James, who bought the rights toThe Count o f Monte Cristo, "a melodramatic potkiler that dulled James's talent through years of easy repetition'" (3). Like Tyrone, James O'Neill "bartered his artistic integri^ for monetary success," a compromise that recalls the moment in Act Four quoted above. In a very real sense, he wanted to buy protection from poverty and further shame.
139 This kind of damaging criticism, which occurs frequently throughout the play,
erodes interpersonal relationships. There can be no doubt that these interactions have
been going on for some time. Everyone in the Tyrone family plays the blame game. No
one's ego is strong enough to stand up and assume responsibility for a mistake. In a
shame-based family, someone has to be blamed for another’s problem. As a result, the
Tyrone family comprises broken relations, critical personal attacks, and the pervasive
shame that attends them. In terms of individual perceptions, the one blamed or criticized
sees himself as a failure. Hence, although Tyrone strongly denies that his frugality has
anything to do with Mary's drug abuse, his internalized shame lurks beneath the oaths and
denials.
Although Tyrone attempts to avoid his shame through the practice of certain
defensive responses, O'Neill lets his readers know that Tyrone's dodges are not always
effective. For example, in Act Three, when Mary describes what life on the road was
like, he does feel ashamed. After she explains that James would often leave her alone in
their hotel room to go to a bar only to return drunk early the next morning, Edmund
Although Bloom does not focus on shame's roleJourney, in he does recognize that the Tyrones evince an aura of defensiveness while engaging in drug and alcohol abuse. He investigates the use and abuse of alcohol and morphine by the Tyrones, concluding that the "pervasive dependence on chemical substances inevitably aflects the behavior of the characters and their interactions m various ways, some subtle and some blatant" (159). He notes that the Tyrones engage m an "elaborate system of denial" and "a pattern of defensiveness" (160), characteristics o f an alcoholic family. What he does not note, however, is die pervasive involvement of shame in this alcohol-related behavior. Bloom notes the recurrent cycle of charge and countercharge endured by the Tyrone men, and he quotes from an article on alcoholism and the family written by Don and Nancy Howard: "Each person keeps the cycle revolving with denial, fear, guilt, blame, confusion and belief in myths, hi this kind of family ... self-worth is negative and low, and the total atmosphere is distrustful and closed" (161). Eisen also detects a defensive conqnilsivity in the Tyrones, for he writes: "Mary ironically afGrms, in Laurin Porter’s phrase, the "steadily expanding cycles of guilt*... that the personal narratives of each Tyrone painfully chronicle and conqmlsively reenact" (131-32). Except what we have here are compulsive behaviors deployed primarily as defenses against sham e cycles, for each Tyrone is caught up in his or her own shame bind, triggering the same self-defeatmg behavior (alcohol or drug abuse, gambling, sexual promiscuity, lying) over and over again.
140 blames his father for Mary's drug habit: "Christ! No wonder—!" This condemnation is
followed by this stage direction: "Overwhelmed by shame which he tries to hide, fumbles
with his watch" (113; act 3). (While Tyrone does feel shame at this point, this does not
mean that he has an awareness of it as a primary affective disorder. Although ashamed
by a remembrance o f his drunken behavior, there is a difference between feelin g shame
and knowing that one carries internalized shame affect.)
As if these instances of criticism and condemnation were not enough, in Act Four
the argument resumes. When Tyrone gently reproaches Edmund for saying that Mary
deliberately hides in a drug fog to "forget we're alive" because she hates them, Edmund
snaps back bitterly:
I know damned well she's not to blame! And I know who is! You are! Your damned stinginess! If you'd spent money for a decent doctor when she was so sick after I was bom, she'd never have known morphine existed! fostead you put her in the hands of a hotel quack who wouldn't admit his ignorance and took the easiest way out, not giving a damn what happened to her afterwards! All because his fee was cheap! Another one of your bargains! (140)
A moment later, Edmund administers his coup de grâce: "Christ, is it any wonder she didn't want to be cured. Jesus, when I think of it I hate your guts" (141).
Jamie, too, finds fault with his father's parsimony, accusing him o f caring more
for his money than his son: "What I'm afiaid of is, with your Irish bogtrotter idea that consumption is fatal, you'll figure it would be a waste of money to spend any more than you can help" (80; act 2, scene 2). Moments later, Mary accuses him of making bad decisions because o f his penurious ways: "You were swindled again as you always are, because you insist on secondhand bargains in everything" (84). Then, in Act Four,
Edmund takes another shot at his father, believing that James does not want to spend
141 money on. his tuberculosis cure. He says, "Don't lie. Papal You know damned well
Hilltown Sanatorium is a state institution! Jamie suspected you'd cry poorhouse to
Hardy— But to think when it's a question of your son having consumption, you can
show yourself up be&re the whole town as a stinking old tightwad!... Jesus, Papa,
haven't you any pride or shame?" (144-45) These harsh accusations have a cumulative
effect, evoking additional shame in one who already suffers from generational and
experiential shame.^*
Here again are the bitter contempt and condemnation that punctuate the interpersonal interactions o f the Tyrone family with shame and the acute hurt evoked by such personal attacks. At one time or another, each Tyrone assumes the mantle of the critical other, perpetuating the shame-based relationships that so define this family.
Possum and Mason address the issue of the shame-bound family in terms of generational shame. They define the concept this way:
[A] shame-bound family is a family with a self-sustaining, multigenerational system o f interaction with a cast of characters who are (or were in their lifetime) loyal to a set of rules and injunctions demanding control, perfectionism, blame and denial. The pattern inhibits or defeats the development o f authentic intimate relationships, promotes secrets and vague personal boundaries, unconsciously instills shame in the family members, as well as chaos in their lives, and binds them to perpetuate the shame in themselves and their kin. It does so regardless of the good intentions, wishes, and lives which may also be part o f the system. (8)
These characteristics are plainly evident not only in the Tyrone family, but in the Loman family as well. Personal boundaries are not respected; authentic interpersonal relationships are not developed and maintained; blame and denial become the hallmarks
This is another exanq>Ie of how blame is used convulsively m shame-bound families. Because of the hrequency of its use, blame is often coimtered with denial; as a result, blame and denial become bound together with shame in a compulsive, and often explosive, manner.
142 of day-to-day interactions; and shame is perpetuated, creating a tense, painful and chaotic
home environment. Additionally, family secrets (e.g., Mary’s addiction, Willy's
infidelity) continue to be kept in the dark, contributing to the family's anxie^ and
mistrust.^ And while all o f these behaviors and characteristics are often ascribed to the
quintessential "dysfunctional" family, they are the product o f shame bound to individuals
who carry the affect fixjm their family of origin into their own families.
A primary origin of Jamie Tyrone's internalized shame is his father. Significant
shame is evoked in a child when he or she is the target of constant parental criticism.
This is Jamie Tyrone's experience. James is highly critical of Jamie, upon whom he
unleashes his invective over subjects large and small. Early in Act One, James attacks a placating Jamie who attempts to quash a building argument over his father's snoring and the literary allusions his sons teasingly make about it: "Yes, forget! Forget everything and face nothing! It's a convenient philosophy if you've no ambition in life except to—"
(21). Moments later, after recounting a story told by James's tenant Shaughnessy, Jamie again is the target of his father's wrath: "I suppose you're regretting you weren't there to prompt Shaughnessy with a few nastier insults. You've a fine talent for that, if for nothing else" (26). James sees his son as an abject failure, and he does not hesitate to seize upon any opportunity to let him know it. While arguing about Dr. Hardy's qualifications, the subject turns to money and James's parsimony and Jamie's profligacy.
^ Some Clitics note that the Tyrones are trapped in a constant state of defensiveness. Through a chronological analysis of O'Neill's plays, Jean Chothia suggests that, while "[t]he direct engagement with autobiography came late ... fiom the outset, CNeflTs plays were concerned with secrets and concealment ..." (193). Many of O'Neill's characters, including the Tyrones, are wary of further exposure to shame. What Chothia calls "fraught relationships" are actually individuals overwhelmed by shame anxiety interacting with one another in a highly defensive manner. Chothia correctly notes that the Tyrones have experienced relationships that have "foundered," which leads them to find "temporary consolation in alcohol [and drug abuse]" (193). 143 When Jamie mocks his own salary, James retorts, "It's more than you're worth, and you couldn't get that if it wasn't for me. If you weren't my son, there isn't amanager in the business who would give you a part, your reputation stinks so. As it is, I have to humble my pride and beg for you ..." (31-32; act 1). Just before this, James calls Jamie a
"lunkhead" and tells him that he has lost all hope in him. These are serious breeches of the interpersonal relationship, ones that destroy trust, erode consideration for the other, and produce considerable shame.
The kind of criticism Jamie experiences exposes him to other generators of shame. Furthermore, such expressions of disgust or contemptcommunicate
"unambivalent rejection," and the open humiliation Jamie endures most certainly evokes shame. Kaufinan notes that "[tjhere is no more humiliating experience than to have another person who is clearly the stronger and more powerful take advantage of that power ...". Such advantage could be taken physically, as in a beating, or emotionally, as in a harsh criticism. Clearly, Jamie suffers profound humiliation at the hands of his father, and his behavior is symptomatic of a shame-based individual
{Shame 21-22).
Jamie and his father have become one another's critical other. As such, each condemns and antagonizes the other compulsively, intensifying the other's shame experience, which in turn triggers defenses against shame. Among the defenses marshaled against the affect are retaliation and contempt, which, when employed by one, provokes a similar defensive assault by the other. In this way, the shame cycle is
144 perpetuated, and the participants become ever more bound to their shame and the behavior it evokes. Obviously, one result o f this dynamic is the erosion o f relationships, something that also contributes to the characters' shame.
Jamie also is humiliated by James for having been expelled &om college; "all you did was get fired in disgrace firom every college you went to!" (32) The irony here is that, although Jamie was "fired" firom a number o f colleges, the behavior that led to his dismissals had a direct causal relationship to shame. By the time Jamie reached college, his self-esteem was critically low, the result o f living in a shame-bound family dominated by a severely critical father and a dmg-addicted mother. Jamie also feels inferior and defective, shame states provoked by firequent criticism. He admits that he intentionally tried to ruin Edmund. Drunk and confessional, he tells Edmund:
I've been rotten bad influence. And worst of it is, I did it on purpose.... Did it on purpose to make a bum out of you. Or part of me did. A big part, that part that's been dead so long. That hates li&.... Never wanted you to succeed and make me look even worse by comparison. Wanted you to fail. Always jealous of you. Mama's baby. Papa's pet! (165)
Jamie's jealousy is rooted in shame. As he felt inferior and, therefore, unlovable, he grew to resent Edmund because he felt even less acceptable in comparison to him. Edmund represented a threat to Jamie's already firagile self which wanted to avoid further exposure to failure (through an unfavorable comparison to his brother, a situation identified by Kaufinan as shame producing).
Jamie, like his mother and father, has lost an important part of him self to shame.
He admits to self-hatred, and believes that a part of him has died: "I hate myself. Got to take revenge.... The dead part of me hopes you won't get well. Maybe he's even glad the game has got Mama again! He wants company, he doesn't want to be the only corpse
145 around the house!" (166) His alcohol abuse and otho: compulsive behaviors, like his
mother's and father’s, are symptomatic o f a pervasive, unidentified shame he has carried
since childhood. His shame affects every aspect of his life, destroys his relationships,
deadens his spirit, thwarts his intellectual and vocational endeavors and imperils his will
to live. Because he hates who he is and what he has become, a part of him yearns to be a
destructive force within the family.
In part because he is the youngest member of the family, Edmund has not been as
debilitated by shame as has mother, father and brother. But like the others, he cannot
escape the consequences of Uving in a shame-bound family, including becoming the
occasional target o f blame.
For example, Mary tries to pass her shame onto Edmund by implying that he is
responsible for her drug use. When Edmund leams fiom Mary that she sent Cathleen into
the drug store to have Mary's prescription for morphine filled, he expresses concern over
Cathleen's ability to remain discrete. We are told that Mary "[t]ums on Edmund with a
hard, accusing antagonism—almost a revengeful enmity" before saying, "I never knew
what rheumatism was before you were bom!" (116; act 3) Although the blame is implied
rather than expressed, the meaning is inescapable, and Edmund looks away "shrinking
into himself." Mary's accusation evokes shame in Edmund even though he knows he is
not responsible for her drug addiction.
Later, in Act Four, Jamie cannot refirain from exhibiting the same compulsive blaming behavior, telling Edmund: "And it was your being bom that started Mama on
dope" (166). Jamie is trying to make Edmund feel guilty for being bom, an event that, as
discussed earlier, intensified Jamie's shame anxiety.
146 Edmund exhibits a number of shame symptoms and defenses, mcluding fatigue, anxiety, depression, retaliation, and obsessive-compulsive behavior, the most obvious mamfestation of which is his abuse of alcohol. Before the play begins, we learn that he
"lacks his father’s vitality" and that the "signs o f premature disintegration are on him."
We also learn that he has "the quality^ of extreme nervous sensibility" (19-20). Like his brother, Edmund sneaks a drink before lunch and, later that evening says, "Well, what's wrong with being drunk? It's what were after, isn't it?" (132; act 4)
Like his mother, he yearns to withdraw, to escape firom the harsh realities of his life: "The fog was where I wanted to be Everything looked and sounded unreal.
Nothing was what it is. That's what I wanted—to be alone with myself in another world where truth is untrue and life can hide firom itself’ (131). As we have seen, depression is a shame-related affect, and foe depressed individual often withdraws to reduce his exposure to additional humiliation. While he is highly critical of Mary's behavior,
Edmund behaves in exactly foe same way for many o f foe same reasons. However, instead o f drifting into a morphine-induced fog, he drifts into an alcohol-induced one.
And also like his mother, Edmund has attempted suicide, an act indicative of internalized shame. As discussed earlier in this chapter, suicide is often attempted when one can no longer bear to stand in foe light of his or her own shame. Alcohol and drugs can relieve foe intensity of shame's pain for awhile, but, like other compulsive behaviors, they only postpone foe day when foe individual can no longer avert foe ftiU force of this affect.
147 Conclusion
Long Day’s Journey Into Night, like Death ofa Salesman, comprises a series of
culminating events and Üieir attendant emotions. It has taken a good deal of time to reach
this state of the Tyrone family's journey, and the gradual but inexorable accretion of
shame has reached such a point that it can no longer be repressed. As we have learned,
shame accrues over a lifetime o f experiences, some of which seem trivial and
unimportant. Once the affect is intemalized, subsequent evocations of it often go
undetected. In this way, unidentiried shame becomes more pervasive until, eventually,
the entire self is affected or bound to this affect. There comes a time in the life of each
shame-based individual when, in a moment of self-consciousness, the self stands
revealed. At this moment, "experiences of shame throw a flooding hght on what and who we are and what the world we hve in is" (Lynd 49).
Mary, James and Jamie Tyrone, like Willy and his son Biff, approach this lighted stage. (BiS^has achieved the most accurate and honest setf-appraisal.) Shame is attended by an element of surprise. Unlike guilt, which is evoked when one engages in behavior one knows to be inappropriate in some way, shame is something that usually comes upon one from without. Hence,
[t]he shameful situation frequently takes one by surprise. But one is overtaken by shame because one’s whole life has been a preparation for putting one in this situation. One finds oneself in a situation in which hopes and purposes are invested and in which anxiety about one's own adequacy may also be felt. In shame the inadequacy becomes manifest; the anxiety is realized. (Lynd 49-50)
It is at this point that Mary, James, Jamie and Willy find themselves. We enter their lives at a time when they are overtaken by their shame. While a single event (e.g.,
Jamie's illness, Mary's resumption of morphine use, or Jamie's guilt) might have triggered
148 the shame-based behavior we witness in these plays, each of these characters’ lives has been a preparation fisr these final experiences. These fbur were bom into shame-bound families where abandonment and broken interpersonal relationships perpetuated the intergenerational cycle o f shame. Each of them suffered the intense anxiety of the inadequate self, a sham e-fueled anxiety^ that m ounted as their innerm ost dreams and desires faded into darkness. Having reached the depths of their full shame, each sees himself or herself as an inadequate, unrealized self. It is at this point that each character’s shame-anxiety is fully realized, and the sudden shock o f this powerful affect drives Mary into a drugged oblivion, James into a state of hopeless resignation, Jamie into a depressed stupor, and Willy to suicide.
In the end. Miller and O’Neill demonstrate in these plays that each Loman male and every Tyrone suffers the fate of the largely innocent individual debilitated by the psychodynamics o f shame affect. In 1940, O’Neill told a fiiend about a new play in progress: ” A deeply tragic play, but without any violent dramatic action. At the final curtain, there they are, trapped within each other by the past, each guilty and at the same time innocent...” (Dubost 124). This, then, is the enduring contribution made by both
Miller and O’Neill: the creation of characters who not only exemplify the destructive nature of shame vis-à-vis the individual, but who also demonstrate quite convincingly shame’s potential to ensnare an entire family in its dark, inescapable web.
149 CHA PTER4
MASTER OF SHAME: WILLIAM FAULKNER
AND THE HUMILIATED SELF
Those who were made to feel powerless and incapable o f fair exchanges with significant others tend to perpetuate these feelings into contemporary relations. Shame-imbued people are not able to conceive of being part of relationships, or even interactions, that are characterized by mutual respect, compassion, and decency. Carl Goldberg
Perhaps no modem American writer understood the devastating effects of shame better than William Faulkner. Virtually all of his novels and short stories contain characters who have been significantly scarred by shame, yet none focuses primarily on this affect or its deleterious implications. In Faulkner's works, shame is ubiquitous and virulent; however, it is almost always hidden, unconscious, and, therefore, unidentified.
It is the elephant in the living room: large, weighty, unmistakable and yet unacknowledged. But once a finger is pointed in its direction, it takes shape, looms large, and fills the room with its ominous presence.
It goes without saying that many critics have focused on the importance of psychology—its centrality to identity formation, its pathologies and their symptoms—in
Faulkner’s works, but none have dealt directly with shame. However, many critics are actually talking about shame even though the word "shame" is not mentioned in their
150 argument. For example, while John. Longley does not apply shame theory to his
interpretation o f Joe Christmas and the Rev. Gail Hightower{Light in August), he reaches
some conclusions that, while derived from a different theoretical context, are similar to
those reached herein. There are those critics, too, whose analyses remain incomplete in
the absence of shame theory. For example, Ineke Bockting, in what she calls a
psychostyUstic analysis of character and personality in selected works o f Faulkner,
formulates a definition of personality that addresses the significance of psychological
conflicts and realities; however, because she does not deal explicitly with shame in her
study, her psychological analyses remain incomplete.^
To say that Faulkner is interested in shame is to underestimate its importance to him. He is fascinated, if not obsessed with it, which suggests that he, too, was haunted by
shame's many demons. Part of Faulkner's genius was his intuitive understanding of how shame originates and takes root in the psyche. As Bockting remarks, he "had what Lee
Jenkins has called an 'intuitive perception of the depth and character of mental aberration and the various modes of mental functioning—as they appear in his characters'"
(Bockting 115). Included in his intuitive perception was a remarkable understanding of
' I argue throughout this dissertation that, for any psychological study of character to be complete, affect must be taken into consideration. Bockting's analysis certainly has merit She argues that in his psychological novels, Faulkner’s characters achieve a "psychological reality" through "the complexity, the layeredness, the fluidi^, and the paradoxical qualities of identity itself..." (13-14). She suggests that both real and literary persons "characterize themselves by how they stmcture then: worlds, or in other words, by how they create their own place within a social structure." For Bockting, the philosophical question concerning the essence o f personality thus becomes; "what happens m us, witfi us and through us on account of our personalities, hi real life as well as in fiction, personalia presents itself as a text:narrative a with its repetitions, its conflicts, its cause-effect relations and its te n d ra i progression" (14). In terms of this concept of personality as text, however, affect must be considered, especially in the calculus of cause and effect relations. Priinary shame affect has the potential not only to influence personality, but to control it as well.
151 shame affect, including its origins, its internalization, and its symptomatic responses, such as denial, grandiosi^, and even death. And Pamela Boker, in an essay that addresses Joe Christmas's rejection of the cultural "I," contends that Faulkner intuitively knew, "with extraordinary accuracy, the pathological mechanisms which allow an ego to cope and survive in a psychic state o f refusal, transgression, and negation of all ordered and stable systems ..." (176). What Boker refers to as "pathological mechanisms," however, are actually shame-related responses, defensive behaviors that allow Joe (and others) to survive in such an abject shame state. Bokefs perceptive analysis exemplifies
Kaufinan's point (see Chapter One) that, lacking the language to describe shame, its symptoms, and the psychodynamic processes that spawn them, identification of the affect is difficult. Here, Boker does identify some of the psychological responses to shame; however, in the absence of shame's analytic firamework and the language that gives it life,
Boker cannot correctly name shame as the primary problem.
Some critics credit Faulkner with creating a psychopath (Joe Christmas) before the science of psychology had a term for it, but in truth the character portrait he paints is not so much that of a murderous psychopath operating beyond the constraints of conscience, but of a man tortured by the poignant, pervasive shame evoked by abandonment, rejection, physical and verbal abuse, and social isolation and condemnation. Kaufinan does include sociopathic and psychopathic syndromes in the category o f pathological syndromes, noting that "[tjhese syndromes essentially involve a misfiring o f conscience and must be examined in terms of shame in order to delineate the necessary and sufficient determinants of antisocial behavior. Failures of human attachment invariably become sources of shame" {Psychology o f Shame 116). While a
152 case could be made that Joe Christmas exhibited both sociopathic and psychopathic
behaviors, the underlying, or presenting, cause o f these behaviors/symptoms is
intemalized shame produced by abandonment, abuse and ridicule (ail of which are
"failures o f human attachment").
While Joe Christmas is perhaps the most memorable of Faulkner’s shame-based
characters, he is but one o f many. Not all are as obvious or as tortured as Christmas, but
each suffers the profound affects of unidentified shame. Most of Faulkner's characters
are shamed more subtly; nevertheless, the damage is done, and the symptomatic behavior
manifests to the detriment of the character and, almost without exception, his or her
family. Faulkner's awareness o f shame, its origins and symptoms is uncanny, and his
accurate representation o f affected characters is unparalleled in modem American
literature.
While the characters discussed in this chapter collectively experience a broad
range of shame origins, I see Faulkner as particularly interested in the generational nature of shame, with its dark undercurrents of family secrets and the deep humiliation they evoke. He had the ability to see directly into such situations and to comprehend the power of the unconscious control these secrets exerted on individual and familial behavior. Faulkner knew, perhaps from personal experience, that the families most likely to be inheritors of shame are those that "protect their history with secrets, mysteries, and myths" (Fossum and Mason 44). Absalom. Absalom! is one such novel where secrets, mysteries, and myths abound, producing an impenetrable, defensive web that occludes
153 the truth while deepening the shame. While it is impossible to know whether Faulkner's remarkable understanding of shame was the product of intuitive or deductive reasoning, unconscious or conscious thought, we have the irrefutable results o f his work: a large body of fiction that explores the secrets and myths that bind not only whole families, but the entire South to its shame.
As we will see, "[f]amily members create powerful myths about their histories, often leaving out the painful historical shapers of the shame. The children in these families are loyal through their lack o f questioning about the past, thereby colluding in the family's rules" (Fossum and Mason 46). In Light in August, this process is eminently displayed through the behavior of the Rev. Gail Hightower, who not only creates an elaborate fiction to conceal his grandfather's cowardice, but evokes it ritualistically to keep the historical truth, with its associated shame and pain, at bay. So powerful is his shame, with its inherited generational origin and inseparable link to a lost war and the
South's ineffable humiliation, that his entire life is constructed upon an imperative to maintain the family myth and, thereby, preserve the individuals sustained by it. Faulkner had insight into a human emotional dynamic that contemporary psychology has just begun to understand.
Another principal Faulknerian subject addressed in the following pages is the attraction of shame-bound families to the dogmatism of fundamentalist religion. Fossum and Mason describe the sexual abuse case o f a mother who expressed neither shame nor guilt over her sexual contact with her children, acts she described as a "wonderful experience." However, she went on to admit that she did feel shame over having had sex
154 with her husband's brother because it violated one of the Ten Commandments. O f this case, the authors write:
This is a clear example o f the rigidi^ of the value structure in a shame-bound family. It is well-known among therapists o f abusive families that this family system is commonly drawn to the dogmatism of fundamentalist religion. The key factor we are underscoring is the family's distortion of rules and guides for living into inflexible, inhumane judgments. Their laws are applied ritualistically and out o f context with the rest o f life. The people involved get hurt to preserve die principles. (33)
A number of Faulknerian families are founded on such rigid and disturbed value structures, and within these families are individuals who use fundamentalist rehgion as their context for creating an inflexible, judgmental family rule of law that is applied both constantly and ritualistically. In Light in August, we see this dynamic in Doc Hines,
Simon McEachem, Calvin and Nathaniel Burden (Joanna Burden's grandfather and father), and even Joanna herself. While the degree of rigidity varies firom character to character, the result is often similar: a family bound to its darkest, most humihating secrets by shame. The rule of law serves to preserve the family and its offending individuals by defending them against the shame that would be evoked by the revelation of the secrets.
It should be noted that there is a connection between these rigid family systems and generational shame. When one is bom into such a family, the offending event may have transpired a generation or more before, but the rigid stmcture, no matter the form, is still maintained as a defense against the still repressed family shame. Because Simon
McEachem's inflexible discipline is based on religious dogma, he most likely was bom into a family that employed religion as the context for the establishment of its rigid rule stmcture, while Hightower, although a minister as an adult, grew up in a world
155 constructed of unspoken myths and unanswered questions. As we will see, his family's
defensive structure was constructed out of silence and a few remnants o f the dead past.
Because the truth was so painfully humiliating, the past had to be reconstructed, leaving
out that event which brings shame to the family. This process, too, had to become both
rigid and ritualistic, and Faulkner not only understood these dynamics, he gave them
vivid life in the fijrm of his remarkable fiction.
This chapter focuses exclusively o i l L ight i n August. B y beginningmy analysis
with Joe Christmas, I am able to explore Faulkner’s understanding o f one of the most
destructive origins of childhood shame: abandonment and broken interpersonal
relationships. However, Christmas experiences other shame origins and, eventually,
shame anxiety, topics also addressed in the first section. Following my discussion of Joe
Christmas, I look closely at Joanna Burden and her shame-evoking experiences,
including the complex relationship she has with him. Then, I examine closely Gail
Hightower, one of Faulkner's most intriguing characters, whose entire life is bound to an idealized illusion that is his defense against generational shame.
Dark Tales o f Hidden Shame
Joe Christmas might be the most profoundly shamed character in modem
American literature. Tom firom his mother's breast by his deranged and fanatically religious grandfather. Doc Hines, he spent his early childhood in an orphanage where he was hectored by other children who, encouraged by Hines, called him a "nigger."
Although his mother did not abandon him, he was an abandoned child nevertheless; furthermore, firom birth he was plagued by Hines, who pledged him self to Joe's
156 destruction because, to Hines, he was the "devil's own work." Thus, from the beginning
of his life, Joe was targeted fi>r punishment and destruction, and the weapons o f choice were shame and humiliation.
Joe Christmas suffers a constellation of experiences that evoke shame, beginning with his separation from his mother. Kaufinan contends that even a preverbal child can experience shame as a result of abandonment. Even though Joe never knew his mother, he felt her absence and was greatly affected by what he did not receive, including her loving regard, reassurance that he was safe, secure, and wanted, and a positive mirroring of emotions that contributes to self-acceptance and trust.^ Instead, Joe is shadowed by the deranged and vengeful Hines, whose overt contempt the child experiences as complete rejection, a rejection he ascribes to his own unworthiness based on the fact that he must be offensive and disgusting. When love is withheld and contempt or indifference is shown, shame can intensify to the point of sheer terror (Kaufinan,Shame 19). Thus, even as a young child, Joe internalizes shame, leaving him isolated, insecure, anxious, and hurt. As we will see, his intense anxiety conditions him not only to expect swift punishment for perceived wrongdoing, but to require it, creating that rigid value system that contributes some order and reliability to an otherwise chaotic, anxiety-producing existence.
~ Other critics have noted Christmas's social withdrawal, though none have linked it to shame affect. Bockting quotes Gordon Allport, who argues correctly that no one "can be indifferent to theabuse and expectations of others." Bockting adds t ^ t "mevitably the persecuted person will have to create ego-defenses." She notes that, due to persecution, "Christmas's personabty becomes more and more detached and resigned" (185). While Bocktmg does not mteipret Christmas's personab^ from the perspective of shame theory, she is correct when she says he "was abeady vulnerable because o f bis rootlessness, bis lack of identity and his loneliness ... [and thus] becomes progressively withdrawn " (185). As ECaufrnan notes, a devastating shame follows the rupture of a significant relationship, particularly one between parent and child. Even more profoimdly disturbing, however, is the absence of interpersonal bonds, which summarizes Joe Christmas's childhood experience.
157 Another shame-evoking experience planned and carried out by Hines is Joe's early social rejection, which Hines orchestrated by using racism and hatred to turn the other orphanage children against him:
And old Doc Hines watched and heard the mouths of little children, of God's own fatherless and motherless, putting His words and knowledge into their mouths even when they couldn't know it since they were without sin yet, even the girl ones without sin and bitchery yet: Nigger! Nigger! in the innocent mouths of little children. (361-62)
In this way, Hines has directed his mad, fanatical, religiously obsessive and inspired vengeance against Joe from thebeginning o f his life. Hines intentionally creates a shaming environment that is both persecutory and isolating: "So old Doc Hines he watched and he waited— Because he didn't play with the other children no more now.
He stayed by himself^ standing still..." (362). Less than five years old, Joe is already ostracized from society and confused about his racial origins, two significant origins of his early intemalized shame. The inscription of the idea that Joe is part Negro is begun by Hines, who sets the process in motion through the orphanage children and dietitian.
Though to the orphanage children the word "nigger" does not yet contain its full cultural significance, it is, according to the prevailing codes, a powerful signifier having profound cultural consequences.^
^ The teim "nigger" is one o f those signifieis that Judith Wittenberg calls "murderous word symbols," and Joe's internalization o f this idea resulted in self-destructive behavior (155). As Lillian Smith notes in her autobiographical memoir, there was no mediating signification for "mulatto" in Christmas's South. If one was thought to have Negro blood, he was coded a "Nigger" or a "colored" and treated accordingly (qtd. in Wittenberg 151-52). To be relegated to second-class citizenship is to experience the evocation of shame.
158 la Hines, Faulkner has created a character with an instinctual knowledge o f the shaming process and its devastating effects, and he became shame's willing instrument:^
Why don’t you play with them other children like you used to?" And he didn't say nothing and old Doc Hines said, "Is it because they call you nigger?" And he didn't say nothing and old Doc Hines said, "Do you think you are a nigger because God has marked your face?..." (362)
Hines shadows the child to reinforce his message of humiliation and to ensure the shaming process continues to its dreadful end. While already confused about his identity and vaguely aware that some kind o f racial division exists in his world, Joe asks a Negro gardener why he is a "nigger." The gardener responds angrily, saying, '"Who told you I am a nigger, you little white trash bastard?' and he says, 'I aint a nigger,' and the nigger says,'You are worse than that. You dont know what you are. And more than that, you wont never know. You'll live and you'll die and you wont never know'..." (363). Thus,
Joe's quest to find a home in the world begins with condemnation, confusion, and a harsh prediction that proves prophetic. (However, because Joe willingly accepts in the end society's verdict that he is Negro, he finds peace during his final hours of life because he is free of the shame bom of homelessness. Even though he remains uncertain about the racial identity of his parents, the Jefferson society of which he is temporarily a member forces upon him a single, clear-cut racial identic, something that has eluded him throughout his life because o f his resistance to a culturally constructed identity.)
While at the orphanage, Joe endures a shame-producing experience that demonstrates his early inurement to, if not dependence on, a rigid rule system. While Joe
** ** Hines, too, is a shame-based character. As such, he exenq>lifies the point û a t Light in August dociunents the vicious cycle ofsham e that affect theory and "reading for sham e" unlocks. Shame is passed along from family member to family member. In this relationship between Hines and Christmas, aggression as a response to shame only begets more aggression (m Joe the adolescent).
159 is furtively consuming some o f the orphanage dietitian's pink toothpaste behind a cloth
curtain in a comer o f her room, the dietitian enters with Charley, the institution's intern.
While they make love, Christmas vomits up the toothpaste and is discovered by the
woman, who calls him a "little rat" and a "little nigger bastard." She believes that
Christmas saw her having sexual intercourse, and she is afraid that he will tell others.
Three days pass while the dietician worries excessively that the frve-year-old child will recount in adult-like detail the nature of her tryst with the intern. When she decides finally to confront him, he anticipates a beating—"[s]lowly and gradually the muscles of his backside were becoming flat and rigid and tense as boards" (116)—not for observing her sexual liaison, but for vomiting up her stolen toothpaste. However, instead of a spanking, he receives a silver dollar. Faulkner describes his reaction this way:
He did not move nor speak. He might have been carven, a large toy: small, still, round headed and round eyed, in overalls. He was still with astonishment, shock, outrage. Looking at the dollar, he seemed to see ranked tubes of toothpaste like corded wood, endless and terrifying; his whole being coiled in a rich and passionate revulsion. "I dont want no more," he said. T dont never want no more,' he thought. (117)
This is a scene, of course, that has earned a great deal of critical attention. Boker, for example, correctly asserts that "Faulkner seems to have been intuitively aware not only of the catastrophic effect that words can have on the firagile ego, but also how they seem to halt the natural flow of time and paralyze the psyche by irretrievably consigning identify to a corrupt symbolic system" (178). She gives as an example the orphanage dietitian's labeling o f Joe as a "little nigger bastard," words that "arrested" Joe and held him "immobile." From this moment on, Joe's psyche carries the imprint o f this so-called
160 primal scene (or governing scene) with its inscription o f "nigger" and its attendant
sh am e/
Thus, this episode demonstrates that, at five, Joe’s psyche is already dominated by
shame affect. Many critics have made the point that Joe is inured to the discipline of
rigid rules o f order and, because o f this, he is skeptical and even resentful o f the
compromising softness and ambiguity of so-called feminine emotions. Joe expects to be
punished, and when he is not, he is not only astonished but outr%ed as well. But there is
another way to account for his response here: his anxiety, already shame-based, is not
relieved. This is a response symptomatic of his deep shame and his unconscious desire to
ameliorate its pain. The fact that he has already come to depend on a rigid rule system
for security and a sense of grounding is proof that his intemalized shame contributes
significantly to feelings of insecurity and alienation, hi instances such as this, where he
believes he has disobeyed a rule, he not only expects to be punished, he needs to be
punished to relieve the intensified shame-anxiety. However, when punishment is
withheld and a gift is given in its place, Joe's anxiety is unrelieved and resentment results.
And it is women who make this exchange, thereby engendering Joe's contempt. By
offering him a gift instead of meting out punishment, the dietician confuses Joe: "He
^ Words can evoke shame affect Under certain conditions, such an affective response to the "catastrophic effect" of words can be intemalized. André Bleikasten recognized this process, for he notes that Joe's discovery of his alleged racial difference "marked the beginning of his schizoid sense of himself as self estranged and heralded a future of isolation, aliénation, and fragmentation. And once the Judgment passed upon him by hostile others had been intemalized, he would never stop loathing himself, consumed both by the white racist’s hatred of the "nigger" and the black man's hatred of his white oppressor"(83). Here, Bleikasten identifies not only Joe's separation fiom self, but also the psychodynamic process of the internalization o f shame affect. The self-loathing that results fiom being found unacceptable by one's culture is, in fact, a clear manifestation of intemalfied shame originating fiom social rejection and condemnation. Once so culturally alienated, Joe is doomed to live in isolation, in part because of social repudiation and in part to reduce his exposure to further ridicule.
161 didn't know what she wanted him to do. He was waiting to get whipped and then be
released" (116). Punishment would free him not only from obligation, but from shame
anxiety as well.
Alwyn Berland, one o f a number of critics who address Joe Christmas’s troubled
relationship with women, provides what might be one of the more cogent analyses of
Joe's primary problem with women. In recounting the incident with the dietitian, Berland
interprets the psychological consequences that the dietitian's response has on Joe in much the same way as I do. He notes that Joe expected a whipping and not the silver dollar she gives him instead. "He is profoundly shocked by the lack of punishment. This is the first dislocation in what is to be a long series for Joe ..." (36). Berland correctly asserts that
Joe is used to a "Calvinist world of strict rewards and punishments," and the dietitian's briberous overture of forgiveness turns the only order he knows upside down: "It never occurred to her that he believed that he was the one who had been taken in sin and was being tortured with punishment deferred and that he was putting himself in her way in order to get it over with, get his whipping and strike the balance and write it ofiF' (37).
He thirsts for punishment here because only it will lessen momentarily the intense shame anxiety he experiences.
It also should be noted that Faulkner provides us with a snapshot of how one processes experience once shame is intemalized. The five-year-old Christmas already has an image of eternal torment: "[He] seemed to see ranked tubes o f toothpaste like corded wood, endless and terrifying; his whole being coiled in a rich and passionate revulsion." This image can be compared to Hightower's idealized vision and its historical
162 antecedent (his grandfather being shot to death by a woman m a hen house), which
produces in Hightower a shame-based terror and revulsion similar to that experienced by
the young Christmas. While Hightower’s chief shame defense forms a fictional scene
into which Hightower retreats for safety, Christmas experiences no such moments of
temporary relief.
Soon after the toothpaste episode, Hines spirits Joe out of the orphanage at night
and tries unsuccessfully to install him in an orphanage in Little Rock. On his return, we are told that Joe "expected to be punished upon his return, for what, what crime exactly, he did not expect to know ..." (131). He has come to expect to be punished, even when he does not know what trespass he has committed. He already exhibits the symptoms of shame anxiety, assuming that he is defective and blameworthy and, therefore, deserving of punishment, even when he has not committed an offense. As we know, the shame-based individual accepts blame all too readily, believing that, if something went wrong, he must be at fault.
One of the most obvious and certainly one o f the most devastating origins of Joe’s shame was the series of beatings he received from McEachem. As we know from
Kaufinan and others, physical abuse destroys interpersonal bonds, ushering in shame, anxiety, and powerlessness and hampering significantly the development of meaningful, long-lasting relationships. Therefore, it is important to look in detail at the episode in which Joe receives his first beating because it contains examples of a few important shame dynamics that will dominate his entire life. The scene reveals the cold, impersonal manner of McEachem, who, like Joe, shows no emotion throughout the ordeal. When
Joe does not leam the Presbyterian catechism in the allotted time, McEachem takes him
163 out to the bam to whip him. We are told that McEachem's voice was "not unkind. It was
not human, personal, at all. It was just cold, implacable, like written or printed words"
(139). Then the beating, described this way:
Then the boy stood, his trousers coU^sed about his feet, his legs revealed beneath his brief shirt. He stood, slight and erect. When the strap fell he did not flinch, no quiver passed over his face. He was looking straight ahead, with a rapt, calm expression like a monk in a picture. McEachem began to strike methodically, with slow and deliberate force, still without heat or anger. It would have been hard to say which face was the more rapt, more calm, more convinced. (140)
The child's implacability is unnatural, providing evidence of the extent to which Joe had
repressed his emotions. His soul already is in jeopardy, and he is but eight years old.
By the time McEachem's abuse of Joe begins, Joe already has intemalized the
shame evoked by broken, or nonexistent, interpersonal relationships. Obviously,
McEachem's behavior—cold, unemotional, unyielding—will not foster the establishment
of a normal, nurturing relationship with Joe. Therefore, Joe's shame will only intensify as
the steadfast McEachem metes out his physical punishment on the recalcitrant child,
who, when reflecting on his first beating, thinks: "On this day 1 became a man" (137).
This episode demonstrates that both McEachem and Joe have shut themselves off
firom their emotions: Joe because of abandonment and humiliation, McEachem because
of the rigid rule system o f his childhood that sacrificed human emotions on the altar of religion's absolutism. With McEachem, Faulkner has not created a child-abusing monster per se; rather, the author depicts a man who has himself become a victim of his
own mthless, unwavering, narrow religious behefs, beliefs most likely inherited fi-om his
family and on which that family's rigid rule structure was based. We do not need
McEachem's childhood background to conclude that its religious fundamentalism was a
164 symptom of its shame-bound nature. Faulkner conveys to the reader that McEachem,
like Hightower and Joanna Burden, represents an inheritor o f generational shame, which has ravaged his emotions and destroyed his soul.
This episode also gives us a hint of the origin of Joe's contempt for women.
When Joe and McEachem reach the bam where the whipping is to be administered,
McEachem discovers that Joe did not bring the catechism book with him . McEachem sends Joe back to the house for it, and when Mrs. McEachem tries to get his attention, he ignores her completely: "He didn't even look at her, at her face.... He walked stiffly past her, rigid-faced, his face rigid with pride perhaps and despair. Or maybe it was vanity, the stupid vanity o f a man" (140). Joe already has the ability to perceive that Mrs.
McEachem is powerless to alter the event that is about to take place. He recognizes the indomitable position McEachem holds, and he has nothing but contempt for the impotent woman who can do nothing to stay the abuse. To him, all women are soft and weak; therefore, he is repulsed by their attempts to succor him. We also see in this brief interlude with Mrs. McEachem the advent of Joe's pride and vanity, two characteristics o f narcissism. That he exhibits these shame-related symptoms, albeit in inchoate form, is further evidence o f the extent to which Joe is dominated by this affect.
That evening, after the series of beatings that occurred in one-hour intervals until
Joe passed out, McEachem leaves the house to attend an evening church service. Mrs.
McEachem brings to Joe a tray o f food, which he carries to a comer of the room and dumps on the floor. Here again we see the vast contempt Joe has for the woman at this moment, a contempt that bums unabated throughout his relatively brief life because it has become bound to his shame and is an expression of it.
165 Experience tells us that the abused often become abusers, usually choosing to
retaliate against a weaker opponent Joe quickly calculates that aggressive retabation
against McEachem would be counterproductive. Thus, Mrs. McEachem is the easier
target. Ironically, although retaliation is a shame-based response, it produces additional
shame when the victim is a scapegoat an innocent other who Just happens to be close at
hand. Joe knows that Mrs. McEachem is a helpless soul, one who will not retaliate. He has taken the measure o f the man, and he knows that McEachem has absolute control
over her. In order to survive, she has surrendered her soul to him:
[She was] a patient beaten creature without sex demarcation at all save the neat screw of graying hair and the skirt.... It was as though instead of having been subtly slain and cormpted by the ruthless and bigoted man into something beyond his intending and her knowing, she had been hammered stubbornly thinner and thinner like some passive and dully malleable metal, into an attenuation o f dumb hopes and frustrated desires now faint and pale as dead ashes. (155)
Her surrender only makes her more contemptible to Joe, who refuses to yield to his unyielding foster father. Nevertheless, the guilt and shame he experiences over mistreating the one person who cares for him are mitigated by his contempt for her defeat and helplessness, something that he both despises and fears.
Joe Christmas also resents Mrs. McEachem because she introduces into the family dynamic something that complicates and confuses the interactions among these characters: emotions. Whenever hfrs. McEachem tries to insert herself between Joe and
McEachem's punishment, Joe resents the overture primarily because it is an emotional behavior, something that destroys the discipline's impersonality, one of the few constants
166 in the boy’s life. The narrator describes the dynamic this way: "The times when ... she would try to get herself between him and the punishment which, deserved or not, just or unjust, was impersonal, both the man and the boy accepting it as a natural and inescapable fact until she, getting in the way, must give it an odor, an attenuation, an aftertaste" (157). Joe is inured to punishment and resentftd of kindness, which, to him, destroys the straightforward simplicity^ o f abuse. As we have seen, the shame-based individual lives in a state of high anxiety. Obsessive-compulsive behaviors, including those of a masochistic nature, are engaged as one way of ameliorating that anxiety, if only for a time.
As shame theory reveals, Joe's relationships with women are complicated further by ordinary expressions of emotion. Bockting asserts that the text "focuses primarily on
Christmas's problematic understanding o f womankind and his fear of female passion"
(190). It would be more correct to say that he fears all positive emotions. Joe is threatened by emotions because he is unaccustomed to them; he is more comfertable with the intensity o f violence than the intimacy of love. Having experienced no maternal bonds to speak of, Joe is quickly confused and threatened by many o f the feelings a woman brings to a relationship.
That McEachem's abuse has become a consistent behavior on which Joe has come to depend is confirmed by Joe's attitude on the Saturday evening that he and his four friends meet at an abandoned sawmill for a sexual encounter with a "negro girl:" "When he reached home he would be whipped. But not for what he might have or might not have done during his absence. When he reached home he would receive the same
167 whipping though he had committed no sin as he would receive if McEachem had seen
him commit it" (146). Regardless of his behavior, he anticipates being beaten. On an
unconscious level, his shame-based self thinks: "I must be no good, otherwise I would
not need to be punished so." Thus for Joe, McEachem's harsh discipline is acceptable
because it was predictable and warranted:
He seemed to recognize McEachem without surprise, as if the whole situation were perfectly logical and reasonable and inescapable. Perhaps he was thinking then how he and the man could always count upon one another, depend upon one another; that it was the woman alone who was unpredictable. Perhaps he saw no incongruity at all in the fact that he was about to be punished.... (149)
Real addresses the stability aspect of abuse, noting that the reliability o f the abuse
becomes a stabilizing element in the child's life:
Because the inner sense of badness (shame) preserves a relationship, it is not readily given up even after the abuse has stopped; rather, it becomes a stable part of the child's personality stmcture. Similarly, adult survivors who have escaped firom abusive situations continue to view themselves with contempt and to t^ e upon themselves the shame and guilt of their abusers. The profound sense of inner badness becomes the core around which the abused child's identity is formed, and it persists into adult life. (206)
There can be no doubt that, by the time Joe is adopted by the McEachems, he is pervaded
by this inner sense of badness, which is the direct result o f having intemalized shame.
Furthermore, McEachem, too, is in the thrall of shame; however, it is manifested as a
state of shamelessness:^ "When a parent traumatizes a child, he is in a state of
shamelessness. If the injurer felt appropriate shame, he would contain his harmful
^ This symptom will be explored in more detail in die next chapter m a discussion of Stanley Kowalski (A Streetcar Named Desire), who also behaves shamelessly.
168 behavior. The shame a parent does not consciously feel will be absorbed, along with
other unconscious feelings, by the child" (206).
There is a tragic irony here, of course. The child not only suffers the traumatizing
effects of physical abuse, he also absorbs, unconsciously, the abuser's shame. In this
way, shame is passed on fiom generation to generation to the significant detriment of
individual and family alike. Additionally, the abused child is affected by a cruel paradox
that further impedes the likelihood that he will become aware of, and thus begin to heal
fiom, his shame. As Real points out,
[t]he paradox is that at the same time the child internalizes carried shame, he also takes in the offender's rage, his shamelessness. All traumatic acts are simultaneously disempowering and falsely empowering. No matter how badly a caregiver treats a child, he also models, tluough example, a shameless way of being in the world. His actions say to the boy: "You, too, can behave as I do when you become a man." In this tragic moment, the very forces that betray the boy, forces he most often finds abhorrent, come to live inside him. (207)
Joe does behave shamelessly as an adult, assaulting men and women alike. In many
ways, he becomes his foster father, carrying his quiet, extensive rage and contempt into his own relationships.
We see early signs not only of Joe's intemalized rage in his behavior toward his foster mother, but also of his contempt. Joe has contempt for Mrs. McEachem (and, eventually, all women) for at least two reasons. First, as Morrison notes, "contempt represents ... an attempt to relocate the shame experience firom within the self into another person, and, thus, like rage, it may be an attempt to rid the self of shame" (14).
Not only does Joe arrive at the McEachems a shame-based individual, he is shamed frequently by Simon McEachem through the beatings and his dogged attempts to break the boy's will and to force upon him a rigid rule system. Joe's open contempt for Mrs.
169 McEachem is an attempt to relocate his shame into her. Second, he believes that she is
trying to get him to access his emotions, to feel. O f course, Joe could not cognitively
process Mrs. McEachem's behavior in this way; instead, he perceives her attempts at
kindness as a way of weakening him, of making him "cry" and, thereby, dominating him
through emotion, which is for him the opposite o f the rigidly impersonal control
exercised by McEachem on which he has come to depend. The narrator describes the
process as follows:
It was not the hard work which he hated, nor the punishment and injustice. He was used to that before he ever saw either of them. He expected no less, and so he was neither outraged nor surprised. It was the woman: the soft kindness which he believed himself doomed to be forever victim o f and which he hated worse than he did the hard and mthless justice of men.... "She was trying to make me cry. Then she thinks that they would have had me." (158)
Not only has Joe become inured to "punishment and injustice," he has come to hate any positive emotion that evokes a response. He can deal with contempt, hate, anger; these affects correlate with punishment delivered impersonally. Yet kindness and care, let alone love, are anathema to him. He feels victimized by such expressions, and he believes that he must suppress his own emotions lest he be controlled not only by
McEachem, but by his wife as well. Joe's emotional growth, like McEachem's, is stunted by shame.
It is interesting to note that Joe believes that McEachem and his wife are working together against him. ("Then she thinks they would have me.") He cannot conceive of them as separate individuals; instead, he views them as a system, like some kind of
170 institution, which, conspires to defeat him, own him. He cannot see his foster mother as a distinct and separate person with whom he can have a relationship apart from the domineering and ruthless man who is his foster father. This is caused in part by the relentless and absolute control McEachem ecercises over his helpless wife; however, it also speaks volumes about the extent to which Joe's emotional development has been thwarted. He misinterprets kindness for conniving, compassion for conspiracy. Inner shame requires constant vigilance, for the shame-based self always must be alert to further exposure to humiliation and to take defensive action to avoid it.
This, then, is the fate of Joe Christmas. In a very real sense he is murdered by his cumulative childhood and adolescent experiences, beginning with Doc Hines, continuing through the McEachem ordeal, and culminating in Bobbi Allen's bmtal rejection.
Certainly one who cannot feel is dead to himself and others. Furthermore, that Joe prefers Joanna Burden for what is manly about her has nothing to do with homosexuality.
As Wurmser notes above, the expression of certain feelings, including love and tendemess, are interpreted as unmanly by those who, like Joe, have been abused or neglected. Thus, depersonalization and the denial and repression of affect is another legacy of unidentified shame.
Before leaving the subject of Joe's experience with the McEachems, it is interesting to note a behavioral similarity between this important literary character and an infamous historical one: Adolf Hitler. InFor Your Own Good, Alice Miller recounts the following story:
[Hitler] told one o f his secretaries that he had read in an adventure novel that it was proof of courage to show no pain. And so "I resolved not to make a sound the next time my father whipped me. And when the time came—I still can
171 remember my lightened mother standing outside the door—I silently counted the blows. My mother thought I had gone crazy when I beamed proudly and said, "Father hit me thirty-two times!’"
When McEachem whips Joe, it is always delivered with a methodical ruthlessness. "It
[the strap] rose and fell, deliberate, numbered, with deliberate, flat reports. The boy’s
body might have been wood or stone; a post or a tower upon which the sentient part of
him mused like a hermit, contemplative and remote with ecstasy and selFcrucifixion"
(150). This latter passage demonstrates Faulkner’s prescient understanding o fsadism,
masochism, and the repression of feeling. Both the fictional character and the historical
figure had to separate themselves from all feeling, sensate and emotional, in order to
endure their abusive circumstances. For such individuals, the pain (and horror) of reality
is too much to bear; thus, the flight from reality and, ultimately, the desire to dominate
others, to inflict pain rather than receive it. And, while there are those who say that, in
each case, the father or the foster father created a psychopath, the reality is that the abuse produced deep humiliation, which was intemalized as shame and manifested as emotional repression. Neither Adolf Hitler nor Joe Christmas had the capacity to feel as adults.
Both had been soul-murdered.^
Let us now examine the nature of Joe's relationship with Joanna Burden. It is
important to look closely at this relationship because Joe's interactions with her (and hers with him) reveal more about his (and her) shame content and its manifestations. While
Joanna is an enigma to Joe, he finds her acceptable primarily because she does not exhibit
^ Miller also suggests that, by beating his son. Hitler’s father, Alois, "was expressmg his blind rage at the debasement he suffered m his own childhood" (157). This idea supports the proposition made earlier regarding Simon McEachem; that he was reared in a shame-bound family that followed a rigidly defined rule stmcture based on religious fundamentalism.
172 the kind of tender feelings that repulse him because he is uncomfortable in their presence:
It was as if he struggled physically with another man for an object o f no actual value to either, and for which they struggled on principal alone....Under her clothes she cant even be made so that it [sexual intercourse] could have happened.... "My God," he thought, "it was like 1 was the woman and she was the man." (221-22)
Nonetheless, Joe cannot have a relationship with Joanna unless it is based on the tension
of force and resistance, the only interpersonal dynamic he knows. One night he steals
into her room, blows out the light, tears off her clothes and essentially rapes her (though
she offers no resistance). Afterwards he thinks: "Now she hates me. 1 have taught her
that, at least" (223). Joe is not comfortable in a relationship unless it is based on hatred
and conflict. That is all he has ever known; therefore, to be in a relationship
with a woman who might show him some care or, worse yet, love, is extremely
threatening to Joe. Not only is heunfamiliar with, and thus wary of, relationships based
on positive feelings, he also is foil of shame-rage, which as we saw earlier, manifests
itself in contempt for the other.
The following night, Joe decides to enter Joanna's house even though he believes
he will find the doors locked against him. However, when he discovers the kitchen door
unlocked, "it was like an insult. It was as though some enemy upon whom he had
wreaked his utmost o f violence and contumely stood, unscathed and unscarred, and
contemplated him with a musing and insufforable contempt" (224). This response to
Joanna Burden's acceptance of him is in line with his attitude about relationships and the
condition of his psyche. As discussed above, Joe's world is based on the logic of crime
and punishment, a logic that circumscribes his entire understanding o f human relationships. Twenty-four hours after he has entered her house illegally and taken her by
173 force, he anticipates resistance and rejection, situations he is used tohandling. Although
"[h]e was not yet raging," his contempt for Joanna was building. Upon entering the
kitchen, he went directly to the table where, each evening, she set out food for him. And
again, instead of rejecting and withholding, Joanna continues to give, for his dinner was
waiting in still-wann dishes. But Joe's shame-rage, always with him, crouching just
beneath the surface of consciousness, explodes, and he thinks: "Set out for the nigger.
For the nigger" (224). He proceeds to pick up each dish, identify it by smell, then hurl it
through the darkened kitchen into the wall, saying "woman's muck" (225). The fact that
Joanna is not repulsed by Joe infuriates him. Her acceptance o f his behavior disorders his
conception o f how the world works, and he is resentful. His intemalized shame has so
corrupted his opinion o f himself that he is contemptuous of anyone who finds him
acceptable. He yearns for resistance, rejection, and punishment. Such is the legacy o f toxic shame.
As noted earlier, Faulkner seems to have a particularly keen insight into shame
and its pervasive effect on the individual who has intemalized it. An example of this
insight is found in the episode that occurs the evening after the food-tossing incident, when Joe walks the two miles firom the mill to Joanna's to change clothes, and then walks back to town again to eat, "as if he were ashamed of the overalls." Then Faulkner adds this comment, which addresses directly the hidden, unconscious nature of intemalized shame: "or perhaps it was not shame, though very likely he could no more have said that it was than he could have said that it was not shame" (226). It is the nature of intemalized shame to go unrecognized, even though its unconscious effects color the behavior of the shame-based person. Joe could not eat with others in soiled overalls. He
174 îs too vain for that, and, as already noted, his vanity and self consciousness are
symptomatic of his shame. Furthennore, Faulkner may have used "perhaps" here to
imply confusion or ambiguity, two common states of mind that are manifestations of
internalized shame. Joe's shame, chronic and pervasive, is hidden. He has no idea that
he is debilitated by it; hence, while many of his decisions are shame-driven, he could not
articulate the reasons behind them.
Faulkner’s insight into shame includes those adolescent experiences that lead to
embarrassment or humiliation, and he included a few exemplary situations in Joe's life as
a teen. The first o f these shaming incidents takes place in the restaurant where Bobbie
Allen works. While waiting for McEachem to conduct some business, Joe enters the
restaurant his foster father had forbade him firom visiting for the purpose o f seeing the
waitress, Bobbi Allen. He orders a piece of coconut pie and a cup o f coffee, which totals
fifteen cents. Joe only has the dime McEachem gave him, so he tells Bobbi Allen, "I
reckon I dont want no coffee" (169). When the proprietress asks the waitress why she
removed the coffee firom the counter, Bobbie lies, saying, "I misunderstood" (169). For
his part, Joe felt shame and humiliation:
When he got out, when his spirit wrung with abasement and regret and passionate for hiding scuttled past the cold face o f the woman behind the cigar case, he believed that he knew that he would and could never see her again. He did not believe that he could bear to see her again, even look at the street, the dingy doorway, even firom a distance, again .... (170)
To feel shame and humiliation is to be abased. It feels like abject failure. Joe wanted to
make a good impression; instead, his small faux pas piqued his hidden shame and left
him scuttling for the door. At that moment, the thought of seeing Bobbie again was so painful that it precluded the possibility altogether.
175 A month later, with a half dollar in his pocket, he returns to town and enters the restaurant. The waitress is not there. Nevertheless, he stops at the cigar counter and says: "I owe a nickel. For a cup o f coffee. I said pie and coffee, before I knew that pie was a dime. I owe you a nickel" (171). Before he can reach the door, the proprietor, speaking in a voice that all in the restaurant can hear, instructs the woman at the counter to return the nickel to Joe, then says: "I dont know what his racket is. But he cant work it here. Give it back to him. You better go back to the farm, Hiram. Maybe you can make a girl there with a nickel" (172). As Joe leaves the restaurant and enters the street, he is
"swept and carried along" by the laughter of the men in the restaurant. He is again shamed, and these experiences profoundly impact his ability to establish intimate relationships with the opposite sex.
Rage is another shame-related symptom that is to have a profound effect on Joe's life. Kauhnan notes that rage can be used as a defense against shame: "Rage serves as a vital self-protective function by insulating the self against further exposure and by actively keeping others away to avoid further occurrences o f shame" (Kauhnan,Shame
14-15). Morrison contributes to this understanding of rage by asserting that it may serve two additional purposes; (1) to expunge shame "through a massive expression of rage aimed at the 'offending' object," and (2) to foster an illusion of power and activity (M orrison 102).®
^ Deeply shamed individuals often exhibit a retaliatory response, striking back at the shaming other or a surrogate (such as Mrs. McEachem). indeed, Bockting notes that "|p]ersecution often leads to imagined acts of revenge" (188). Joe has been persecuted, provoked and hiuniliated and he "nurtures a conscious wish for further confrontations.... [because] he cannot and will not accept any more persecution" (Bockting 189). He has endured a decade of brutal abuse, and each whipping evoked additional humiliation. Ashe grew strong enough to confront his relentless adoptive father, die possibilities o f an explosive retaliation response grew. 176 Joe's rage has its first massive expression the night McEachem enters the dance hall with the intent of punishing Joe, whom McEachem sees as the devil: "[T|t was not the child's face which he was concemed with: it was the face of Satan, which he knew as well" (191). When McEachem, obsessed with Old Testament evil, approaches Joe with fists raised, Joe hits him over the head with a chair, killing him. He then rides
McEachem's horse back to the house to collect his few belongings and money, riding
"lightly" and "exulting" because he is free o f the "shalt n o t... of honor and law" (194).
On his return trip to town, he beats the horse with a section of broom handle. Though the old farm horse is spent, Joe continues to beat it mercilessly, even after it comes to a halt:
"Then Joe raised the stick and fell to beating the horse about its motionless head. He beat it steadily until the stick broke. He continued to strike it with a fragment not much longer than his hand" (197).
He has been deeply shamed by McEachem and his host of "shalt nots," and his anger serves a self-protective function against it. Joe also is attempting to expunge his shame, which is so extensive, pervasive, and chronic that only a massive expression of shame-based rage is possible. And, lastly, his rage fosters an illusion of power over all the shame-producing experiences he has experienced, including abandonment, abuse, and domination. However, none of these rageful expressions can begin to dissipate the intemalized shame that foments such negative reactions.
Joe's final episode with Bobbi Allen not only evokes shame in him, but also sets the stage for his future interactions with women. After killing McEachem, Joe is beaten and robbed by the restaurant proprietor/pimp's henchmen and viciously spumed by Allen, who calls him a "nigger" and blames him for getting her in trouble with the "clodhopper
177 police." Her hysterical invective was to have consequences on other women whose
paths crossed Joe's later on: "Bastard! Son o f a bitch! Getting me into a jam, that always
treated you like you were a white man. A white man!... He told me himself he was a
nigger! The son of a bitch! Me f —ing for nothing a nigger son o f a bitch that would get
me in a jam with clodhopper police. At a clodhopper dance!" (204).
After this harsh insult and painful abandonment, Joe resorts to insulting prostitutes by telling them that he is a Negro. Then one responds nonchalantly and without anger or shock, saying: "What about it? You look all right. You ought to seen the shine I turned out just before your turn came" (212). He nearly beat the woman to death because, even though he believed that he had Negro blood, he was ashamed to have sexual relations with a prostitute who willingly accepted Negro customers.
Following this experience, he is "sick for two years." His sickness is about his attempt to become a Negro. He fights those Negroes who call him white, just as he had once fought white men whom he had baited into calling him a Negro, and he lives "as man and wife with a woman who resembled an ebony carving." From her he tries to inherit her Negroness, including "the dark odor, the dark and inscrutable thinking and being of Negroes ..." (212). Joe wants desperately to be one or the other—black or white—without equivocation, without challenge. Living between cultures as he does is a shame-producing situation; however, while he could pass for white, he refuses to do so.
As a result he lives the life of a social outcast, never comfortable in either the world of the Negro or the white man.^
^ It should be noted here the obvious similarities between Joe Christmas and Charles Etienne Bon, son of Charles Bon, the son of Thomas Sutpen and his octoroon wife, in Faulkner’sAbsalom, Absalom! Bon also
178 A number of critics has addressed the issue of Joe's racial identity, including his refusal to accede to a culturally defined one. Faulkner explained that Joe Christmas's
"tragic condition" was the result of Joe not knowing what he was. According to the author, Joe "knew that he would never know what he was, and his only salvation in order to live with himself was to repudiate mankind, to live outside the human race" (qtd. in
Boker 175). Boker notes correctly that "Joe manages to reject and evade all externally imposed categories and thereby to survive without succumbing to a self-interpretation based on racial and cultural definitions" (175). Joe's repudiation of "all externally imposed categories" is tantamount to a refusal to be defined by the culture's binary definitions of race. He will not allow himself to be delimited by or reduced to either black or white, a capitulation that would further erode his self-respect because it would entail the renunciation of a part o f himself. Even though he easily passes as a white man and is uncomfortable with and humiliated by his (alleged) black self, he refuses to accede to a single, culturally defined racial identity because the rejection of a part of himself would evoke further shame.
While Boker's focus is on "psychological stratagems" that Joe uses "to perpetually claim for himself an existence based on denial and repudiation," she is actually identifying a psychological defense against shame when she notes that, by refusing to accept a culturally determined definition of himself, he exhibits "a gesture o f defiance
initiated fights, with whites who would call him Negro and with Negroes who would call him white. And he, too, lived with a dark-skinned Negro woman whom he married, even though he "passed" for white. These behaviors are the shame-based repudiations of those aspects of themselves that both Christmas and Bon disliked most. At times, they both despised their whiteness; at other times, they despised their blackness. It is the nature of shame in such cases that each man hated himself at all times for what he was—an outcast fiom himself. Shame separates the self from the self.
179 and noncompliance." Boker notes that Julia Kristeva suggests that ”[t]o rehise the social
order... is to risk the only alternative: to live with an identity" that is not detennined by
cultural categories, that is, in other words, fundamentally arbitrary and undefined" (176).
A person so defined—or undefined—is forced to live without the security of a cultural
identity, a secure place in the social structure. Such an outcast lives with perpetual shame
because he or she exists in a constant state o f unacceptability. As John L. Langley, Jr.
suggests, Christmas foregoes "a comfortable, culturally-based self-interpretation for an mner 'cosmos that is violent, chaotic, and absurd"' (qtd. in Boker 176). Kartiganer notes that Joe Christmas ensures social isolation through his "pursuit o f self." He argues that
Christmas lacks "the kind of stable and consistent meaning that fictional characterization" insists on because he resists "repression and commitment to a fixed pattern. Being neither black nor white, Christmas is doomed to indefiniteness" (10-11). However,
Kristeva argues that "the abject," the one who does not respect borders, positions and rules, is "the one who separates himself, strays instead of getting his bearings.... And the more he strays, the more he is saved" (qtd. in Boker 177). This is trae of Joe Christmas because, by refusing to adhere to the culture's rules, he is not reduced to what he is not.
Christmas exemplifies those who are shamed through language. In discussing the
"problematic process o f signification and ... the coercive effects of language,"
Wittenberg argues that Christmas's racial status "is constructed by language rather than by visible, verifiable data" (159). Drawing on Lacanian theory, Wittenberg notes the profound impact words have on individuals as part of an "encompassing construction"
(language) that "largely constitutes the Symbolic order, the cultural law that dictates and constructs the development of the speaking subject" (150). The individual is, according
180 to Wittenberg, "the slave o f language.”*® As such, one can be shackled to internalized shame affect when one is labeled, and thus culturally identified as, a failure, a bum, an alcoholic, and so on. In Christmas's case, of course, the problematic word symbol is
"nigger," one of those "signifiers of racial classification... [that] can prove psychologically deterministic" (151). Wittenberg asserts that, in Christmas's case,
"[e]ven invisible 'blackness' becomes the determinant of individual fate" (152).
Lacking an awareness of or refiising to privilege shame psycholo^, Bleücasten argues that the world ofL ight in August is controlled by a dominant discourse, and "only the white man can claim the privileges of full and sovereign humanity" while women and blacks "are assigned to an inferior essence, and so are quite 'naturally' destined to occupy subordinate positions in the social structure." Faulkner "allows us to measure its effects, to see how it works, how it warps, and how it kills" (90). Bleikasten's argument has as much to do with affect psychology as it does Lacanian theory. Whether he knows it or not, Bleikasten is describing the deleterious effects of toxic, unidentified shame, for when one is assigned to an inferior social position, one is shamed to the core.* *
In an analysis of the language Joanna's father, Nathaniel, uses when describing the curse God put on all white people—"A race doomed and cursed to be forever and ever a part of the white race's doom and curse for its sins None can escape it."—Bleikasten asserts that "words inflict wotmds. Both testament and prophecy, the paternal pronouncement marksJoanna forever. There could hardly be a better illustration of the performative power of language. The father's words have conjured up a world of division and guilt, and for Joanna their magic is to last to the very end; their evil enchantment will never be dispelled " (86). Words do indeed inflict deep wounds, and while her father's speech is an attenq>t to evoke within his child a sense of guilt and responsibility, it also piques her sense ofshame because such a pronouncement conveys to the yotmg Joanna that she is a sùmer, an uncleansed and, dierefore, a defective and unworthy being who must atone for her sin. This shame, then, is central to the "curse" put on her.
' ' Gena McKinley notes that, during the 1920s and 1930s, leaders of the "New Negro " movement called for "an end of the characterization of blacks.... The [new] objectives were to "repah’ a damaged group psychology and reshape a warped social perspective " (ISO). Such an objective addresses the concern about group shame, experienced by all members of a marginalized minority.
181 Bleikasten might as well be describing the cultural origin of shame when he wntes: "One divides to oppose: ideal versus real, male versus female, white versus black.
One term in the binary opposition is always valued over the other.... To divide is to pass judgment, to name the categories of good and evil, to assign them to fixed locations, and to draw between them boundaries not to be crossed" (96). Bleikasten notes that, to enforce these divisions, a culture erects invisible (and, increasingly, visible) barriers to keep the inferior fiom circulating and communicating with the superior. "Personal identity is never in any circumstances a mere matter of individual preference Identities are defined and distributed according to the prevalent codes.... To have a clear-cut identity is a social imperative" (94). Although a part of Joe yearns fi>r the security of a clear-cut identity, he refuses those opportunities that would require him to be either black or white because he believes that such a capitulation to a culturally defined identity represents the denial o f his real identity. However, by refiising to be defined by others, particularly McEachem and Joanna Burden, Joe avoids the shame that capitulation evokes. In each situation, he rebels against the other's attempts to codify him, either through Presbyterian dogma or racial signification, and he resists having an identity imposed on him.^^
Because there was no culturally constructed and approved identity for one such as
Joe, he often defines himself oppositionally (that is, in opposition to that which another says he is):
Wittenberg also notes that, by refusing to leam the Presbyterian catechism, Christmas refuses to capitulate to the repressive codifications of the "Symbolic effects of the Protestant code" (154). As suggested in this chapter, Joe's identity is already conflicted, his relationship to himself is already ambiguous. As a result, he experiences significant humiliation. To capitulate to the catechistic text would be tantamount to being de&ied by McEachem, a situation that would deepen his ambiguity about himself.
182 Joe Christmas's position is one of absolute marginality. There is no group that could become the center for him as long as groups are divided according to the "natural" category o f race— Joe's marginal identic, visible in his disruptive acts, is one that has never been socially permitted. While he is deeply enmeshed in binary thinking, Joe's identic is yet constituted in the constant fight against racial categorization. He constitutes himselfin that permanent refusal. (Wachholz 140).
This is an accurate interpretation because to accede to one racial category would be a
denial o f the other, which also is crucial to his identic (no matter how unclear or
undefined). To deny one part or the other evokes shame because such a denial suggests
unworthiness or unacceptability to someone.
There is an heroic quality about Joe Christmas that most critics neglect to
acknowledge, perhaps in part because they are unfamiliar with shame theory. He refuses
to surrender to cultural tyranny, just as he refused to surrender to McEachem's religious
tyranny. While there are critics who argue that Joe could have saved himself by choosing
to pass for a white man, he could not allow himself to be culturally defined as either
black or white because to do so would be to repudiate who and what he was as a whole.
To choose one clear, culturally defined racial identity would be tantamount to
" According to Lacan, identity is a fiction grounded in discourse and not essence. "Identity is not som ething that one has but a way of being spoken of and speaking about oneself that makes a person a 'culturally inteUigible subject"' (qtd. in Wacbbolz 136). Judith Butler contends that identity is constructed "in the dominant discourses of race and gender as a concept that... denies the powerful ontological status of being real or natural to fiiose cultural practices that disrupt the 'fantasy* of a stable, coherent gender or racial identity" (qtd. in Wacbbolz 136). While Wacbbolz does not try to define bow Butler defines "real" or "natural," here is a deconstructionist who msists that each individual has an identic beyond a culturally constructed one thatcontains a real or natural element. While addressing the problem of a cultural construction of selfhood [here, primarily tbrougb. racial identification], McKinley suggests the idea of a "true" identity; "Writers of fiction associated with this movement found diat one way of challenging the racist stereotypes and repairing the psychological damage was to dramatize the inqrartance of maintaining one's 'true' racial identity" (ISO). This suggests that, for each individual, there is a "true" identity that is not circumscribed by cultural stereotypes of race, gender, social class, profession, religion and so on.
183 self-rejection, a repudiation of the amalgamation that he believes himself to be, and such
a decision would exacerbate greatly his inner shame.
In spite of this heroic posture, Joe's position as an outcast leaves him feeling desperate. We see Joe's desperation and regret over being homeless in the world near the end of Chapter Five. We follow him as he walks from town into and through Freedman
Town, where the Negroes live, then into a white neighborhood. In this brief episode, we are shown that Joe is a stranger to both these worlds, and he looks "more lonely than a lone telephone pole in the middle of a desert" (106). While in the black section of town, the residents talk "in a language not his." While the atmosphere of Freedman Town is more fluid and alive than the "cold hard air of white people" (107), Joe walks on until he observes four people playing cards on a veranda, "the white faces intent and sharp in the low light, the bare arms of the women glaring smooth and white above the trivial cards."
This tableau has an impact on him, and he thinks; "That's all I wanted. That dont seem like a whole lot to ask" (lOS).**^
Joe just wants to fît somewhere. Repulsed by the sensate-saturated environment of the Negroes, which overwhelms his repressed emotions and intensifîes his anxiety, he flees to the safety of the sterile, well-ordered world of whites, where he covets the simplicity of a trivial card game. At that moment, poised between two unfamiliar and rejective worlds, Joe yearns to be accepted into the cool clarity of solid white society.
This episode is a nucrocosmic exançle of Joe's conflict arising out of his assumed biraciality. McKinley makes the point that Christmas "wanders from place to place desperately seeking a single identity" (156). While this is true, he cannot sustam such an identity because of the unconscious pressure to resist such a shame-evoking capitulatioiL McKinley correctly notes that "Christmas does not allow hhnself the full benefits of a white man; in fact, his 'passing' is interrupted repeatedly by his guilt-driven need to 'confess' his 'blackness'" (157). He yearns for the peace he believes he would experience if he were accepted unconditionally by white people, yet it is he who sabotages his opportunities to pass.
184 However, he cannot bring himself to choose one racial identity over the other, and so he
remains homeless.
But to be homeless in the world is tantamount to bemg unwelcomed by all who
inhabit it. Joe eventually tires o f his valiant but futile fight to maintain an identity that
lacks cultural recogmtion not to mention acceptance, and so we see Joe working through this process o f racial identity and acceptance as he flees fiom the Jefferson sheriff. And, while Hightower has no way of knowing it, Joe's quest for a peace beyond his own tortured reality is becoming nearly as deliberative as Hightower's own. Joe is aware o f the likely outcome of his capture: "It seemed to him that he could see himself being hunted by white men at last into the black abyss which had been waiting, trying for thirty years to drown him and into which now and at last he had actually entered, bearing now upon his ankles the definite and ineradicable gauge of its upward moving" (313). While he recognizes that, if captured, he will be treated like a Negro murderer, he does not try to escape firom the area because he believes that his only opportunity for peace lies beyond the "black abyss" through which he must pass. Fitting comfortably in neither the white culture nor the Negro one, he reconciles himself to the certain death his capture brings:
It is just dawn, daylight: that gray and lonely suspension filled with the peaceful and tentative waking of birds. The air, inbreath^ is like spring water. He breathes deep and slow, feeling with each breath himself diffuse in the neutral grayness, becoming one with loneliness and quiet that has never known fury or despair. "That was all I wanted," he thinks, in a quiet and slow amazement. "That was all, for thirty years. That didn't seem to be a whole lot to ask in thirty years." (313)
By accepting the fate that would be his if captured, Joe begins to feel a peace he has never known because he recognizes that, once in custody, he will be treated, tried, and punished as a Negro. And this is the one thing that he wanted: the peace that came with
185 being accepted as one or the other* white or Negro. He has grown tired o f fighting to fit
in and o f the chronic shame bom of ridicule and rejection. Death becomes a welcome relief, too, but only after Joe relieves himself of his own divisive internal conflict.
Therefore, his new-found peace is not based primarily on the townspeople's belief that he is a Negro—he realizes this is a belief bom of fear, hatred, and revenge, not of acceptance—but his willingness to accept, and not fight, his reality at that moment and to take what comfort he can find in it. Even though the home they have built for Joe is a racial stereotype labeled "nigger," a home that comes complete with an entire region's outrage and the promise of certain death, Joe willingly accepts it because, for him, it means an end to the shame of being homeless. Once he accepts the "black abyss," which represents his death and the "nigger" label that becomes the vehicle o f his death, he is released ftom the terrible grip of intemalized shame. And, once released, he is firee to experience his real self, which is instinctively attuned to nature. He becomes "one with timelessness and quiet that has never known fury or despair," and that is all he ever wanted.
A number of critics note that Christmas grows weary of living and Bockting is no exception. She suggests that Joe's time is up. Her analysis of his texfs lexical fields demonstrates that "all o f Christmas's conceptualizations revolve around his need for rest, sleep, peace and love. But it appears somehow to be too late" (183). And it is. What critics such as Bockting do not understand, however, is that his entire life has been a struggle agamst shame and humiliation and for some self-definition apart firom the socially constmcted identities others try to inqx>se on him He is, finally, exhausted by the constant (inner and outer) stmggle and the chronic anxiety that requires his incessant vigilance. It is no wonder, then, that he allows himself to be captured, knowing that he will be treated (i.e., hung) as a Negro. His constant defense against his unidentified shame, while an unconscious affective process, has left him utterly exhausted. He welcomes death for only it will bring him peace. It is not an exaggeration, therefore, to conclude that he dies fiom his internalized shame.
186 The Burden o f Generational Shame
Joe Christmas is not the only characterin Light in August to enter adulthood
carrymg intemalized shame. Joanna Burden is another; however, the primary origin o f her shame is quite different than that of Joe's. Joanna's grandfather, Calvin, was a
fanatical abolitionist and, after the Civil War, an early civil rights activist who argued for
Negro voting rights. Like his father Calvin, Nathaniel Burden, Joanna's father, became an advocate for freed Negroes. He also passed on to his daughter the generational shame that would shape her life from that point fi)rward:
"Your grandfather and brother are lying there, murdered not by one white man but by the curse which God put on a whole race.... A race doomed and cursed to be forever and ever a part of the white race's doom and curse for its sins. Remember that. His doom and his curse. Forever and ever. Mine. Your mother's. Yours, even though you are a child. The curse of every white child that ever was bom and that ever will be bom. None can escape it." (239)
Joanna was deeply affected by her father's words. She began to see Negroes "not as people, but as a thing, a shadow in which I lived," and she saw the black shadow become a cross to which were nailed white babies "even before they drew breath." Thus, she intemalized the curse as described by her father and the shame that went with it, and it upset her terribly: "|T|t was terrible to me. I cried at night" (239). She became so afiraid that she believed her life was in danger, and she wanted to tell her father that "I must escape, get away from under the shadow, or I would die" (239-40).
Like Joe, Joanna is burdened by inner shame as a young child, and like a curse, her shame, like Joe's, is hound to everything she subsequently does. Although Joanna's father tells her that it is a curse which she cannot escape, throughout her adulthood she tries to expiate the sin she did not commit but was made accountable for nevertheless.
187 The intemalized generational shame that attended this so-called curse formed the
foundation on which she would build her relationship with Joe Christmas, a relationship
based on shame and the behaviors and beliefo about self that it spawns.
If, like a coin, a curse can have two sides, then Joe's is the obverse of Joanna's.^^
While Joanna suffers the white man's curse for enslaving and mistreating Negroes, Joe
suffers the Negro’s curse for having what he believes to be Negro blood. When Joe tells
Joanna that one of his parents "was part nigger," something Hines told him, she asks him
how he knows that. "I don’t know it," he responds, adding: "If I'm not, damned if I
haven't wasted a lot o f time" (240-41). Doc Hines put the curse o f the Negro on Joe just
as Nathaniel Burden put it on Joanna. Each character fights the stigma in his or her own
way, but both struggle to firee themselves firom the shame that is bound to their individual
"curses." Joe intemalized the taunts of "nigger" made by the children at the orphanage
who, at Hines's instigation, teased and shunned the young Joe. He also intemalized the culture's fimdamental attitude toward Negroes, including its hatred, fear, ejection and revulsion. And because Joe believed, or was forced to believe, that he was both Negro and white, the region's intense racial conflict also became intemalized within him, dividing his self into two separate, antagonistic parts that reflected the South's deep racial
One cannot help but wonder if Faulkner used the name Joanna to represent the combination of Joe and anima, which, in Jungian psychology, is the feminine component of the unconscious of a man. As we will see, Joanna's sexual relationship widi Joe becomes an obsessive-compulsive behavior, the unconscious purpose of which is to defend against her generational shame. Joanna needs Joe to expiate her sin (the origin of her shame). Furthermore, the correlative o f this relationship is Joe's attraction to a woman who, by becoming a victim, mitigates Joe's shame anxiety. Alice Miller repeatedly makes the point that the once-humiliated child might not become psychopaduc if he finds his own victim, an experience that helps him forget his own shame, anxiety, insecurity, and helplessness (Miller 21). Thus, Joe and Joanna are unconsciously drawn to one another because they conq>lement each other in terms of shame (specifically, shame anxiety and its amelioration). Each is victimized by the other. (Surely Joe endured McEachem's cruelty in part because he in turn treated Mrs. McEachem as a victim.)
188 schism and that did not reconcile one to the other during Joe's lifetime. Because o f these unconscious internalizations, Joe became a walking microcosm of the South's deepest and darkest conflicts. Although Joanna's internalized shame did not manifest in overt aggression against others as Joe's did, it did keep her isolated 6om Jefferson's white community. Thus, she was shunned by one race and chained to the other—shunned because of her family's historical views of slavery, and chained because of the curse into which her father said she was bom. Thus, both Joe and Joanna remained social outcasts.
A number of critics, including Olga Vickery, note that all three main characters in
Light in August—Joe Christmas, Joanna Burden, and Gail Hightower—are excluded from the community of Jefferson. However, Vickery misses the role shame plays in each character's social rejection. She notes that in Faulkner's Jefferson the "individual can only become a member o f society by permitting himself to be classified according to race, color, geographic origin, and so on. Created by man, these categories become creators of man insofar as they establish social identification as the necessary prerequisite to human existence" (30). Vickery also notes that, when one does not fit into an acceptable category, one is "either sacrificed to or driven out of the society whose cherished beliefs" are threatened (31). This is what happens to Joe Christmas, Joanna
Burden, and Gail Hightower, and each suffers the shame o f the banished.
The origin of Christmas's initial shame is his grandfather's response to his daughter's promiscuity, which results in a pregnancy marked by an uncertain and therefore sullied paternity. Vickery correctly argues that, because Hines considers
Millie's pregnancy "an unforgivable sin," he requires "a scapegoat who will bear the guilt and punishment. By calling her lover a 'nigger,' he can transform a commonplace
189 seduction into the horror of miscegenation" (31). What Vickery does not explain, however, is the reason underlying Hines's need for a scapegoat. (She concludes that he regards Christmas with "malevolence and hatred" for reasons that "remain personal.")
While the reasoning behind Hines's abusive treatment o f Christmas is indeed personal, it is not obscure. He hates and badly mistreats his grandson because he represents for
Hines an origin o f significant shame (Millie's out-of-wedlock sexual intercourse). As we have seen, children can be a source of shame and embarrassment to their parents, and
MiUie's behavior, which can be reduced to a single act, evokes additional shame in an already humiliated man. (Hines's fanatical religious fimdamentalism is an indicator that he is fiom a shame-bound family system.)
Joanna's shame, o f course, has a generational origin as discussed above, while
Hightower’s, also generational in nature, springs from his grandfather's shameful behavior and his family's efforts to cover it up. Thus, all three are connected, and each suffers the damaging effects of an internalized shame bequeathed to them by others.
Joanna's sexual relationship with Joe develops into an obsessive-compulsive behavior that becomes an unconscious attempt to free her from the shame-bound curse put on her by her father. Her nymphomania is more than compensation for "frustrate and irrevocable years;" it is the vehicle she uses to immerse herself fully in Negroness, in the
"black thick pool" and "black abyss" of the people for whom she was forever cursed.
When she consummates her wild, unrestrained sexual activity by chanting "Negro!
Negro! Negro!" she is, for the moment at least, at one not only with the man who believes himself to be part black, but also with the entire black race. These images represent not
190 only her unmersion in sin, but also in négritude as a way o f atoning for the sins of her race against blacks and the curse placed upon her for those sins.
Faulkner not only had a remarkable understanding o f shame affect and its symptomatic behaviors, including sexual compulsion and the role it plays in the psychodynamics of shame defense, but he also had an understanding of the role perception and creation plays in shame dynamics. For example, the relationship between
Joe Christmas and Joanna Burden is a complex one and might be based, in part, on the idea of perception and creation, especially as related to the realm of shame. According to this idea that unconscious desires determine the most basic of perceptions, an individual can create his or her own reality and even another person—a person-object—to meet the internal needs of the subject (the creator), including the need to rid oneself of shame.
Morrison addresses this psychodynamic process as follows:
With this emphasis on perception of an object based on a projection, the object might be considered to be created, in part, by the subject.... Thus, interaction with another person based on a view of him ... as container of the subject's own shame, suggests the fantasied creation of the perceived other to meet the internal needs of the subject to rid himself of shame. (106)
In their relationship, we see this possibly working both ways (Joe as subject and Joanna as object as well as Joanna as subject and Joe as object). To an extent, Joe contributes to the creation o f Joanna's sexual self, and it is to this part of her that he transfers his own shame about being part Negro.
Ogden looks at this process in terms of projective identification, noting that it is
"a fantasy o f ridding oneself of an aspect of the self and ... the entry of that part into another person in a way that controls the other person fix>m within." Ogden then describes this process in some detail:
191 The next stage then entails an interaction between the subject and object, frequently centering on the projected shaming introject or shameful affect: the subject projects his shame "into" the object (the container), treats the object with contempt and haughty disdain, and thus distances himself firom his own shame, while continuing to interact with it through the interpersonal relationship with the object. This stage represents the identification element of the equation. Finally, the object accepts the projection, contains it to greater or lesser degree, and must deal with, and alter, the shame (that is, "metabolize" the projection), (qtd. in Morrison 106)
This is what Joe does. He attempts to project his shameful Negroness onto a receptive
Joanna, who, as discussed above, has her own shame-based reason for wanting to receive
this aspect o f Joe.
However, as time goes on, the table is turned, and Joanna becomes the subject
because, through her acceptance (of the projection) of Joe's Negroness, she is relieved
momentarily of the shame accompanying the curse put on her by her father. Her shame
is relieved for only as long as Joe, as her object, accepts the role into which she projects
him. As we know, Joanna wants to convert Joe into a full-fledged Negro, sending him to
a Negro college and establishing for him an internship with a Negro lawyer. When Joe
refuses, he no longer serves as Joanna's host object, and her attempts to project her shame
onto him fail. This is when she reverts to Calvinistic fundamentalism, praying obsessively for forgiveness of her sins. In this way, she establishes some distance between herself and her shame while maintaining some control over a wary but bewildered Joe. ("He began to be afraid.... But he began to see him self as from a distance, like a man being sucked down into a bottomless morass" [246].) In this way, each projects onto the other a shared element of their shame: she, the curse of the Negro that her father, Nathaniel, said the white man was to sufier forever; and he, the stigma
192 of Negro blood that has doomed him to be an outcast as long as he lives. When the obsessive-compulsive sexual phase o f their relationship ends, the projective identification
stage o f their shame defense comes to an abrupt end, thrusting Joanna back into her generational shame and fueling her desperate attempt to ameliorate it through prayer.
However, her behavior reactivates Joe's principal governing scene, thus piquing his own internalized shame, which he can no longer project into her.
This sexual phase of Joe and Joanna's relationship is followed by a third phase, which begins with Joanna asking him: "So you realize that you are wasting your life?"
(253). She then tells him that she wants him to assume all her business affairs with the
Negro schools. While she recites the details, "he listened in mounting rage and amazement" (254). We leam, too, that "(h]e began now to be afiraid ..." (255). Then, after Brown (Burch) comes to live with him, Christmas becomes concerned that Brown will (a) leam about his relationship with Joanna and (b) leam that she was trying to change his life and "make of him something between a hermit and a missionary to negroes" (256-57).
Joe is ashamed of being in what might appear to an outsider an intimate relationship with a woman, and we are told that "[h]e would have died or murdered rather than have anyone, another man, leam what their relations had now become" (256). His shame is so deep, and his humiliation so easily evoked, that he would rather die or murder to prevent another, especially a man, firom learning that he has a relationship with
Joanna that might be based not only on sex, but also on care, concern, and perhaps even love.
193 Yet there is more to Joe's conflict with Joanna, andshame again plays a sigmficant role. In his experience with McEachero, Joe literally fights for his life, his self, and his soul. This epic stmggle is, perhaps, one of the most compelling aspects of the narrative, for how does an eight-year-old develop the will power to resist the equally strong-willed and ruthless McEachem? While the answer to this question is elusive, we do know that, by the time Joe was five, his psyche had been exposed to five years of
Hine's relentless, hate-inspired and religiously fueled wrath. Hines was obsessed with the destruction of Joe's soul; he believed he was on a mission ordained by God. When Joe went to live with Simon McEachem and his wife, he was already a deeply shame-based person. At the age o f five, Joe was so toxically shamed that he had been, as Wurmser and Bradshaw might say, "soul murdered." When, at eight, McEachem first took the hamess belt to Joe for refusing to leam a passage in the Presbyterian catechism, no less than Joe's very self was at risk. His resistance was instinctual, the unconscious desire of the human organism to fight for its life regardless o f the cost. Had he given in to the cold, relentless McEachem, much more than his pride would have been surrendered in that bam.
Joe fears Joanna because he knows, or at least anticipates with considerable anxiety, that she will try to change him just as McEachem tried to change him. Joe's governing scene is one o f abuse and control and the shame, humiliation and powerlessness that accompany it. Thus, Joe will not allow himself to be controlled in any way by anyone, for to do so is to retum to the governing scene and the terror of the
194 affects bound to it/^ Therefore, when Joanna decides that she will change Joe’s life for
the better, she does not realize that she will die trying. Joe lives in a state o f high anxiety
as the result o f his internalized shame. His constant vigilance is one defensive response
to his damaged and highly insecure sense of self. Joe considers any attempt, however small, to exercise control over his life as a serious threat. That is why he experiences both fear and rage when she tells him that she wants him to take over her business affairs.
Such an exercise o f control represents a clear threat to his already tenuous hold on his own Life, a hold that is constantly undermined by the self-doubt and insecurity that are the products of his inner shame (not to mention his culture’s refusal to recognize his [alleged] multiracial identity). That is why, upon hearing for the Grst time Joanna's plans for him, he lays awake thinking, "I have got to do something. There is something that 1 am going to do" (216). Joanna’s plans for Joe contain an implicit assumption that he is not acceptable as he is and, thus, must change. Joe senses the critical evaluation implied in her idea, and he is insulted. This evokes his shame, making some kind of a retaliatory response inevitable. That "something" Joe thinks about becomes murder, the only alternative Joe believes he has to preserve what little dignity and self-reliance he has left.
Had Joanna not continued to push her plan on Joe things might have been different for them both. But her relentlessness becomes an unconscious reminder of
McEachems, and the threat to his very existence looms larger and larger the more she
Wittenberg correctly notes that it is Joanna Burden "who makes the most extensive efibrt to 'place' him" [Joe Christmas] (156). She tells Joe that she is pregnant with their "bastard, Negro child," and she "pressures him to become more oEGcially' black by attendmg a Negro school." Bleikasten correctly asserts that Joe is compelled to kill Joanna because of her insistence on confining him in a Negro-only role: "When Joanna, recalling her father's speech and identifymg with her father’s will, msists on confining Joe within his mythic "Negro" identity, Joe has no other course but to kill her" (88).
195 discusses her plans with him. However, there is another shame-related factor in the complicated calculus o f Joe and Joanna's relationship that contributes to his attitude and its final result. Because Joe has not been able to reconcile himself to the possibility that he might be part Negro, and because he has internalized the South's deep fear and loathing of the Negro, he takes umbrage at Joanna's suggestion that he (a) go to a Negro college and then study law with a Negro lawyer and (b) admit to the college administrators and the lawyer Peebles, that he, too, is a Negro: "Tell niggers that I am a nigger too?" (262) These are shame-provoking suggestions, ones that drive Joe into a defensive mode, for he can ill afford the effects that additional shame cause him.
As noted above, Joe began to fear Joanna— "He began now to be afiraid"— because of her plans to change him. Underlying Joe's fear, which is actually shame- anxiety, is the threat o f further humiliation.^^ Suggesting that he become something other than what he is implies that who he is at the moment is not acceptable. To a shame-based individual, who already feels highly inferior and insecure, such an implication evokes shame. In a discussion on shame and suicide, Morrison addresses the concept of mortification: "The searing shame that leads to suicide is, then, the true root of mortification and ... can lead as well to fantasies of murdering those in whose presence
In her analysis of Joanna Burden's desire to educate Joe and to turn over to him some of her philanthropic responsibilities, Bockting notes that Joanna's intentions, while essentially well-meaning, were a call to "grow up." Rodger Cunningham calls Joanna's intentions "inqilicitly infantil^ing and hence double-binding" (qtd. in Bockting 191).
196 one has experienced humiliation" (60)/^ Joe's fear approaches mortification^ and, as we have seen, Joe has such a fantasy ("There is something that I am going to do"), which is based firmly in the shame evoked by Joanna and her plans to change him.
As if all these shame-evoking situations were not enough to compel Joe to take some kind o f action against Joanna, there is her praying:
He would go on into the house and mount the stairs. Already he would be hearing her voice. It would increase as he mounted and until he reached the door to the bedroom. The door would be shut, locked; firom beyond it the monotonous steady voice came. He could not distinguish the words; only the ceaseless monotone. He dared not try to distinguish the words. He did not dare let himself know what she was at. So he would stand there and wait, and after a while the voice would cease and she would open the door and he would enter. A s he passed the bed he would look down at the floor beside it and it would seem to him that he would distinguish the prints o f knees and he would jerk his eyes away as if it were death that they had looked at. (263-64)
He does not dare distinguish the words because he does not want to confirm what he aheady suspects—that she is praying, and not just for herself, but for him, too. At this point, he did not dare believe what he already knew. (This is an example of Faulkner’s idea of unconscious awareness, where "memory knows before knowing remembers," which is to say that, oftentimes, the unconscious mind makes a connection before one has a conscious recollection of it.) When he sees the knee prints, they remind him of his own and the governing scene is recalled. He jerks his eyes away "as if it were death that he had looked at" because the knee prints remind him o f Simon McEachem and all that he associates with him, including the beatings, the humiliation, the catechism, and the
It should be noted that Joanna's death is both a suicide and a murder, with each fulfilling a corresponding response to the shame-based mortification addressed by Morrison. Joanna believes that her searing shame is die result both of her own volition and of Joe's behavior. Therefore, when he refuses to pray with her, she believes that her only recourse is to kill him (the murder aspect of mortification before one's shame) and then kill herself. When the pistol fails to kill Joe, he slits Joanna's throat, thereby murdering the one in whose presence he has been shamed.
197 praying and religious dogma to which his shame is inextricably bound. To Joe, Joanna's
knee prints are the equivalent of Kurtz's horror, and he is mortified by them.
When he does allow himself to hear her words, he hears McEachem's, too: "soul,"
"expiation," "hell... forever and ever and ever..." (264). Joe's response to her request
that he kneel down and pray with her is a simple yet uncompromising "no." And, also
reminiscent o f the McEachem experience, neither would surrender to the other, an
understandable impasse when one recognizes that each character's intractability is rooted
in pervasive shame. For Joanna to deviate from her praying, or for Joe to deviate from
his refusal to do so, would be tantamount to surrendering to an all-engulfing shame that is
life-threatening to both.
Kaufinan recognizes the power and importance of such governing scenes,
especially those that are related to physical abuse:
Like magnets, scenes compel reenactment. Phenomenologically, a scene is an entrance, a psychological "black hole" drawing the conscious adult self inward. It is a portal in time. The mature self is immediately transported back into the original scenes, which then are re-experienced fully. Once a governing scene has been reactivated, the original experience is relived in the present with all its affects reawakened. (122)
Faulkner understood this dynamic, for Joe Christmas is a paradigmatic example of it.
Joanna's behavior reactivates the most powerful governing scene in Joe's life, transporting him back to the original scenes at the McEachems. All of the associated affects, including fear, pain, anger, humiliation, and shame, are reawakened, and all the horror of the past returns full force.
The point was made above that, like Hightower, Joe Christmas was forever seeking a peace beyond his own troubled reality. However, in Joe's case, he was unable
198 to attain such relief until the last days o f his life, while Hightower is engaged in a behavior o f the obsessive-compulsive kind that brought him temporary relief firom that which caused him considerable pain and anxiety: generational shame. As we will see, however, Hightower pays a terrible price for temporary relief from his chronic, internalized shame.
Shame and Idealization: A Ride into Unreality
As any reader of Light in A ugust knows, the Rev. Gail Hightower is obsessed with a vision of his grandfather charging into Jefferson on horseback to bum Grant's stores.
While the townspeople had no idea about the vision or Hightower's obsession with it, they took notice of the man's repetitive behavior: "We don’t know why he stays here [in
Jefrerson]. But any day you pass along there about dusk or nightfall, you can see him sitting in the window" (54). The town did know, however, about the Presbyterian minister's disgrace: about how his wife "went bad on him," stealing away to Memphis for the weekend because "he couldn't or wouldn't satisfy her himself;" about how she committed suicide by jumping out of a Memphis hotel room window while registered as the wife of another man; about how he was locked out of his own church by a scandalized congregation that he had tried to defy; and about how he retreated to his house only to be vilified by hateful, unfoimded gossip and tied to a tree and beaten unconscious by outraged townsmen. And while his congregation had no idea that his entire life was organized around a myth, a single idealization on which his life depended and to which he retreated at the same time each and every day, it did know that he
"couldn't get religion and that galloping cavalry and his dead grandfather shot fi’om the
199 galloping horse untangled horn each other, even in the pulpit. And that he could not
untangle them in his private life, at home, either, perhaps" (56).
In the discussion to follow, I will try to tease apart these issues of religion, history, myth, obsession, idealization and isolation as they relate to Hightower and his internalized shame, which, as we will see, has its origin in gaierational shame. While
Faulkner created a number of characters who carried generational shame, perhaps none are so clearly and profoundly affected as Hightower.^®
At this point, it might be prudent to demonstrate just how the application of shame theory, when applied to the analysis of a character as troubling (and troubled) as
Hightower, can improve upon insights made by others, including those that may have become fendamental to our understanding o f the novel. For example, while Irving Howe is correct to suggest that, inLight in August, "Faulkner means to dramatize both the terrors o f isolation and the erosion of relationships" (10), such an assertion takes us only so far. One o f the objectives of this chapter is to record in greater detail the affective response both to isolation and the social rejection that preceded it and to damaged or destroyed relationships, particularly those with significant others. Thus, when Alfired
Kazin says that Hightower is "too vague, too drooping, too formless, in a word too much
Some critics argue that Hightower is not a fiilly realized character and, because he is not, he should not be analyzed as one. Michael MOlgate is one such critic who, on the one hand, entertains the notion of Hightower's underdevelopment as a character. However, MÙlgate also suggests that, while Hightower might not be a fully realized character, "it may m one sense be very much to the point that Hightower is not completely realized ... [because] obsessed with the past, he does not live in the present where realization can occur..." (156). This is an entirely valid observation for, as we have seen in this study, one who is burdened with internalized shame lives in a state of repressed and underdeveloped emotions and, consequently, cannot be folly engaged—or realized—in the world around him. Further conq>licating Hightower’s abiliQr to appear folly achieved as a character is his nearly complete withdrawal from reality through his obsessive tmmersal in his primary shame defense, that idealized vision of his grandfather which he retreats to daily.
200 the creature o f defeat and o f obsession, to compel our interest or our beliefj" I respond by attempting to explain why he is these things that Kazin suggests (qtd. in Howe 14). To achieve some insight into the nature of an obsession that holds one in its thrall so completely is one reason why we are interested in so tormented and defeated a character.
Through the application o f shame theory, one can begin to understand the origin of the obsession and the man controlled by it.
Criticism such as Howe's and Kazin's, while failing in rather significant ways to open up for us the character o f Hightower, can provide us with hints to explore or pointers to follow. For example, while Howe is quite correct to suggest that, "because of his fear of human involvement and his need for protective routine," Hightower fails
Christmas, we are left to wonder why the minister fears involvement (recall his panic attack in the grocery store) and needs a compulsive protective routine (Howe 14). Any explanation, any interpretive strategy that moves us closer to an understanding of such self-defeating, dysfunctional behavior is bound to compel our interest in the afflicted character and to convince us, at least partially, that he is believable (especially if his emotional disturbance could be ours).
Shame theory offers such a potential to reread characters, to come to understand them in a different, perhaps even fuller way. For example, traditional Freudian explanations, such as the following one offered by Richard Chase, can be illuminated and then recast in a different light when affect theory is brought to bear: "Hightower has projected his sexual and spiritual impotence back upon a myth of his grandfather.
Faulkner goes along with Hightower on this point, assuming too much that a fantasy projected fiom some center of real causation is the cause itself' (qtd. in Howe 14). As we
201 explain here, illusions or visions such as Hightower's are defending scripts employed as a response to (i.e., a defense against) family shame, which, as Lynd suggests elsewhere in this study, can be exceptionally potent ("shame in a kindred cannot be avoided”). The nature of Hightower’s grandfather’s death destroys the per&ction of Hightower’s mythic world (which he prefers over the reality of his childhood), built upon other Southern myths constructed both to maintain the spirit o f the South’s former power and vitality and to defend against the horrible truth behind its economic and political successes. Because
Hightower is humiliated by the manner o f his grandfather’s death, he Uves with considerable shame anxiety, which, according to Wurmser, originates in disgrace (50).
Disgrace is a variant of shame and leads to selfcondemnation. Because Hightower wants to foee himself firom this state of disgrace, he revises his illusory world, excluding those facts that lead to shame and humiliation. However, whenever he capitulates to reality, his fictive world, held in perfect stasis beyond time, is threatened, and his shame anxiety intensifies. (And if he is to overcome this anxiety, he will have to face again his profound failures and to take responsibility for them.)
Let us now look at some critically important circumstances that contribute to the formation of Hightower’s mental and emotional states. To Hightower, his parents were phantoms largely because they were middle-aged and among the living when he was a child, and they paled in comparison to the history of his grandfather, who ascended to mythical proportions in his mind. He listened to their Negro housekeeper Cinthy with rapt attention as she tirelessly told stories about the heroic grandfather who had killed
Yankees "by the hundreds." To this unsullied myth he compared his own father who, by
202 contrast, was alive, imperfect, and occasionally lightening. The young Hightower fisund no horror in the tales about the grandfather because:
they were just ghosts, never seen in the flesh, heroic, simple, warm.... "so it's no wonder," he thinks, "that I skipped a generation. It's no wonder that I had no father and that I had already died one night twenty years before I saw light. And that my only salvation must be to retum to the place to die where my life had already ceased before it began." (452)
Having lived his formative years in the still, serene, and static unreality of a timeless myth, devoid o f parents and interpersonal relationships, emotions are alien to
Hightower. Of love he thinks: 'Terhaps they were right in putting love into books....
Perhaps it could not live anywhere else" (456). And o f marriage he concludes, "But to him it was not men and women in sanctified and living physical intimacy, but a dead state carried over into and existing still among the living like two shadows chained together with the shadow of a chain. He was used to that, he had grown up with a ghost"
(454). This is not, of course, the description of a healthy, functional relationship; instead, it is the description of an emotionless relationship, a dead state, shadows among shadows, desiccated and lifeless. In a very real sense, Hightower's soul is lifeless, too, something that he acknowledges. He recognizes that he is not equipped to live among the living— brought up as he was by ghosts inhabiting myths—so he believes that his only alternative
(other than suicide, one might suppose) is to create a life outside of reality. To do this out of whole cloth he needs the stasis of religion, the environment of Jefferson, and an idealized vision of his grandfather. (And, conversely, he does not need a wife, who becomes a useless appendage to his obsessional behavior moimted in defense of his shame.)
203 While there is no history o f overt physical abuse or emotional neglect in
Hightower's childhood, his relationship with his middle-aged parents is distant if not strained. As such, the interpersonal bond is as much ill-formed as broken. Thus,
Hightower’s early childhood experience ^proximates that o f the abandoned or neglected child, and the establishment of a meaningful relationship with his father is further complicated and thwarted by Hightower's early obsession with his dead grandfather, who looms so large in his mind that he precludes the possibility o f having a normal relationship with a living human being. (As we will see, the myths surrounding his grandfather have been inflated to heroic proportions to shield the family firom further shame.)
Thus, Hightower is susceptible to the shame normally evoked by broken relationships. He lives as though he "had already died," and even though he may be the initiator o f his own neglect (if such is possible), his psyche does not know the difference nor does it assign an origin to the neglect. Hightower’s self knows only that it exists virtually without meaningful relationships with significant others, including parents, and that neglect fuels internalized shame and its attendant condition o f low self-esteem, insecurity, and withdrawal. The profound paradox of his condition is that the origin of his initial inner shame (the familial shame over his grandfather’s ignominious death) and his response to it (his retreat firom life into the unreality of a mythic realm peopled by ghosts) becomes the very focus o f his obsessive-compulsive behavior, engaged in as a defense against shame-based feelings.^^
Real and others note that, when a parent is nothandling feelings effectively, the child will take on those feelings firom the parent Real puts it this way: "[T]he child will take the feelings that the parent is not handling responsibly into his being... [T]t is inevitable that one of the feeling-states transmitted to children
204 la a sense, Hightower is correct when he thinks that "my life had already ceased
before it began." Hightower is so focused on his dead grandfather and the mythic life he
constructs around him that reality is not only unattractive but largely repulsive. Reality,
like his parents, comes with warts. It has challenges and uncomfortable situations that
prompt afîèctive responses, including fear, sadness, anger, foustration, and
disappointment. Hightower learned early the narcotic effect—though he had neither the
awareness nor the language to call it that—of surrendering oneself completely to a place
beyond time, static, perfect, imcompUcated, truthful, heroic, exciting. His first siurender
was the chinch:
He believed with a calm joy that if ever there was a shelter, it would be the Church; that if ever truth could walk naked and without shame or fear, it would be the seminary. When he believed that he had heard the call it seemed to him that he could see his future, his life, intact and on all sides complete and inviolable, like a classic and serene vase, where the spirit could be bom anew sheltered fi-om the harsh gale of living.... (453)
Hightower's primary motivation for joining the seminary was not religion but shelter. He
was seeking a cloistered enviromnent that, if not outside of reality, was at least one step
removed firom it. Hightower knew that, in reality, his tmth, the truth about his
grandfather, could not "walk naked and without shame or fear," so he needed an
environment where his grandfather's infamy would not be accompanied by the shame and
anxiety it evoked. Additionally, he required an atmosphere that was so static and lifeless
that history (i.e., his grandfather's history, particularly the circumstances surrounding his
... w ill be the feeling of shame" (205-6). Although we know virtually nothing about Hightower's relationship with his father, we know that the father,unlike the grandfather, went to war not as a soldier but as a doctor because he could not support the cause of slavery. We can conclude from this that he was ashamed o f the South's behavior as well as thecircumstances surrounding his father's death. Hightower absorbed these feelmgs as generational shame.
205 death) could be revised, proffered as truth, and maintained into perpetui^—his life made
"intact and on all sides complete and inviolable," free o f the attendant shame that eroded
his inner self and threatened his very life.
The serene vase about which Hightower thinks is allusive of Keats' "Ode on a
Grecian Urn," the first stanza of which is:
Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness. Thou fester-child of silence and slow time. Sylvan, historian, who canst thus express A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: What leaf-fiing'd legend haunts about thy shape O f deities or mortals, or of both. In Tempe or the dales o f Arcady? What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ectasy?
Surely Faulkner was famihar with these lines as he breathed life into Hightower, who
was himself such a foster-child of "silence and slow time." Hightower's childhood had
been spent in such a detached ambience, and, as an adult, he needed to find a similar
atmosphere in which he could sustain his own unreahstic legend. When he discovers that
he can no longer sustain his myth at the seminary—"He believed at once that his own belief about the seminary had been wrong all the while, not seriously wrong, but false,
incorrect" (455)—he decides that he must be assigned to a church in Jefferson, that place where his life "already ceased before it began."
Once in Jefferson, the mood o f Keats' Grecian um is the mood Hightower strives
to achieve each evening as he sits in his study window. His vision, as idealized as the
figures on the um, are bom out of silence and quietness and assume a power and
importance that exceed not only poetry but reality. Hightower is haunted by the ghost of
206 his grandfather, and his spiritual and emotional deaths are the result of his inability to
escape the thrall of these legends, hi the end, Hightower, like the urn's figures, is locked
into an eternity of unreality, and his streets of Jefferson are like the urn's: "And, little
town, thy streets for evermore/will silent be; and not a soul to tell/Why thou art desolate,
can e'er retum ."
Some shame theorists address this psychodynamic o f creating an illusional or
idealized world to defend against shame. Homey addresses the issue of the idealized self,
which may begin as a relatively harmless fantasy in which one pictures oneself in some
glamorous or heroic role. The individual may take this process further, creating in his mind an idealized image of what he "really" is, could be, or should be. Then, if one takes this to the next, decisive step, his real self fades out and the energies available for self- realization are shifted to the actualization of the idealized self (qtd. in Kaufinan, Pow er o f
Shame 9). This is precisely what Hightower does, with the exception that he pours his energies into the actualization of an idealized vision, that of his grandfather as hero and not as cowardly thief stealing a chicken from a woman's hen house. By devoting a significant portion of his life and energies to the daily actualization of his idealized vision, he frees himself momentarily from the humiliation and generational shame that he has absorbed. What is unique about this example is that Hightower creates an idealized image not of himself but rather o f his grandfather, who is, o f course, the origin not only of his pervasive shame, but of his family's as well. (This is the deep, dark family secret that has sickened at least two generations of Hightowers.) However, by devoting his energies to the maintenance of this image, Hightower loses his authentic self and, as we will see, his wife and his church as well.
207 Whitaker notes that "[t]he shameful experience is a sense o f having failed to live
up to one's projected image" (qtd. in Possum and Mason W). As a child, Hightower
created such a projected image, highly idealized and heroic, for his grandfather and the
South's participation in the Civil War (one based on bravery, glory, and the courageous
defense o f the homeland rather than a defense o f the despicable, inhuman practice of
slavery). Hightower's substitution of fiction for fact may work in an allegorical way, and
Faulkner might be suggesting how Southerners rationalize their participation in a corrupt
and shameful war. Their glorification of the war may be, ultimately, a cover-up for the
repressed shame they feel as a result of the South's participation in slavery, with its rapes,
beatings, murders, separations, and so on (all topics Faulkner addresses in his body of
work).^^ In this way, not only individuals but entire cultures inherit generational shame;
^ Berland recognizes the centrality of Hightower’s grandfather to his own identity— "His grandfather... became the emotional center of his life"(47). Although Berland does not suggest a reason why Hightower has made his vision the obsessional centerpiece of his existence, he does note that this vision "becomes inextricably part of his religion" and that Hightower is "a m an possessed" (48). Berland does recognize that Hightower’s wife's "sordid liaisons " and suicide are a response to neglect (though he fails to identify shame's role in her death), and he notes that, after being driven out of his church, Hightower "retains his emotional coimection with the galloping horses"(48). Berland does not seem to grasp, however, the vital significance of Hightower’s vision to his very life and identify, although he does note that "Hightower comes to realize that he has forfeited his life, and—quite literally—that of his wife, because of his allegiance ... to a dream vision o f the past..."(49). Vickery also recognizes that Hightower is dominated by his vision: "And since nothing can compare widi his vision, the people he meets and the tasks he is forced to perform become annoying interruptions of the commonplace and trivial. What destroys Hightower is not the fact that he has a dream, but for the sake of the dream, he becomes msensitive and indifferent to the qualify o f his actual experience" (38). What Vickery does not seem to understand is why Hightower is so completely obsessed with his dream to the exclusion of actual people, responsibilities, and commitments. Like Vickery, Kazin recognizes Hightower's obsession with the past Kazin notes that Hightower’s life tragedy is "his grandfather’s glorious’ death. ” Kazin suggests that Hightower personifies "the Southern effort to explain, to justify, and through some consummation in violent physical action even to lighten, the burden of this obsession with the past ” (103). While Kazin is correct to call Hightower’s obsession with his grandfather his "life tragedy, ” what he is unable to account specifically for is the deeper cause behind Hightower’s mythologization of his grandfather's death. Hightower’s revision of his grandfather’s final cavalry ride intentionally omits the actual cause of death because the way he died sullies the myth and gives rise to an enduring humiliation that is exacerbated by the South’s own deep, but hidden, shame.
208 thus, the culture itself must mythologize (idealize) its role in shame-evoking situations, substituting fictions fi>r the truth that will not walk with shame.^
At this point, one might ask; Are we as readers really supposed to accept that
Hightower experiences significant shame over this singular incident? Helen Lewis asserts that "[d]ishonor is the most serious shame state, since it carries the clear implication o f personal guilt, signifying both a serious transgression and a personal failure” (The Role o f Shame 18). Lewis also notes that "shame can be experiencedfo r someone else, as if the 'other's* honor were one's own. In this meaning of the term, there is a feeling o f personal responsibility, and yet the self is by implication helpless to avoid shame o f the 'other' who is close"(Shame and Guilt 64). As we know, Hightower's grandfather, although dead, became for Hightower larger than life. The boy bonded with an heroic myth, and when the underside of the myth was revealed to him, he could not avoid shame: "Stealin* chickens. A man growed, wid a married son, gone to a war whar his business was killin' Yankees, killed in somebody else's hen house wid a han'ful of feathers" (459). To distance himself from his shame, he created the idealized image of his grandfather, which he consciously evoked in a ritualized way on a daily basis. (Thus, like an alcoholic who retreats to his drink of choice for relief from his inner pain,
Hightower resorted to his vision, which became a destructive compulsion.)
^ Thus, the purpose of Hightower's vision expands beyond the personal to the cultural, meaning that Hightower experiences both generational and cultural shame. This might explain why he is so anxious about the imminent capture of Joe Christmas: "I wont. I wont I have bought immunity.... I paid for it 1 didn't quibble about the price. No man can say that I just wanted peace; I paid them their price without quibbling" (293). Hightower has retreated from the reality of present-day Jefferson to the static perfection of his idealized vision of war-time Jefferson, replete with heroic soldiers on horseback and victories over Union armies. There is no room fbr bigotry and race-related violence in his vision. He has bought immunity from all that However, die capture of Joe Christmas and the consequences of his crime will destroy Hightower's vision and the peace it brings him, threatening his elaborate wall of defense and leaving him vulnerable to both generational and cultural shame.
209 As he recounts the story to his wife, he tells it accurately. However, he chooses to see it in a "fine" way by denying the episode's humiliation and shame:
I tell you, they were not men after spoils and glory; they were boys riding the sheer tremendous tidal wave of desperate living. Boys. Because this. This is beautiful. Listen. Try to see it. Here is that fine shape of eternal youth and virginal desire which makes heroes, that makes the doings of heroes border so close upon the unbelievable that it is no wonder that their doings must emerge now and then like gun flashes in the smoke, and that their very physical passing becomes rumor with a thousand faces before breath is out of them, lest paradoxical truth outrage itself. Now this is what Cinthy told me. And I believed. I know. It’s too fine to doubt. It’s too fine, too simple, even to have been invented by white thinking. A negro might have invented it. And if Cinthy did, I still believe. Because even fact cannot stand with it (458)
As he tells the story, he tries to make it "beautiful," couching it in the ideals of youth and heroism and elevating it to the heights of myth because it is so fantastic that it is "close upon the unbelievable." Yet Hightower equivocates, for truth is "paradoxical" and
"rumor" begins altering facts immediately. He blows his own smoke into the event, clouding its ostensible truth even further. Although he is compelled to believe that his grandfather’s death, too, is as heroic as Van Dorn’s cavalry raid on Grant’s supplies, he covers himself, his vision, with the belief that "even fact cannot stand with it."
As briefly mentioned above, Hightower’s idealization, like most, if not all, compulsions, has a detrimental effect on his life. Like any obsession, it began to consume him, taking over his life and destroying his relationship with his wife:
But he had never told anyone that [the early stirrings of his vision]. Not even her. Not even her in the days when they were still the night’s lovers, and shame and division had not come and she knew and had not forgot the division and regret and then despair, why he would sit here at this window and wait for nightfall, for the instant of ni^t. (441)
210 This passage provides an important key to an understanding o f Hightower and the events
that shape his adult life. First, it confirms that he and his wife were sexually intimate
early on in their marriage and only later, after his fixation with the vision had become an
obsession, did they become estranged. This estrangement is the "division” mentioned
above, and the shame is the feeling he felt, more unconsciously than consciously, as a result o f abandoning his wife emotionally and physically. And she knew not only that he had abandoned her, but for what (a ghost). Thus, Hightower's shame also has an experiential origin: the failure o f his relationship with his wife and the ultimate consequences of that failure (including her suicide). This failure, then, has the effect of driving him deeper into his vision, where, momentarily, the pain o f his deep shame cannot reach him.
However, near the end o f the novel, we wimess a contrite Hightower coming face to face with his shame. Shortly before the narrative turns firom him for the last time,
Hightower takes some responsibility for his past behavior, something he has not done for twenty-five years. While he has not broken the compulsion to idealize the past and imagine himself living among ghosts, he begins to work through his realistic shame, which originated in his own behavior. He recognizes that he considered his marriage "of so little worth that I did not know that I had even accepted it." This is a significant awareness, a first step in fireeing himself firom the paralysis of shame that is largely responsible for keeping him chained to the window. He also becomes aware that his obsession with the past destroyed not only his marriage, but his wife as well: "And if that was all I did for her, what could I have expected?... I became her seducer and murderer, author and instrument of her shame and death" (462). He comes to understand the effect
211 his obsession had on his wife, and he accepts responsibility for his behavior. Out of his
deep, inner shame, like one awakening firom a long coma, he admits to his actions and the
despair they have caused. He has carried the shame all along, but he has defended
against and kept it hidden deep in his unconscious mind. Now, he is willing to be held
accountable, and he admits to himself that he played a part in his wife's shame and death.
He also realizes that, if he is to recover firom his own shame, he must stop projecting
blame onto God.
By reentering the life o f Jefferson and by helping to bring Lena Grove's child into
the world, Hightower has begun a conscious process of addressing his internalized
shame. However, do we find evidence in Light in A ugust which suggests that he will be
free eventually of his idealized vision and the obsessive-compulsive behavior that keeps
him tied to it?
After Hightower delivers Lena's child, he feels enlivened, nearly triumphant:
'"Life comes to the old man yet.... What iff do? What if I do feel it? Triumph and
pride? What if I do?'... He moves like a man with a purpose now, who fbr twenty-five
years has been doing nothing at all between the time to wake and the time to sleep again"
(383). He returns home and takes firom his study's shelf a book that is "food for a man:"
Henry IV . Hightower does not choose Tennyson because, at that moment, he feels that he
has rejoined the living and, therefore, does not need Tennyson's poetic anesthetic to numb
his contact with reality. When he awakes after a six-hour nap in his backyard, he discovers that the "glow," his renewed enthusiasm for life, has not dissipated. He first thinks that he had "hoped" to sleep off this feeling; then he admits that he "feared" he would lose it. He responds to this anxiety saying, "I have surrendered too. And I will
212 permit myself. Yes. Perhaps this too is reserved for me. And so I shall permit myself'
(384).
Here, Hightower assumes some control over his destiny, something he has not done in twenty-five years. Like Joe, Hightower realizes that he, too, can surrender to something that brings him peace: answering the call of another. Although he decides to permit himself to be used in this way, this does not signal either the willingness or the ability to try to make a fidl retum to life as he experienced it prior to his wife's death. He still carries immense shame, and it will continue to debilitate him in profound ways.
Even though he has performed a good deed that has helped to move him outside of his shame momentarily, his shame has the potential to pull him back into itself eventually.
The substantiation of this process is given at the end o f Chapter Twenty, the penultimate chapter. Hightower is back at the window as "the final copper light of afternoon fades." The scene which he overlooks is "prepared and empty, framed by the study window like a stage" (441). He still needs his vision fix. Although he has just taken a small step back into life, his deeply internalized shame continues to gnaw at him, and he seeks relief in the idealized vision that has been his compulsive escape from pain for a quarter century:
It is as though they had merely waited until he could find something to pant with, to be reafhrmed in triumph and desire with, with his last left of honor and pride and life.... Yet, leaning forward in the window, his bandaged head huge and without depth upon the twin blobs of his hands upon the ledge, it seems to him that he still hears them: The wild bugles and the clashing sabers and the dying thunder of hooves. (467)
Faulkner critics continue to disagree about Hightower's final vision and what it bodes for the future. For example, Harvey Gable attempts "to recast our imderstanding of
213 Hightower’s cavalry visions by showing that they are not his 'paramount illusion' but instead a real, recurring force o f renewal that he has successfully resisted until his final scene when, weakened by injury and educated by compassion, he finally succumbs to its life-giving power" (426). For Gable, Hightower's vision "is nothing more than the repressed but irrepressible Lifo-force in him," which he defines alternately as "an infusion of divine power" and the "unfathomable mystery o f soul that drives man" (432). Gable is critical of those who see Hightower's vision as an illusion and, thus, as a kind of escape from reality. Instead, he views it as something Hightower is trying to escape to, something beyond the limiting constraints of a socially constructed reality, "a moment... outside the circle o f convention" (433) beyond space and time, a "visionary experience" serving as a kind of symbolic death leading to a "new life through the birth o f a new identity" (435).
While Gable is correct to note that Hightower does achieve the power of self- examination, which "leads to the revelation that he never has really been alive in the world ..." (438), he is too quick to dismiss those who, like Lee Jenkins, see in
Hightower's daily invocation o f a static and idealized vision a compulsive behavior that facilitates an avoidance of reality. Gable's symbolic interpretation turns what is clearly a psychodynamic process (of shame avoidance) into a highly abstract and undefined "Lifo- force" to which Hightower is trying to escape. Following Gable's logic, then,
Hightower's vision is not a retreat fiom reality, but rather an escape to a dimension beyond space and time that is free of cultural constraints or, more precisely, socially constructed reality.
214 This is a puzzling conclusion in part because Hightower does not display a great
concern for how he is perceived by others, hi fact, his obsession with the past (and, most
particularly, his [re]vision of his grandfather) influences his every decision, imbuing his
purpose with a monomaniacal flair that excludes concerns about or consideration for the
high opinion o f others. If there is one thing to which Hightower does not feel bound, it is a socially constructed reality. He has his illusion, his primary shame defense, and that more than anything else informs the construction o f his reality. While Gable correctly notes that, for the first time, Hightower is able to see his pulpit rantings as his parishioners saw them, it does not follow that Hightower immediately seeks to flee his culturally constructed self, histead o f taking a step outside of Gable's "circle of convention," Hightower takes a step into it, achieving not only some recognition of who he is and what he has done, but also assuming some responsibility for his behavior.
Other critics offer more plausible interpretations of this final vision and
Hightower's meditation preceding it. Walter Slatofi^ for example, offers what is perhaps the most reliable critical interpretation of these oft debated issues. Slatoff notes correctly that Hightower comes to recognize not only that he has failed, but the reason why: "The main weight o f the chapter is on Hightower's growing realization of the extent of his failure and guilt as minister and husband, a failure due primarily, he recognizes more and more clearly, to his obsession with this grandfather" (144). After the wheel of
Hightower's deliberations ("the sandclutched wheel o f thinking") releases, Slatoff notes that the "released wheel suggests that there has been resolution.. ..[however] [w]e wonder now whether we have observed a moment of tragic illumination or an escape into fantasy and confusion" (144-45). Slatoff is quite perceptive to note the complexity of
215 Hightower's thinking and the confusion it creates for the reader; however, despite this
complexity and confusion, the critic does not shrink 6om offering what is, I believe, a
cogent analysis o f this episode and a defense o f the conclusion reached by this study;
He has had his vision of the galloping figures thundering past. The tone is excited and triumphant, seeming to suggest that the vision is a kind of final reward, and it seems to be equated with strength and honor and life. But this vision, and the obsession that brings it, has been clearly associated with Hightower's failure to come to terms with himself and his world, and in his presumable recognition of his guilt before the final release o f the wheel.... We are left puzzled, therefore, not only about the nature and degree of Hightower's self-realization but about how to feel about it. The rhetoric and placement of the final vision compel us to view it as an afiSrmative and triumphant end for Hightower. It is, after all, what he has been waiting for. At the same time it seems anything but triumphant and afGrmative when we consider that this very vision is a kind of madness which has emasculated and destroyed him and that his welcoming o f it means he had again retreated from himself and the world. (145)
Slatoff s interpretation here seems entirely reasonable. While I have refirained from
calling Hightower mad, his engagement with his vision is an obsessive-compulsive
disorder that has emasculated and destroyed his potential to be an engaged, useful, and
functional individual. His obsession did destroy his ministry and marriage, and it was a
contributing factor to his wife's suicide. While he did take a step back into the life of
Jefferson, this final meditation, with its conclusion that he was the instrument of his
wife's death, drives him back to the safety o f his vision, which, as we know, is a defense
against his shame anxiety.
While this does not augur the death of Hightower's soul, it does suggest that, for
the time being, he remains unable to fi*ee him self fully from the influence of internalized shame that has shaped his life and darkened his soul. Instead of praying, one of the habits he expressed a desire to revive, or engaging in some other positive behavior, he indulges himself in his long-sustained compulsion to idealize not only his family's past,
216 but his present and future as well. This is because he has allowed his entire life—past,
present, and future—to be circumscribed and limited by these "wild bugles and the
clashing sabers and the dying thunder of hooves.” Although he was driven out o f the
pulpit by the townspeople, Hightower already was living outside of reality.
In the end, then, one might wonder if either Joe Christmas or Gail Hightower has
had any sustained success avoiding his shame. While both Joe and Hightower defend
against a powerful shame affect that threatens to engulf them both, it is Joe who comes closest to reconciling himself with his shame during his lifetime (with the exception of the last few days of his life). Joe fought off his pervasive, chronic shame his entire life, while Hightower gave into it. (Note that Joe stays lean and trim—Sghting shape—while
Hightower turns to flab.) While Joe went along with McEachem's abuse, he never gave into it. histead, he deconstmcted it by incorporating it into his vision of reali^. Joe converted punishment and injustice into stability; anything controverting these behaviors and situations he constmed as threatening. However, Joe's final days are a capitulation to shame and the oppressive culture that fostered it. And while Hightower takes steps to move out of his isolation and the humiliation behind it, he does not relinquish the idealized vision that is his principal defense against his generational shame. Thus, it is not unreasonable to conclude that the abandoned, horribly abused, and fi^equently rejected
Christmas goes to greater lengths to firee himself from the thrall of shame than does the hapless Hightower, who continues to ride his window into an escapist fiction.^"^
Longley notes that, after Percy Grimm kills Joe Christmas, Hightower envisions their two faces, one emerging out of the other. Longley concludes that Grimm's and Christmas's "terrible failure and terrible guilt are somehow directly related to his (Hightower’s) own failure to live up to his humanity" (66). Hightower does fail to live up to his humanity because he is otherwise engaged in an unconscious struggle to defend against an inherited shame that threatens to overwhelm him.
217 Conclusion
That Faulkner had a profound understanding of and intimate familiarity with shame seems inarguable. For if he did not, how could he create a Joe Christmas, who was bom into a state o f shame only to suffor the most traumatic, shame-producing childhood experiences? And, if Faulkner did not understand folly the origins and consequences of generational and cultural shame, how could he create a Gail Hightower, whose entire life energies are poured into the creation and maintenance o f an idealized vision that, momentarily, frees him from the poignant pain of that chronic, pervasive shame bom of familial and cultural humiliation?
These and other Faulkner characters have been called insane, murderous, obsessed and psychopathic. However, such labels miss entirely the underlying and compelling presence o f shame, a psychological affect Faulkner not only knew well, but incorporated into the very essence of his greatest fictional accomplishments.
218 CHAPTERS
CULMINATING RESPONSES OF A SHAME-BASED PSYCHE:
FLIGHT, RAGE, AND VIOLENCE IN WORKS BY
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS AND NATHANAEL WEST
Shame is the "sleeper" that fuels the irrational guilt whose malignant consequences Freud was the first to describe. The ferocity of the attack on the self in shame is something that everyone can introspect and observe. The ancients had a saying that "notÜng is more wretched than when you feel ashamed fijr what you have done."
Helen Block Lewis
This chapter contains four separate discussions that crystallize around the theme of culminating shame-based responses, progressing fiom esc^e to rage and violence to the possibility of reconciliation to one's shame. Two of the three Williams's plays addressed below. The G lass M enagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire^ as well as West's The D ay o f the Locust, dramatize two contrasting outcomes of disavowed shame: escz^e (including actual flight or a retreat to an illusion) and rage leading to violence. (In Homer Simpson,
West creates a character who exemplifies both the response of escape and of violence, demonstrating again the possibility o f multiple responses to internalized shame.)
Williams's work, punctuated as it is by protagonists who have become isolated firom their community and separated fiom themselves, illuminates the theorists' contention that
219 shame drives a wedge between the shame-based individual and others, fostering
behaviors that result in isolation and separation. And while this behavioral observation
has been made by virtually every Williams critic, none have called attention speciGcally
to the centrality of shame, which has contributed to these characters' crises, alienation,
feelings of despair, and illusions, to which they flee in the unconscious hope that the consequences o f this affect will be avoided.^
West extends Williams's discussion of the culmination of shame in the violent,
"retaliatory" response by demonstrating that the retaliatory response can manifest in a crowd as well as in an individual, providing a psychological insight into the collective behavior of a disenflanchised group. Such an insight conveys an important cultural message, given our country's history of privileging some citizens at the expense of others.
No matter its root cause, marginalization creates an environment rife with shame potential.
But ultimately we must return to Williams. The chapter's discussion onThe Night o f the Iguana in a way completes the trajectory o f the investigation into escape, rage, and violence by suggesting, if not actually reaching, a conclusion that differs from the conclusions arrived at in The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, and The Day
' Examples of this oversight in literary criticism are abimdant. For example, Robert Hanptman contends that alienation is at the heart of Williams's creative universe, and his characters are "[o]stracized from the human community... loners and outsiders who consequently become anxious, frustrated, and ultimately mentally unbalanced." While Hauptman argues correctly that "guilt is unconsciously dissembled by Williams's characters" (96), he offers no real rationale for either the characters' alienation or their disguised or repressed guilt As I argue in the preceding chapters, certain causes for behavior, such as isolation and alienation, are actually symptoms which point to a deeper constellation of causes. Here I am arguing that repressed guilt—which, more than alienation, plays a pivotal role in the "mentally unbalanced" behavior of the characters to which Hauptman refers—should be connected to hidden shame. (Hauptman, in discussing the "various ugly symptoms" that result from guilfs repression, mcluding "obduracy, a sense of infallibility, and self-aggrandizement" [96], is actually describing narcissistic responses [e.g., grandiosity] to hidden shame affect.)
220 o fthe Locust. Rather than dramatizing a character's attempts either to escape his or her shame or to seek a violent revenge on the shaming other or a surrogate—two dramatizations that leave us with the specter that shame remains a destructive innmr force— inIguana Williams suggests a third conclusion: the possibility of recovering from internalized shame. By presenting Larry Shannon with an opportunity to recover from the long-term effects of his shame, Williams demonstrates that he is not an author resigned to shame's triumph. Therefore, not only does Williams dramatize the debilitating effects of disavowed shame, asking critics and other readers to privilege affect in works such as The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire (even though his characters do not), he also dramatizes the possibility of confronting shame in a more honest, conscious way. InIguana, Williams's principal characters, Larry Shannon,
Hannah Jelkes, and Maxine Faulk, model a kind o f optimistic behavior in reaction to shame with which an audience might profitably identify.
By reading for shame (i.e., avowing shame as opposed to disavowing it) in these and other works, we can demonstrate that shame is linked fimdamentally to scenes of flight or of violence. Thus privileging affect theory in an investigation of these literary works reveals them to be intervening (even if unintentionally) in the questions about ethics, responsibility, and violence that today, in a postmodern world where traditional sources of authority and morality have been challenged, predominate hterary analyses.
While most, if not all of the traditional, essentialistic assumptions have been challenged by post-structuralism, we have discovered the need to revise or to replace these outmoded ideas with something else, including an illuminated reflection on the origins and symptoms of pathologies through the application of affect theory.
221 The Glass Menagerie: Illusion, Withdrawal, and Escz^e
It is not surprising that, in a review o f major critical z^proaches toT7te Glass
M enagerie, Thomas P. Adler suggests escape as the most often proposed central motif:
"firom a too-possessive love; firom responsibility (personal, familial, and social); from reality; from time; and even from an indifferent universe" (36). While the theme of escape is tangentially related to C. W. E. Bigsby's idea of alienation, neither interpretation takes into account the characters' affective response either to the conditions contributing to a need for escape (from reality or responsibility) or to the effects of isolation and alienation. Therefore, in light of shame theory, such traditional analyses of theme and character serve primarily as starting points for a deeper analysis of character behavior and motivation based on affect.^
Lacking a critical application of affect theory, many critics of Williams's work are unable—or hesitant—to provide specific psychological explanations for the behavior they observe in Amanda Wingfield. As a result, we are given rather uninformative descriptors (e.g., "shrewish," "nagging," "noble") or innocuous conclusions (e.g.,
Amanda "reflects the extremely complex nature of human love") that do little to advance our understanding of the character (Adler 38). For example, Jeanne McGlinn considers
Amanda a mythmaker unable to "face reality," while Robert Jones sees her "immaturely retreating to a 'world of imagination'" (Adler 39). Surely few would argue that Amanda finds her reality difGcult to face and, therefore, retreats to an idealized version of the
South of her youth. These observations are readily apparent and easily made. However,
■ For a review of the primary themes in Williams's major plays, see Adler's essay, which includes a comprehensive bibliography for each work considered. 222 when afTect theory is used as another interpretive method, motives for behavior are uncovered, origins of primary affect (e.g., shame) are identified, and defensive responses to psychological injury are better understood, combining to deepen our analysis of this complex character.
In the context ofThe Glass Menagerie, shame theory can be used to revise a critical view that, while on the right interpretive track, does not quite reach the station.
For example, Eric Levy is correct when he notes that Laura is burdened by self- consciousness; however, because he does not understand that Laura's exquisite self- consciousness is symptomatic of her extensive hidden shame, he attributes it to Amanda's need to "flatter her own self-image" (qtd. in Adler 39). (This is not to say that Amanda does not inflate her ego at Laura's expense. She does, of course, and grandiosi^ is one of her preferred responses to her own inner shame.) If we supplement Levy's recognition with the connection between self-consciousness and internalized shame, his observations of both Amanda and Laura may have been amplified.
Bigsby provides us with another useful example of an interpretation that could be revised in the context of shame theory. In addressing the Wingfields, Bigsby contends that their alienation and despair are not determined primarily by political or social circumstances. Instead, Bigsby contends, these characters are, "beyond anything, the victims of fate (Laura), o f time (Amanda), and of a prosaic and destructive reality" (34).
Fate, time, destructive reality—these well-used terms are too unspecific to approach a comprehensive imderstanding o f these characters and their behavior. While one could ascribe Laura's physical deformity to fate, this would not begin to explain her extreme anxiety approaching terror. And using time as an explanation for Amanda's reliance on
223 an illusion may at first sound plausible until one recognizes that it is too vague to be of
much value. One aspect o f shame theory that makes it a valuable extension to literary
criticism is its clearly defined origins and symptoms, which are connected by well-
understood psychodynamics substantiated by clinical observations, psychotherapeutic
experience, and psychological theory.
Amanda Wingfield exemplifies an observation made by the playwright and critic
Robert Hauptman in his monograph entitled The Pathological Vision^ a study o f the
"pathological ontology" fisund in Genet, Céline, and Williams. Hauptman
contends correctly that, fisr a number of Williams's characters, the creation of illusions becomes a primary panacea when they "can no longer face the truth or cope with reality"
(100). This dynamic o f creating an illusory world as a defense against unidentified shame and the reality that spawned it is discussed in some detail in the context of the
Rev. Gail Hightower (see Chapter Four). Bigsby notes that, far fi'om being a panacea, such fantasizing contains a destructive element; in Ihe Glass Menagerie and .4 Streetcar
Named Desire, Williams, "like William Faulkner, acknowledges the seductive yet destructive power of a past reconstituted as myth" (38). Such a defensive strategy, regardless of its mythic foundation, separates one firom reality and, thereby, prevents honest, sustained and fimctional relationships with oneself and others in a realistic firamework. Hightower, like Amanda Wingfield and Blanche DuBois, provides evidence in support of the contention that living in an illusory world not only separates one firom reality and the significant others who dwell within it, but also evokes additional shame.
Although Hauptman does not pursue an analysis of Amanda firom the perspective of shame theory, he does note the destructive potential of living too fully in an illusory
224 world. He wonders if Amanda's illusions are more detrimental than helpful, and he notes that, by helping Amanda to avoid her present responsibilities, her illusions also cause suffering and disappointment (103).^ Hauptman notes that, in Totem and TaboOy Freud observes: "It is characteristic of ... neurosis to put a psychic [here, illusive] reality above an actual one and to react as seriously to thoughts as the normal person reacts only towards realities" (108-9). Hauptman contends that most of Williams's characters who exhibit illusive behavior do behave as described by Freud. While Hauptman is unaware of the connection between internalized shame affect and dwelling in or relying on an illusory world, he is correct when he asserts that "[tjhose who are most deeply enmeshed in their own worlds ... fail to realize the extent of their malady or the deleterious toll it is exacting" (109).“*
Amanda's detachment from reality has identifiable origins that can be interpreted through the application of shame theory. In the character descriptions that accompany the play, Williams says this of Amanda: "having failed to establish contact with reality,
[she] continues to live vitally in her illusions ..."{The Glass M enagerie 5; subsequent citations refer to this edition). Here, "continues" is exceptionally important because it lets the reader know that Amanda's difficulties with life have been with her for some
^ Bigsby, on the other hand, argues that Amanda's fantasies have an ameliorative effect; "[m]emory has become myth, a story to be endlessly repeated as a protection against present decline" (38).
Some critics charge Williams with creating an abhorrent universe peopled by psychologically deranged, morally bankrupt characters. For example, Norman Fedder, m The Influence o fD. H. Lawrence on Tennessee Williams, charges that W illiam s presents "an abnormal psychology rather than a comprehensive philosophy of life" (qtd. in Hauptman 109). This study contends that many o f the characters in modem American literature heretofore misunderstood as pathological or morally deviant are actually the victims of internalized shame and must be reconsidered in this light.
225 time. For example, Laura's physical deformity is not a recent occurrence; as a result,
Amanda has experienced significant affective responses (not the least of which is shame) to her daughter's defect for quite awhile. She also has experienced abandonment, poverty, social humiliation, and, perhz^s most devastating of all, the loss of her ideal of
Southern womanhood (which rests on mythic notions of marriage, maternity, financial security, and domestic bliss), all o f which evoke a strong afibctive response in the form of shame. In her book-length study of the play, Selma Presley contends that Amanda not only creates an illusory world, she idealizes it as well, speaking "as though she had been reared in the antebellum South" (35) as the daughter o f a plantation owner. Such a tendency not only to escape to the past but to idealize it as well clearly suggests a considerable uneasiness with circumstances, some o f which are addressed below.^
While most critics take note of Amanda's occasional fantasy, some contend that she is out of touch with reality, an observation that Presley believes leads to a misinterpretation of Amanda's role and, as a result, distorts the meaning of the play.
In particular, Presley takes issue with those who refer toThe Glass M enagerie
"as a tragedy about a woman completely out of touch with reality" (36). While it is absurd to contend that Amanda has withdrawn firom reality completely, it is unreasonable to assert that her occasional practice o f an illusory existence is unrelated to fears about her present situation and her ability to survive it. It is undeniable that
^ Presley argues that Amanda's reminiscences "reflect neither mental imbalance nor idiosyncratic behavior ... [because] [s]he inherited a view of the world that inspired many who lived in the Deep South in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries" (36). While it is true that a regional (though largely repressed) shame pervaded the South after the Civil War, Presley’s observation overlooks specific problems confionting Amanda and the psychological effects of those problems. 226 Amanda is in crisis. Not only is she beset by her own very significant problems, she also is confi-onted by her children's dilemmas: Tom's im m inen t decision about whether to remain financially responsible for his mother's and sister's welfare, and Laura's inability to fimction successfully as an independent person. Presley recognizes that Amanda is driven to last resorts (e.g., trying to arrange a romantic liaison for her daughter), and she notes correctly that Amanda is desperate for legitimate reasons (37). Compounding her desperation is disavowed shame,^ which intensifies her anxiety and contributes to her feeling ofpanic.^
Amanda, like Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire and Faye Greener in
The Day o fthe Locust, relies heavily on a narcissistic defense to keep her inner shame at bay. She has merged her grandiosi^ with her mythmaking to produce an idealized vision of herself as a desirable Southern Belle untarnished by the tawdriness of reality. In Scene
One, Amanda tells her two adult children, Laura and Tom, the often told story of her youthfiil popularity in Blue Mountain, where she claims to have been quite the sought- after debutante:
One Sunday afternoon in Blue Mountain—your mother received—seventeen !— gentleman callers. Why, sometimes there weren't chairs enough to accommodate them all— I understood the art of conversation!... It wasn't enough for a girl to
^ I use the tenn "disavowed shame” as a substitute for the often used "mtemalized shame" to suggest that, at some level o f consciousness, a character does know or may have a presentiment of knowledge about his or her shame but continues to behave as if he or she did not achieve such an awareness.
^ Other critics interpret Amanda's illusions differently. Hauptman believes that Amand a finds reality too harsh to face and her fantasy is a way of resolving di^arity' between past and present, expectation and fulfillment (101). Griffin contends that Amanda's belief in the myth of the Old South lends "a stability of time and place" to those who, like Amanda, believe in it. Because she is alienated firom the South, she becomes preoccupied with its myth (24). Joseph Wood Kiutch sees Amanda as a heroine, but one who is "an absurd and pathetic widow... defeated by a crude and pushing modernity which neither understands nor respects her dream of gentility" (qtd. in Presley 37).
227 be possessed of a pretty face and a graceful figure—although I wasn't slighted in either respect. She also needed to have a nimble wit and a tongue to meet all occasions My callers were gentlemen—all! Among my callers were some of the most prominent young planters o f the Mississippi Delta—planters and sons of planters! (26; scene 1)
Abandoned by her husband, impoverished, and reliant on Tom for her primary support,
Amanda finds herself in a desperate situation, which piques her already considerable shame anxiety. Having little in the present about which to feel good, she boasts about her past in a grandiose fashion, relying on the grace and patience of her children to hear her out once again. And, characteristic of the shame-based narcissist, she returns to her idealized version of her youth again and again. When Tom's fiiend, Jim O'Connor, comes to their back-alley apartment for dinner, Amanda tells him:
Well, in the South we had so many servants. Gone, gone, gone. All vestige of gracious living! Gone completely!... All my gentlemen callers were sons of planters and so of course I assumed that I would be married to one and raise my family on a large piece of land with plenty^ of servants.... I married no planter! I married a man who worked for the telephone company! (82; scene 6)
Ashamed to entertain the young man whom she believes to be Laura's future suitor in such humble surroundings, Amanda exaggerates her past as a way of avoiding temporarily the humiliation her poverty evokes. She again emphasizes that her gentlemen callers were a ll sons of planters, a mantra so often repeated she no doubt beUeves it.
Wurmser explains that lying is used as a defense against shame. When the truth causes one to feel belittled, incompetent, defective, or worthless, one exaggerates, pretending to be better in some way than one actually is. Unable to conceal her present circumstances fix)m her son's young fiiend, she embellishes her past not only to impress him, but also to deflect shame away fix>m her own vulnerable self. Although her husband
228 left her sixteen years ago, she remains unreconciled to this abandonment. As a result, she
misrepresents his absence to Jim, saying "Now he travels and I don't even know where!"
(82; scene 6).
Amanda's shame anxiety is intensified by her acute fear of being abandoned
again. With no viable means of support, she is completely dependent on Tom, a would-be writer whom she knows is growing tired of his warehouse job. As her anxiety increases, so does her emotional dependency on Tom. In Scene Three, she becomes practically hysterical (she is described alternately as being "shrill" and "fairly screeching"), asking Tom: "What right have you got to jeopardize your job? Jeopardize the security of us all? How do you think we'd manage if you were—" (41). What she cannot say is "how would Laura and I manage if you were to leave," a possibility too fearful to verbalize. Her tirade is prompted by her concern over Tom's frequent visits to the movie theater, a behavior she fears will eventually wear him out, making him late to work. Because her anxiety is exceptionally high, she projects the possibihty of tardiness into the probabiUty of dismissal, which to her is tantamount to starving, homelessness, and perhaps even death.
One of the primary origins underlying Amanda's shame and the anxiety evoked by it is her lack of self-sufBciency. Becoming a self-sufBcient and, therefore, a self- supportive individual is one of those primary cultural scripts Kaufrnan identifies as being necessary to avoid feeling ashamed of oneself. (However, Kaufinan's conceptualization of this script must be reinterpreted in the context o f Southern womanhood if it is to be applied to Amanda. In Amanda's mind, self-sufficiency is garnered through marriage to a prosperous husband.) Amanda is not self-sufficient, and she does not have any hope of
229 becoming such: "What is there left but dependency all our lives?... I’ve seen such pitiful
cases in the South—barely tolerated spinsters living upon the grudging patronage of
sister's husband or brother’s wife!..." (34; scene 2). Although Amanda does not admit it,
she is embarrassed to have to depend on her son Tom ft»r support. By not being married
to a wealthy Southern aristocrat, she feels that she has failed herself and her children.
And while she believes subconsciously that financial dependence on anyone other than a husband—including a son or daughter—is tantamount to failure, she tries to convince herself that if she pays for Laura’s vocational education or finds a man who will marry
Laura, then her dependence on Laura would be more acceptable.
Perhaps more important thanAmanda's lack of self-sufficiency in the context of shame potential is her near-infinite displacement firom her ideal of Southern womanhood, an influential cultural script that was once the realistic center of her universe. (It continues to be the center of her illusory existence, of course.) Her tawdry surroundings, juxtaposed as they are against her idealized memories of life in the South that are a reflection of antebellum grandeur, increase her sense of lost entitlement and her feeling of humiliation. Unconsoled by her behef that she married "for love," Amanda experiences the death of a dream that, although rooted in myth, became an unfulfilled goal that contributes to her travail.
Amanda is not, however, the only shame-based individual in the play. Laura suffers feelings of crippling shame and pessimism stemming firom at least two potent sources: a physical handicap and a broken interpersonal relationship as a result of her mother’s condemnatory attitude. Laura experiences other origins of shame, too, but these two primary ones will be discussed first.
230 As a youth, Laura had to wear a leg brace, and she became very self-conscious
about it. She recounts her embarrassment to Jim, who confessed he never noticed her handicap:
Yes, it was so hard for me, getting upstairs [in the auditorium]. I had that brace on my leg—it clumped so loud!... \yvincing at the recollection} : To me it sounded like—thtmder!... And everybody was seated before I came in. I had to walk in firont o f all those people. My seat was in the back row. I had to go clumping all the way up the aisle with everyone watching! (93; scene 7)
Self-consciousness can be a manifestation of internalized shame. Lewis confirms the connection between shame experiences of this kind and selficonsciousness through her observation o f a client, noting that "[ajlthough her shame feeling is acute ... [she] does not explicitly identify her own feeling as shame, but rather as 'embarrassment,' a shame variant.... [She] also conveys the acute selficonsciousness of shame, with its implied hostile watcher" {Shame and Guilt 202). Laura was deeply embarrassed in high school because she believed that her leg brace was apparent to all. She winces still at the recollection o f her long climb up the auditorium stairs—in her mind her crippled body the singular focus o f her classmates—confirming the poignancy of the humiliation she felt.
While Laura felt embarrassed, shame was produced. Williams makes it clear to his audience that Laura believed that everyone not only noticed her defect but condemned it as well, and she experiences this idea o f the hostile watcher, which is akin to the critical other.
Some critics note correctly that Laura's withdrawal firom reality is related to her handicap, but they miss the centrality o f affect theory. Hauptman is one such critic, for he concludes that Laura's physical handicap "makes her unable to cope with the world
(for example, she becomes nauseous at secretarial school and stops attending)... [and] is
231 also an excuse to avoid involvement..(9 8 ). It is not her handicap per se that prevents her firom getting along in the world; instead it is her internalized shame, which may have been evoked originally by Amanda's response to Laura's handicap because it prevented
Laura firom becoming the perfect expression o f grace and beauty that was an integral part of Amanda's ideal of womanhood. Her self-consciousness, shyness, and anxiety are symptomatic of internalization of shame affect, as is her withdrawal firom situations (e.g.,
Rubicam's Business College, with its typing tests and other measurement criteria) that expose her to evaluation (with its potential for additional shame). Although Hauptman suggests that Laura uses her deformity as an excuse to avoid contact with the world, it is her significant shame anxiety that forces her to shrink firom reality. Griffin, too, contends that Laura's defect causes her to withdraw into her own world (28) and that the glass menagerie is an escape mechanism (29); however, Griffin also does not connect Laura's deformity to shame affect, the anxiety it produces, or the symptoms Laura experiences.
Instead, Griffin sees Laura's lameness in more general terms, as "a symbol of a more serious, mental condition ..." (30).
Laura's shame anxiety is so powerful that it practically paralyzes her.® Rangell notes that anxiety of this kind is a response to the anticipation of exposure to additional shame. When Jim comes to the door, we see an exemplification of this dynamic: "Oh, Mother—yo u answer the door!... Oh, Mother, please answer the door, don't make me do it!... Mother—you go to the door!... Please, you answer please!...it,
^ In his short story "Portrait of a Girl in Glass," which is a short version of the dinner eventThe in Glass Menagerie, Williams describes Laura in a way that is unmistakably symptomatic of one in the thrall of shame anxiety: "She made no positive motion toward the world but stood at the edge o f the water, so to speak, with feet that anticipated too much cold to move.... I think die petals of her mind had simply closed through fear" (qtd. in GrifGn 30).
232 I'm sick!" (74-75; scene 6) She is terrified to meet a stranger in her own home, and when
she pleads with her mother to be excused fiom meeting Jim at the door, Amanda shames
her; "I'm sick, too—of your nonsense! Why can't you and your brother be normal
people?" (75) A little later, when Laura is left alone in the dining room with Jim, she is
so nervous "[s]he can hardly speak fiom the almost intolerable strain of being alone with
a stranger" (88; scene 7). We also learn that she suffers a "paralyzing shyness," another
symptom o f her unidentified shame. Her anxiety is so severe that she can barely
function.
To the shame Laura feels as a result o f her handicap is added the shame that
originates when one fails to meet the expectations of a significant other. Kaufinan teUs
us that shame is readily induced when a parent communicatesto a child in some way that he or she is a disappointment as a person{Shame 19). When this occurs, the child believes herself to be fimdamentally flawed because the judgment, whether expressed or implied, comes fiom the most significant person in the child's life. During the course of the play, we learn that Amanda does not always maintaina positive attitude about Laura's handicap. After Jim O'Connor’s departure, a nearly frantic, critical and self-centered
Amanda blames Tom fijr not knowing about Jim's engagement, then says: "Go to the movies, go! Don't think about us, a mother deserted, anunmarried sister who's crippled and has no job! Don't let anything interfere with your selfish pleasure!" (113-14; scene
7). In a single sentence, Amanda mentions three conditions about which Laura suffers considerable shame: spinsterhood, lameness, and unemployment. Laura knows that she is a disappointment to her mother, and this intensifies Laura's own deep distress.
233 And Amanda is dis^pointed in Laura for yet another reason. When Amanda leams that Laura has not been attending classes at Rubicam's Business College—the typing mstructor informs Amanda that Laura, a "terribly shy little girl," dropped out of school after a few days o f class; we later learn Laura was so nervous she vomited, a humiliating experience that made it impossible for her to return—she tells Laura: "Fifty dollars' tuition, all o f our plans—my hopes and ambitions for you—just gone up the spout like that" (32; scene 2). While this may not sound like a shame-evoking reproach, it is to
Laura. Amanda does to Laura what Willy and Linda Loman do to Biff: she puts into her daughter's hands the responsibility for her (Amanda's) life. When Laura tells her that she carmot return to the college, Amanda asks, "So what are we going to do the rest of our lives!... Amuse ourselves with the glass menagerie, darling?... We won't have a business career—we've given that up because it gave us nervous indigestion!" (33-34; scene 2).
Amanda's sarcastic, insensitive response only increases Laura's shame. In addition, by making Laura responsible for her (Amanda's) welfare, she adds to Laura's already high anxiety. In this way, new experiences related to the family's well-being increase Lawa's exposure to shame because so much is at stake she is too terrified to even try. When this level of anxiety is coupled with her low self-esteem and lack of confidence, it is no wonder Laura suffers firom emotional paralysis.^
^ Delma Presley notes correctly that Laura "has accepted her isolation as hopeless," "has given up trying to be 'normal,"' and "apparently is prepared to lead a life of dependency" (41). These responses—isolation, hopelessness, despair, and con^>lete dependence on anodier—are manifestations o f shame affect, the primary origins o f which are Laura's defbrmi^ and her mother's response to it. Presley goes on to identify what clearly are manifestations o f shame when she says o f Laura: "She is afOicted widr a profound shyness, and she is afiaid even to attempt to overcome it. The mere thought of social actrvify makes her nauseous " (41-42).
234 O f the three Wingfield's, Tom is the least affected by shame—that is, until he leaves his mother and sister to join the Merchant Marines. This is not to suggest, however, that he does not suffer fiom the affect. He undoubtedly experiences some shame as a result of not meeting his ideals of becoming a writer and having adventurous experiences. Furthermore, he loathes his warehouse job: "You think I'm in love with the
Continental Shoemakers?... Look! I'd rather somebody picked up a crowbar and battered out my brains—than go back mornings" (41; scene 3). In deference to and out of concern for Amanda, who has not demonstrated that she is either capable or willing to become setf-sufScient, Tom sacrifices his dreams and lives at home as the primary breadwinner, a role about which he is conflicted. Speaking to the audience, narrator
Tom, viewing the couples kissing in the alley outside the Paradise Dance Hall, says:
"This was the compensation for lives that passed like mine, without any change or adventure" (57; scene 5). He feels trz^ped by his financial responsibiUties to his mother and sister, and he is distressed that he is unable to pursue his own dreams for the future.
This distress, a variant of shame, is compounded by Amanda, who either harps at him or blames him for situations for which he is not responsible.
A desperate and fiightened Amanda, anticipating Tom's departure for the
Merchant Marines, tries to blame him for Laura's situation and to evoke in him a sense of guilt for wanting to leave: "Oh, I can see the handwriting on the wall as plain as I see the nose in front of my face! It's terrifying! More and more you remind me of your father!
He was out all hours without explanation!—Thenleft I Goodbyel And me with the bag to hold" (54; scene 4). Here, a clearly terrified Amanda tries to make a connection between Tom's desire for adventure and independence and his father's abandonment of
235 the family. When Tom wonders what he can do to make Laura more "independent,"
Amanda says: "Overcome selfishness! Selfi self, self is all that you ever think of!" (53).
Her criticism of Tom ensures that, when he does leave, he will experience the guilt and
accompanying shame evoked when one fails to meet the expectations of a significant other. Because she is not confident that she will be able to support herself and Laura,
Amanda tries to shame Tom into staying at least until Laura is married, an unlikely occurrence given her emotional state and physical imperfection. Thus,Amanda's inability to support Tom's wish to leave dooms him to a life o f shame and regret.
Although few critics note that Tom experiences unidentified shame over leaving his mother and, more particularly, sister, many suggest that he experiences considerable guilt. GrifGn, in a comparison of the play to "A Portrait of a Girl in Glass," argues that
"[t]he story ends like the play, with the narrator, having deserted his mother and sister, stül gripped by guilt when he recalls his sister: 'once in a while.... A door comes softly and irresistibly open. I hear the tired old music my unknown father left in the place he abandoned as faithlessly as I'" (30-31). Tom is undeniably riddled with guilt; however, his desertion of his mother and sister is one of those moral decisions that evokes shame as well as guilt, with shame becoming an internalized affect and, as a result, an enduring source of emotional despair.
With its clearly delineated responses, shame theory is a useful critical tool in determining the origin o f one character's ambiguous relationship with another. For example, R. B. Parker contends that Tom's narration is problematic because his attitude toward Laura is ambiguous. While this may be the case, Tom's ambiguity may have less to do with Parker's assertion of an "incestuous attraction" than with shame affect and its
236 defensive responses. Di an essay comparing certain psychological aspects of characters in The Glass Menagerie to those inThe Two Character Play y Parker argues that the primary interpretive problem facing critics o fThe Glass Menagerie is one o f mood and tone. (For Parker, mood has to do with the attitude "Tom-as-narrator" has to the events he recalls, while tone is "the slightly mocking, not wholly ingenuous stance that Tom seems to take to the audience...” [68].) His analysis focuses not only on the play and alternative presentations of it (including "A Portrait of a Girl in Glass"), but also on biographical information aboutWilliams. Parker concludes that there are subtle hints
(especially in "A Portrait") of incestuous attraction between Tom and Laura. While I am not disputing Parker’s suggestion, an alternative interpretation can be made if one considers Tom's attitude from the perspective of shame theory. From this point of view, we might expect Tom to be somewhat ambivalent because he continues to experience both shame and guilt over abandoning Laura. It is exceptionally difGcult for someone in
Tom's position to admit—to himself or to an audience (of whatever kind)—that his behavior may have led to disastrous consequences for the sister he so loved. He can speak of the grave possibilities in symbolic terms—"Blow out your candles, Laura" (115; scene 7)—but to speak symbolically in such a situation is to put some emotional distance between himse lf and the difGcult realities experienced by the one he left behind. So, yes,
Tom's mood is complex and his tone ambiguous under the circumstances. These are shame's defenders, called forth to protect the deserter from the fiiU affective force of what he has done.
237 Shame-evoking hicidents and the Retaliatory Response:
The Unlikely Bond Between Stanley Kowalski and Homer Simpson
As Stanley Kowalski and Homer Simpson share a few important shame-related
characteristics, they are discussed together here. Both Stanley and Homer are bom on the
page as full-fledged adults and, as such, have no childhood history to analyze. However,
both of these characters experience as an adult a significant shame-evoking incident that
has a profound and lasting effect on them. Furthermore, both Stanley and Homer strike
back as a result of their shame, exhibiting what Lewis calls a "righting" tendency, which
is a shame-based retahatory response mounted to punish the offending other or a
surrogate. Stanley Kowalski also exemplifies the concept of shamelessness, which is,
ironically, a defensive response to inner shame.
A number of shame theorists address the aspect o f shame that has to do with
exposure, especially exposure that comes suddenly and unexpectedly. Wurmser notes the
importance of discovery, saying: "An obligatory aspect o f shame is the role discovery plays. It is usually a more or less sudden exposure, an exposure that abruptly brings to
light the discrepancy between expectation and failure" (52). Lynd suggests that shame often results when a vulnerable aspect of the self is unexpectedly exposed: "Experiences of shame appear to embody the root meaning of the word—to uncover, to expose, to wound. They are experiences o f exposure, exposure of peculiarly sensitive, intimate, vulnerable aspects of the self. The feeling of unexpectedness marks one of the central contrasts between shame and guilt" (qtd. in Wurmser 52).
238 Stanley Kowalski experiences the damaging effects of a sudden, unexpected
exposure to shame. He is humiliated by Blanche DuBois, who gives this unflattering
description of Stanley to Stella as he eavesdrops on their conversation:
"Well—if you'll forgive me—he'scommon! ... He acts like an animal, has an animal's habits! Eats like one, moves like one, talks like one! There's even something—sub-humaxt—something not quite to the stage ofhumanity yet! Yes, something—ape-like about him, like one of those pictures I've seen in— anthropological studies! Thousands and thousands of years have passed him right by, and there he is—Stanley Kowalski—survivor of the stone age!" (A Streetcar Named Desire 83, scene 4; subsequent citations refer to this edition)
Her denigration of Stanley continues, then she essentially tells Stella to leave him: "In
this dark march toward whatever it is we're approaching.. .D o n 't —don't hang back with
the brutes!” (83; scene 4) From that moment on Stanley begins to plot his revenge,
which is the execution of the righting tendency.
However, if Stanley is the confident, cock of the walk male some readers contend
he is,^° it seems questionable that he would be seriously concerned that an eccentric,
emotionally over-wrought, and homeless Blanche is capable o f separating him from
Stella. If this is the case—that is, if he is this confident, secure man's man—he would not
feel threatened by Blanche. But he is, and his revenge is as much about victory as it is about vindication. We need to recognize, then, that Stanley is a shame-based character
Kolin notes that a "fairly large group of supporters has gloried in the sexual prowess of Williams's 'gaudy seed bearer,"' though few women are mcluded among this cheerleading squad. (Among those who interpret Stanley &om a feminist perspective are Andrea Dworkin, June Schlueter, and Anca Vlasopolos.) Joseph Krutch crows that Stanley's "vnility, even orgiastic virility, is the proper answer to decadence," while Foster Hirsch declares that Williams "celebrates the sensual vigor and pride that Stanley so spectacularly incarnates." Although not as effusive, Henry Popkm conq>ares Stanley to a Greek god, proclaiming that "Adonis reigns in Stanley's world where Blanche must be seen as the dreaded destructive Gargoyle." Finally, in what might be the most misguided if not offensive observation of all, Mark Winchell chortles that Stanley is "the bad boy... [who] proves that the sententious schoolmarm is really a secret nympho" (Kolin 58-9). Such interpretations are obviously biased m favor o f Stanley, who is heralded as a paradigm of machismo rather than as a victim of his own considerable shame.
239 even before he is humiliated by Blanche. (The exact origins of Stanley’s shame are
unclear. One possible cultural source of this negative affect could be his Pohsh ethnicity
and de facto membership in the immigrant class, which, in America, often is the target of
discrimination. In Scene Eight, Williams dramatizes Stanly's sensitivity to the
pejorative term "Pollack:" "Don't ever talk that way to me!... [calling me a] Pollack ...I"
[131].) Stanley is a wife-beater, and spousal abuse can be an indicator of unidentifted
shame. Bradshaw notes that those who physically or sexually abuse others "are fueled by
internalized shame," and he quotes Kauftnan, who contends that:
The perpetrator of the assault or violation also is shame-based. Such acts are acts o f power and revenge, bom of impotence and fueled by shame ... that scene of forcible violation is a reenactment, a transformation of a scene of equal powerlessness and humiliation experienced by the perpetrator at the hands of a different tormentor.... The victim, the target of revenge, is confused with the source of the perpetrator’s shame. By defeating and humiliating the victim, the perpetrator is momentarily fteed of shame. (21)
Thus, Stanley’s abusive behavior is likely a shame defense, engaged to free him momentarily from the thrall o f this hidden affect.
Real, whose primary focus is on male depression, suggests that wife batterers are exhibiting sadistic grandiosity or, put another way, shame-grandiosity, when abusing their spouses, which is a way of "medicating" their shame-based depression. Real also notes that the violent aspect of abuse also has a shame component: violence is another addictive defense that is used to pump up one’s self-esteem. "Like alcohol or drugs, violence operated for Jimmy [one of Real’s clients] as a magic elixir transforming his shame into grandiosi^, shifting him from a sense o f helplessness to a sense o f omnipotent control" (67).
240 Stanley’s grandiosity does have a sadistic aspect. He assumes the elevated, sadistic role o f this abusive form of grandiosity, while Stella becomes the masochist. For example, he assumes that Blanche has inherited a fortune and, in the process of disposing the family's estate, has swindled Stella out of her share. He invokes the Napoleonic code—which, according to Stanley, states that "what belongs to the wife belongs to the husband..." (32, scene 2)—as his authority to rifle through Blanche's personal belongings. As Real notes, the spouse who assumes the sadistic aspect o f grandiosity exercises control over and abuses others as means of elevating himself or herself (65). In
Trauma and Recovery, Judith Herman demonstrates that, "[i]n a totalitarian family, the man imposes his will on other family members and their subservience provides the platform of his grandiosity" (Real 65). Stanley exercises complete control over Stella, who submits herself to the subservient role that Stanley's shame-grandiosity demands.
And, when he rapes Blanche, a classic example o f the righting tendency, he is not only retaliating for her shaming him (vindication), but also exercising his control over her
(victory). He has to be the powerful one in defiance of his pervasive shame."
In Scene Four o fStreetcar, the morning after Stella is assaulted by Stanley, a deeply concerned and nearly hysterical Blanche is shocked that Stella not only returned to the apartment, but slept with Stanley as well. Stella downplays the incident and excuses Stanley's violence:
" There are critics who assert that Blanche provokes Stanley's assault GrifGn, however, is not one of them. While she notes the sexual innuendo that underlies Stanley and Blanche's verbal sparrmg (SO), she also notes that Stanley "interprets her hysterical actions as provocation, even her defensively breaking the bottle as rough house'" because, even in her obvious state of desperation, "to Stanley women mean only one thing—sex" (60). Griffin's position is defensible, for Blanche's behavior is evidence that she resisted Stanley’s assault. Furthermore, Stanley's sexual behavior needs to be reconsidered in the context of affect theory and convulsive behavior. 241 I know how it must have seemed to you and Fm awful sorry it had to h^pen, but it wasn't anything as serious as you seem to take it. In the first place, when men are drinking and playing poker anything can h^xpen. It's always a powder-keg.... No, it isn't all right for anybody to make such a terrible row, but—people do sometimes. Stanley's ahvayr smashed things. (72; emphasis added)
Stella idolizes her husband, and although she recognizes that he always has exhibited violent behavior during their marriage, she expresses no outward concern about it
Instead, she admits to being "sort of—thrilled by it," an indication that she has assumed the masochistic position in the relationship, merging with a force "larger than life" (and, thus, seeking transcendence by submerging her self in Stanley, the controlling, "abundant other"). Stella's defense o f Stanley fits the pattern of the battered-wife syndrome, characterized by an abused wife who continues to "accept" the abuse of her grandiose husband. The husband's grandiosity is a cover-up for feelings of low self-esteem originating in shame. (Note: Happy Loman, like Stanley Kowalski, is portrayed as a successful "lady's man; " nevertheless, his assertiveness with women masks his inner conflict, which is dominated by foelings of inferiority and low self-esteem.) Louise
Blackwell describes the "merger" position of an abusive relationship when she suggests that Stella "is in the predicament o f many of Williams's women who have subordinated themselves to a domineering and often inferior person to attain reality and meaning through communication with another person" (Kolin 60). And Londré notes that, while
Stella "may be trapped in marriage to a man who makes messes for her to clean up, ... it is a situation she has chosen for herself..." (56), an interpretation that overlooks Stella's dependency on and desire for (sub)merger with the abundant other, the elevated one who lifis her out of her owndiminished state of reality.
242 Fossum and Mason also link spousal abuse, as well as self-abuse, to shame:
We find themes of the shame-bound family when people are compulsively abusing themselves in all the countless ways they can do so: abusing drugs and alcohol, physically inflicting pain or injury, overworking, over-exercising, or starving themselves. We recognize the same theme when people arecompulsively abusing others, whether it be child abuse or spouse abuse and whether the abuse be physical, sexual, or emotional. (9)
Alcohol abuse is another shame-related behavior, and we witness Stanley's drunkenness
on more than one occasion, including the card game in Scene Three. Angry because he is
losing at cards, an incensed Stanley "stalks fiercely” through the portieres into the
bedroom, grabs the radio to which Blanche is listening and throws it violently out the
window. Then, he charges Stella and strikes her, prompting his poker-playing fiiends to restrain him. In this scene, Stanley is not just a drunk, he is a mean, abusive drunk,
and this behavior provides additional evidence that he is in a state of shame. (Some
Critics are not in agreement about who is the play's protagonist, Blanche or Stanley, and Williams himself is no help, for he regarded both as synq>athetic characters. However, we should leave the door open to a consideration thatW illiams may have preferred imconsciously Stanley over Blanche. Mark Lilly contends that Stanley is a "stereotyped homoerotic icon for Williams " (qtd. in Kolin 52). When one considers carefully Williams's description of Stanley in Scene One, one can detect in it the playwrights own deep admiration approaching awe: "Animal joy in his being is inq)licit in all his movements and attitudes. Since earliest manhood the center o f his life has been pleasure with women, the giving and taking of it, not with weak indulgence, dependently, but with the power and pride of a richly feathered male bird among hens" (24-25; scene 1). The description continues, and it is as adoring as it is efihisive. Williams seems smitten, and it is not too much o f an interpretive reach to see that, when he &st conceived of Stanley, Williams was infatuated with the idea of him. As a result, others—critics, other readers, members of a theater audience—are susceptible to this subtle but influential bias, overlooking Stanley's sadistic cmelty, greed-inspired aggression, rage and volatility, alcohol abuse, and vindictive nature. These are not the behaviors of a secure self constructed around a "conq>lete and satisfying center." While he obviously enjoyed "good drink and food and games," this is not nearly enough to get one to overlook his violations of his wife and sister-in-law. (This problem of sympathetic allegiance is evidenced by the number of critics who have addressed it. As Kolin points out, some have looked at Williams's own sympathies for clues: "Berlin proposed that "Williams wishes to keep the sides balanced." More recently, Abbott similarly reminded readers that "there must be a fine balance in the audience's sympathies between Stanley and Blanche, for unless we see Blanche as a tragic figure, then the play loses impact" Cheslefs survey ofA Streetcar Named Desire criticism m the early 1970s generally placed Williams in Blanche's camp, but Lacan- and Foucault-inspired readings of the 1980s and 1990s do not always concur. Stanley has ... moved fiom brute to sensitive and threatened husband. Blanche, too, has been unseated as Williams's favorite for some readers. Lant, m fact, indicted Williams for his "unacknowledged, unconscious misogyny [that] weakens his development of Blanche as a strong, exciting character... Blanche is damned no matter how she behaves " (Kolin 55-56].) 243 critics have suggested that Stanley may be jealous of the attention Blanche pays to Mitch.
If this is true, Stanley's petulant behavior, as disproportionate as it is in^propriate, belies
the suggestion that he is cocksure and self-possessed. Instead, his immaturity, rage, and
drunkenness suggest something altogether different: a self-centered, insecure man who
behaves as one who is affected by internalized shame.)
At times, Stanley behaves shamelessly, which is a response to hidden shame.
Goldberg notes that those who behave in a shameless way also «cperience self contempt.
Stanley Kowalski fulfills the classic characteristics of the shameless personality who,
"[i]n the throes of their shamelessness ... not only become insensitive to the griefs and sensitivities of other people, but lose touch with their own feelings as well" (14). Lynd extends this explanation, saying that "[sjhameiess ... is a term of opprobrium. To be shameless is to be insensible to one's self; it is to be lacking in shame, unblushing, brazen, incorrigible" (24). Stanley's behavior toward both Stella and Blanche, which can be authoritarian, demanding and abusive, is characterized by such shamelessness, strongly suggesting that he unconsciously experiences considerable self-contempt and is, therefore, a victim of internalized shame.
When Stanley's contempt is fused with his urge to retaliate, things get ugly.
Throughout Blanche's visit, Stanley's contempt for her has grown, in part because she has expressed openly her disapproval o f him As his contempt for her has intensified, apparently so has his abuse of Stella. Near the end of dinner one evening, Stella, emboldened by Blanche's confiontive behavior, says to Stanley: "Your face and your fingers are disgustingly greasy. Go and wash up and then help me clear the table."
Stanley is affronted, and his shame-rage is piqued. He hurls a plate to the floor, saying:
244 "That's how I'll clear the table! " \He seizes her arm.\ "Don't ever talk that way to me! Tig—Pollack—disgusting—vulgar—greasy!'—them kind of words have been on your tongue and your sister's too much around here! What do you two think you are? A pair of queens? Remember what Huey Long said—'Everyman is a King!' And I am the king around here, so don't forget it!" \He hurls a cup andasaucer to thefloor.} "My place is cleared! You want me to clear your places?" (131; scene 8)
This behavior is reminiscent of Joe Christmas's, and Stanley's contempt evolves from one
of the same origins: criticism. Stanley is not only grandiose, he also is exceptionally
sensitive. And while Williams did not bring to center stage Stanley's ethnic origin,
Stanley clearly is sensitive to it, suggesting that being Polish at a time when many
Americans derided that culture may have contributed to his shame. Like Joe Christmas,
Stanley Kowalski experiences the critical judgment of others as a result of his difforence.
Stanley's pride has been hurt, and he experiences humiliation. Angry retaliation
is one defensive response employed against shame. Karen Homey, who relates shame
directly to pride, notes that "two typical reactions to hurt pride are shame and
humiliation" (qtd. in Kaufinan, The Psychology o f Shame 8). Adler notes that retaliation
is often a reaction to humiliation. Getting back at the offending other becomes one way
of defending against the felt shame (Kaufinan 8). Thus, Stanley's desire to humiliate
Blanche can be understood as a way of paying her back for the humiliation she has
caused him. The object is, of course, to humiliate the offending other or a surrogate,
and this is what Stanley does to Blanche by sexually assaulting her. Because she is his
"offending other," he makes her the receptacle for his shame.
Few critics contest that Stanley's sexual encounter with Blanche was a rape. However, some critics see the play's ending as ambiguous because, as Londré notes, even though there are hints that "life will continue as Stanley would have i t ... Stella will now have to live with illusion, as Blanche did" (62). (The illusion, of course, is Stella's decision to accept Stanley's denial that he raped Blanche, a decision that separates her irrevocably from Blanche.)
245 Stanley retaliates against Blanche in other, less overtlyaggressive ways. Once he
learns her history, he divulges it to Stella, telling her that she lost her teaching position
because she seduced a student and was run out of Laurel because of her behavior. He
also tells Mitch, whom Blanche has been seeing and with whom she hopes to have a
secure, long-term relationship, about Blanche's past, which effectively ruins Blanche and
Mitch's relationship. What might seem mean-spirited, spiteful behavior is actually a
shame-based, defensive response. Additionally, Stanley does not respect boundaries.
From the outset of her visit, Blanche's privacy is violated by Stanley, who rummages through her clothing and other personal items, including her letters from Allan Grey.
Stanley's behavior—his aggression, his control, his boundary violations, his unfounded suspicions and assumptions, his rage and violent abuse, his drunkenness—suggests a dysfunctional personality as a result of an affective disorder.
We see a somewhat different version of this same dynamic in the character of
Homer Simpson, who, unlike Stanley Kowalski, is exceptionally shy and passive. He continues to absorb humiliation after humiliation until, finally, his shame reservoir can absorb no more, and his one and only retaliatory response becomes his last. While West provides virtually no background information on Homer Simpson's childhood, he does mention that, before moving to Califr>mia, Homer lived in a small Iowa town where he had worked for twenty years as a hotel bookkeeper. Homer is shy and exceptionally passive—after a bout with pneumonia, he moved to California simply because his doctor, who had "an authoritative manner," suggested it—two fairly common shame symptoms.
(When Tod Hackett first approaches Homer, calling out a fiiendly greeting, Homer runs
246 away. Human contact terrifies him.) He exhibits extreme shame anxiety to the extent that he is alexithymie (numb), a condition West symbolizes through Homer’s hands:
He lay stretched out on the bed, collecting his senses and testing the different parts of his body. Every part was awake but his hands. They still slept. He was not surprised. They demanded special attention, had always demanded it. When he had been a child, he used to stick pins into them and once had even thrust them into a fire. Now he used only cold water.... [He] carried his hands into the bathroom. He turned on the cold water. When the basin was full, he plunged his hands in up to the wrists. They lay quietly on the bottom like a pair o f strange aquatic animals. When they were thoroughly chilled and began to crawl about, he lifted them out and hid them in a toweL {The Day o f the Locust 82; subsequent citations refer to this edition)
Homer's hands, which seem to have an existence o f their own, are a symbol for his alexithymia, a condition where one loses the capacity to feel because one’s affective responses have been significantly depressed. Real notes that many men "experience depression as a state of numbness, which is known in psychiatry as alexithymia. This experience of depression is not about feeling bad so much as about losing the capacity to feel at all. They are like the souls in the lowest rung of Dante’s Inferno, who were not seared in fire but fi"ozen in ice ” (55). West’s description of Homer confirms that he has sealed ofi^his emotions:
Except for the Romola Martin incident [discussed below] and perhaps one or two other widely spaced events, the forty years of his life had been entirely without variety or excitement. As a bookkeeper, he had woriced mechanically, totaling figures and making entries with the same impersonal detachment that he now opened cans of soup and made his bed. Someone watching him go about his little cottage might have thought him sleep-walking or partially blind. His hands seemed to have a life and a will of their own. It was they who pulled the sheets tight and shaped the pillows. One day, while opening a can of salmon for lunch, his thumb received a nasty cut. Although the wound must have hurt, the calm, slightly querulous expression he usually wore did not change. The wounded hand writhed about on the kitchen table until it was carried to the sink by its mate and bathed tenderly in hot water. (88)
247 These are examples of dissociative feeling. Homer lives his life with "impersonal
detachment," and he behaves as though he is "sleep-walking or partially blind." He does
not feel the painful cut on his thumb, but his hand, as if an entirely separate physical
entity, writhes in pain. His emotions, which have been severed from experience, never
seem to reach the surface. West describes his affective state this way:
His emotions surged up in an enormous wave, curving and rearing, higher and higher, until it seemed as though the wave must carry everything before it. But the crash never came. Something always happened at the very top of the crest and the wave collapsed to run back like water down a drain, leaving, at the most, only the refuse of feeling. (86-7)
No matter how hard he tries, he cannot summon normal emotional response.
Not only has Homer lost the ability to feel emotions, he also is beset with shame
anxiety, a condition exemplified by the Romolo Martin incident, which becomes a
significant shaming instance for the adult Homer. Martin is an alcoholic and, by
inference, a prostitute in debt to the hotel. The hotel manager dispatches Homer to her
room to collect the debt. Although Homer is excited—an earher encounter with the
young woman titillated his long-dormant sexual passions—he also is terrified: "He stopped at [room] six-eleven and made as though to knock, then suddenly took fright and
lowered his fist without touching the door. He couldn’t go through with it" (84). Homer is terminally bashful, and he is loathe to initiate any new action because he is terrified of being shamed.
However, in this instance, Homer cannot shrink away from Romola Martin's door because he is in the presence o f the assertive housekeeper who has knocked on the door for him. To flee at that moment would have humiliated him in the presence of the housekeeper, so he stands his ground and, after Romola opens the door, enters the room
248 "without daring to look around at the housekeeper" because he wants neither to see her look of reproach nor to show her his look o f fear (85-6). When Miss Martin beckons him to the bed, where she has assumed a position that "couldn't be mistaken," Homer is so terrified by the prospects o f a sexual encounter that he runs fiom the room. This experience became for him a sudden, unexpected exposure to shame. He had had the opportunity to fulfill a long-neglected sexual need, but his shame anxiety drives him fiom the encounter, producing additional shame and reinforcing his overall attitude of bashfulness and impotence. Later, he tries to repress the incident, for it has become the
"thing he was trying so desperately to avoid" (83). To be aware of it is to come face-to- face with his humiliation.
Homer's reaction to this incident demonstrates that he has carried internalized shame into adulthood. Homer has become an object to himself (which is another shame dynamic West incorporates into his portrayal of Homer's relationship to his hands).
Bradshaw summarizes this idea as follows;
When you're an object to yourself, you turn your eyes inward, watching and scrutinizing every minute detail of behavior. This internal critical observation is excruciating. It generates a tormenting self-consciousness which Kaufinan describes as "creating a binding and paralyzing effect upon the self." This paralyzing internal monitoring causes withdrawal, passivity and inaction. (Bradshaw 13)
Homer is highly self-conscious, a clear shame symptom. To relieve his internal critical observation, he sits in his backyard and observes a lizard, whose behavior is representative of Homer's own:
The lizard was self-conscious and irritable.... Whenever one o f its elaborate stalks was foiled, it would shift about uneasily on its short legs and puff out its throat. Its coloring matched the cactus perfectly, but when it moved over to the cans where the flies were thick, it stood out very plainly. It would sit on the cactus by
249 the hour without moving, then become impatient and start for the cans. The flies would spot it immediately and after several misses, it would sneak back sheepishly to its original post. (89)
Like the lizard, Homer prefers to blend into his environment so that he goes unnoticed.
He stands in the shadow of a date palm to observe Fay Greener's apartment house, and when approached he runs home. While he is nervous, self-conscious, and easily embarrassed—all signs of unidentified shame—he yearns for human contact that is practically impossible for him to make.
Homer tries to romance the young Faye, another shame-based character whose narcissistic behavior not only contributes to her self-absorption and grandiose behavior, but also deepens Homer's humiliation and despair. After her father Harry's death, she moves in with Homer, who spends his time and money helping her to improve her chances o f landing a larger role in the movies. Although Homer is kind and caring to
Faye, she treats him with utter contempt: "As time went on, the relationship between
Faye and Homer began to change. She became bored with the life they were leading together, and as her boredom deepened, she began to persecute him. A t first she did it unconsciously, later mahciously" (143). The worse her behavior, the more servile he became. The more she abused him, the harder he tried to placate her. "His servility was like that of a cringing, clumsy dog, who is always anticipating a blow— [His generosity] was so balky that she was unable to ignore it. She had to resent it. He was destroying him self..." (143). Faye resents his kindness because, unconsciously, she is ashamed of taking advantage of him. Thus she behaves contemptuously toward him. Her contempt reaches a crescendo one evening in the Cinderella Bar, where she hectors the abstinent
Homer into drinking brandy. When Homer demurs at first, "[s]he ignored him as though
250 she hadn't even heard his protest. She was both furious and ashamed of herself. Her
shame strengthened her fury and gave it a target" (144). Here, West understands
perfectly Faye's internal shame dynamics. She tries to repel her shame with anger, which
she directs at the hopelessly unassertive Homer, the ideal receptacle for discarded affect.
There is a strong suggestion that Faye has become sadistic, physically abusing
Homer. Later that same evening, Faye turned toward Homer, and "he leaned away as
though she was going to hit him. She flushed with shame at this and looked at Tod to see
if he had noticed" (149). It seems apparent that she has assumed the position of
shameless sadist, punishing the meek, withdrawn and loyal masochist who has not the self-esteem to stand up for himself and stop the abuse. Both are shame-based characters, and their relationship only intensifies their humiliation.
By the time Homer decides to return to Iowa, his shame anxiety has reached a crisis point. Depressed over Faye's promiscuous behavior and humiliated again by her callous indifference, Homer curls up in a fetal position utterly resigned. He has become even more paralyzed by his shame and, like Blanche DuBois, is unable to function.
Shocked and insensate, Homer is an emotional time bomb ready to explode. When he is struck in the face by a rock thrown by Adore Loomis, a child-actor whose bratty behavior manifests in practical jokes the intent o f which is to humiliate others, Homer erupts in a massive retaliatory response. "The boy turned to flee, but tripped and fell. Before he could scramble away, Homer landed on his back with both feet, then jumped again"
(181).
Homer stomps the child to death and is in turn killed by the maniacal crowd, made up of people who "were savage and bitter... made so by boredom and
251 disappointment" (177). One could say that Homer snapped, but there is more to it than
that. He has suffered a breakdown of sorts, o f course, and Wurmser gives it a name,
narcissistic mortification, which is a "sense o f terror ('a sudden loss o f control over
external or internal reality, or both") and occurs when shame anxiety or other types of
anxiety reach traumatic proportions" (57). Homer snaps because his psyche cannot
withstand being humiliated again. He loses completely his already tenuous hold on
reality, and he exhibits a massive retaliatory response fueled by shame-rage. The shy,
withdrawn, mild-mannered man becomes an insane child murderer, and the
internalization of the shame affect and its subsequent intensifications are the genesis of
this tragedy.
The Night o f the Iguanai Williams's Solution to
Healing the Shame That Harms
As an adolescent, Larry Shannon experienced a single, profoundly humiliating
incident that led directly to the internalization of affect because he suffered the kind of sudden, unexpected exposure of an intimate aspect of self that produces immediate and extensive shame. This single incident greatly affects him, disturbing his psyche and influencing his behavior into adulthood. When we first meet Shannon inThe Night o fthe
Iguana, he is on the verge of an emotional breakdown, the culmination o f long-term shame affect, its manifestations, and defensive responses to it.
Early in Act One, an exhausted Shaimon confesses to his antagonist. Miss
Fellowes, that his life has "cracked up" on him and he is "at the end o f... [his] rope" {The
252 Night o f the Iguana 26, act 1; subsequent citations refer to this edition). He imagines
acquiring some relief at Maxine Faulk's Costa Verde Hotel through a bottle or, if that
fails, a swim to China, by which he means a suicidal drowning. Thus, "[u]ndergoing a
dark night o f the soul," he seeks an escape 6om a reality made all the more problematic and painful by his own destractive behavior (Adler 121).^^ Thomas Adler, in his comparison ofThe Night o f the Iguana to Williams's Summer and Smoke, notes that, for
Williams, Shannon was the male equivalent of Blanche DuBois. This seems entirely reasonable for, like Blanche, Shannon yeams for a refuge firom his guilt and inner shame.
And like Blanche, he, too, is controlled by destructive compulsions that intensify negative affect, driving him to despair.
Using affect theory to analyze Shannon's psychological problems yields useful results. And Critics who neglect to consider the origins of Shaimon's psychological problems are likely to misdiagnose the underlying cause of his behavior as Adler does when he asserts that "Shannon's problem has always been an obsession with darkness and evil..." (121). More correct are those who note that he suffers from excessive guilt
(though no critic specifically identifies shame as a primary origin of his distress) and "an inability to forgive himself or believe in himself as redeemed" (Adler 122), a somewhat
*'* Because Hauptman. believes that isolation is the fondamental problem facmg the "typical" WOliains character, Hauptman can conclude that Shannon's "unstable personality" is the result of his loneliness, which leads first to fiustration and then to anxiety. To lend validity to his conclusion, Hauptman quotes Karen Homey, who notes that "[t]here is one essential factor common to aU neuroses, and that is anxieties and the defenses built up against them" (113). What Hauptman does not understand is that many of the characters whom he believes are made neurotic by dieir isolation experience hidden shame. The anxiety to which Homey refers is, in the case of these characters,shame anxiety, which provokes the host of defensive responses we see manifested m their behavior. (Whereas Hauptman believes that isolation is a primary theme for many of Williams's characters, some critics, including Thomas Adler, contend that escape is the central motif. Both isolation and escape, however, can be responses to mtemalûed shame affect.)
253 obvious conclusion given the fact that he continues to seduce nubile women and blame it
on them: "The kid asked fiar it, no kidding, but she's ... a month less'n seventeen" (15; act
3). However, Adler notes correctly that Shannon's life "has been a recurring cycle of
weakness, sin, guilt, and prayer..." that began when his mother caught him masturbating,
an incident that is profoimdly important to an understanding of his shame.
This incident produces a significant shame reaction that continues to affect him
well into adulthood. Maxine, the proprietress o f the Costa Verde Hotel and a longtime
Mend of Shannon's, recounts for him this traumatizing experience based on his telling of
it to her husband, Fred, years earlier:
I know your psychological history. I remember one of your conversations on this verandah with Fred. You was explaining to him how your problems first started. You told him that Mama, your Mama, used to send you to bed before you was ready to sleep—so you practiced the little boy's vice, you amused yourself with yourself. And once she caught you at it and whaled your backside with the backside of a hairbrush because she said she had to punish you for it because it made God mad as much as it did Mama, and she had to punish you for it so God wouldn't punish you for it harder than she would You said you loved God and Mama and so you quit to please them, but it was your secret pleasure and you harbored a secret resentment against Mama and God for making you give it up. And so you got back at God by preaching atheistical sermons and you got back at Mama by starting to lay young girls. (86; act 3)
As a result of this humiliating experience and Sharmon's response to it, we can see
a number of shame dynamics at work. First, the interpersonal bond between mother and
son is broken. While he still loves his mother. Shannon has been deeply embarrassed,
and the parent-child bond can never be fully restored.*^ Furthermore, Shannon's mother
Morrison notes that Freud "equated shame in a young boy with a history of bed-wetting, and the threat of the boy's mother to tell Mends and teachers" (22). Freud had an early awareness o f this dynamic; he "unequivocally placed shame as an affect within a social context, equating it with fear of other people knowing about it [the shame-evoking behavior].' Similarly, Freud wrote, 1 reproach myself on account of an event—I am afiaid other people know about it—therefore I feel ashamed in front of other people" (22). This is how Shannon becomes ashamed before God.
254 essentially becomes the "spook" (the negative introject or "critical other") fiom which he tries to escape throughout his adulthood. (He has internalized his mother as the critical other; whenever he commits an act that produces realistic shame, the "spook" is activated and "pursues" him. hi this way, the negative introject becomes part of his conscience, bound to the behavior associated with the original internalizing event
[masturbation and the mother's discovery of it].)
The dynamic at work here is the fusion of sex with shame. By punishing him for masturbating. Shannon's mother fuses the behavior with the affect, and the incident becomes a governing scene. Thus, whenever he has sex, his shame is activated, and he returns to the original incident. Because he never exercised his intense rage on the offending other (a la Joe Christmas), he expresses it at innocent others, usually the young women he seduces.^®
This dynamic manifests in Shannon as a compulsive behavior that includes both sexual addiction and physical abuse. Charlotte, his most recent victim, provides an account of this behavior: "Yes, I remember that after making love to me, you hit me,
Larry, you struck me in the face, and you twisted my arm to make me kneel on the floor and pray with you for forgiveness." Shannon concurs, saying: "I do that, I do that always when I, when ..." (53; act 2). Also bound to his internalized shame is an image of a punishing God because his mother told him that God would punish him for
Grifhn is quite correct in noting that, while Shannon is aware of his despair and his attempts to flee it, he does "not understand the deep sense of sin and guilt which afflicts him in sexual matters." GrifBn notes that it was his mother who instilled a sense of guilt in him: by punishing him for his autoerotic behavior on behalf of God, his adult sexual encounters "are always followed by guilt and punishment..." (221).
255 masturbating. Thus, whenever he consummates a sexual encounter, the shame affect must be ameliorated through supplication to God. So he prays, and he forces his partners to do likewise.
Just as sex and shame are conflicted in Shannon, so are his religious beliefs and his doubts about them. GrifBn contends that, "just as he is [tom] "between sexuality and guilt,'" Shannon also is '"tom between belief and disbelief . . ."' (221). Because he carries internal shame, he sees himself as a corrupted individual. As a religious person. Shannon believes that his sin separates him from God. When Christianity and shame become entwined, one feels that one is unacceptable to God. Shannon's religious crisis is a manifestation of this nexus of dogma and shame affect.
While he is conflicted by his religious beliefs and his shame-based responses to them, his sexual compulsion is an even larger problem. An example of his sexual addiction—and its inappropriate expression—occurs when Shannon, an ordained minister, receives a visit in his study from a "very young Sunday-school teacher" who declared her love for him:
I said, let's kneel down together and pray and we did, we knelt down, but all of a sudden the kneeling position tumed to a reclining position on the mg of my study and ... When we got up? I stmck her. Yes, I did, I stmck her in the face and called her a damned little tramp. So she ran home. I heard the next day she'd cut herself with her father's straightblade razor. (59)
This incident exemplifies the exhibition of a drive-shame bind, in particular a sex-disgust bind, which Kaufinan describes as follows:
The socialization of sexuality begins with the infant's discovery o f its genitals. Masturbatory activities, from infancy through adolescence, become ready targets for shaming. Sexual curiosity and sexual play are additional avenues to shaming, and nudity is yet another potential source of sex-shame binds. Analogous to
256 affect-shame binds, when the expression o f sexual behavior or sexual urges (drive signals) is sufSciently or consistently shamed and therefore bound by shame, sexuality itself spontaneously activates shame. All later sexual dysfonctions have their origins in sex-shame binds, or m sex-disgust binds that develop analogously and frequently appear in conjunction with sex-shame binds. {The Psychology o f Sham e 64)
Shannon is affected by such a sex-disgust bind. For him, sex became bound to disgust and, therefore, to shame.
Shannon's sexual behavior also can be linked to the "righting" tendency, that shame-related symptom which exacts revenge by shaming another and, thus, triumphing over another as a vicarious experience. However, because his mother is too powerful and too loved to attack directly, he targets other women as a way o f avenging his mother’s shaming of him. By humiliating other women. Shannon vicariously shames his mother because the humiliation he wants her to feel is felt vicariously by another.
Shannon engages in behavior that produces realistic shame, to which many of his behaviors, including his aggressive sexual encounters with and abuse of women, also can be attributed. Wurmser explains the active creation of realistic shame as follows:
Since internalized shame is usually much more archaic and compelling than "realistic” shame (shame in response to outer reality), external [realistic] shame may be used to shield against the much more menacing inner shame. Situations in outer life therefore may be actively created in which humiliation is expected and provoked, so that the person does not have to experience even more devastating and deeper feelings of unworthiness. (46-47)
Thus, realistic shame is produced when a shame-based individual engages in behaviors designed to draw the selfs attention away from its internalized shame. In other words, to relieve (defend against) the emotional pain of felt internalized shame, one will commit an act that one knows is shamefrd because, by producing "real" or external shame in the
257 moment, one's mind is temporarily diverted from the chronic, pervasive inner shame that
is so persistently disturbing.
Along with the righting tendency and the creation of realistic shame. Shannon
also exhibits rage, which serves as a "self-protective function by insulating the self
against further exposure and by actively keeping others away to avoid further
occurrences of shame" (Kaufinan,Shame 14-15),*^ Real notes that violence is another
addictive defense that is used to pump up a shame-based individual's self-esteem. "Like
alcohol or drugs, violence operated [fi>r his client]... as a magic elixir transforming his
shame into his grandiosity, shifting him from a sense of helplessness to a sense of
omnipotent control" (67).^* Lewis notes, however, that such a defense often backfires because such hostility is really shame-rage and, as such, is "quickly directed back upon
the self by guilt... [because] hostili^ evoked in shame is trapped against the self both by the passivity of the self and by the person's value for the other"'{Shame and Guilt 198).
Thus, shame-rage is both a defensive response and a shame symptom; however, like other responses, it does nothing to dissipate the internalized shame from which it springs.
Instead, it offers only momentary relief from shame's chronic negative affects.
Shannon shows clear signs of hidden shame, including physical and emotional exhaustion, obsessive compulsive behaviors, lying, and rage. When he reaches the Costa
Shannon employs other defenses against shame. GrifBn notes correctly that he tries to avoid his emotional problems through alcohol as well as sex. GrifBn suggests that Shannon comes to realize that, "in the past, alcohol and sex have afforded ... temporary escape firom the conflicts that are tearing him apart" (223).
Real also notes that this "pattern in males of moving fiom the helpless, depressed, one down' position to a transfigured, grandiose, one up' position has become one of the most powerful and ubiquitous narratives in modem times" (68). However, achieving the one up' position does not ensure happiness and contentment because the intemalized shame is still unresolved. 258 Verde Hotel, he is on the verge o f an emotional meltdown: his ability^ to function is
reduced, and he may be suicidal. What is clearly different about The Night o f the Iguana
when compared to, say, A Streetcar Named Desire orThe Glass Menagerie is the
suggestion that its long-suffering protagonist has a remedy set before him This remedy
consists o f two healing aspects, one spiritual and the other physical. Hannah Jelkes
represents the spiritual part of the equation. She has the potential to help Shannon
through his night of despair because she has the ability to talk him through his panic and
"to see and face truths about himself' (GrifGn 224). She, too, has experienced something
close to a breakdown. As a result, she can relate to Shannon's experience and
the fears it provokes with compassion and credibility. Complementing Williams's prescription for recovery is Maxine Faulk's response to travail: sexual relations. For
Williams, depression and despair, with this implied correspondence to death and
destruction, must be counterbalanced by love and sexual vitality, assets that Maxine
Faulk has in abundance. But libido alone is not the answer as Shannon's sexual behavior
as its consequences demonstrate. He must first admit to his shortcomings and character
flaws, then become reconciled to them, a step Hannah is ahle to help him take.
Thus, Williams must have had an intuitive understanding of affect theory, for he realized that the "cure" for shame and guilt is found in part in functional relationships.
(Some critics suggest that inA Streetcar Named Desire Williams posits that desire is an antidote for death and despair.) Blanche was denied such a healing association; however,
Hannah Jelkes, because of her virtue, stability, compassion and faith—"the breadth of her humanity and understanding is all-encompassing" (Griffin 223-24)—is capable of helping Shannon to understand that he is a redeemable person, that his sins are forgivable
259 and his behavior correctable. Jacob Adler contends correctly that H annah Jelkes is the first of Williams's central characters "who hasnot fallen, who is neither neurotic nor depraved, but who retains the virtues o f vitality, sanity, kindness, faith and courage, and who has resolved the problem of sex through virginity without pmdery, intolerance, or psychological instability" (qtd. in Adler 122). It is true that Hannah serves as a kind of spiritual guide who "acts as a catalyst, leading Shannon to rediscover in himself some spark of humau-ness that will restore his confidence in his innate decency and worthiness of being saved" (Adler 123).*^
Remarkably, the process Williams presents here is the only example contained in this study that addresses healing the wounds created by intemalized negative affect, particularly shame. While Williams may not have fully understood his characters in the context of hidden shame, in The Night o f the Iguana he offers a solution to the harmful effects of it.^° Furthermore, although Williams probably could not have described in detail the rather extensive psychodynamics of shame, he surely understood the damaging consequences of this affect and the process to overcome them.
While Robert Hauptman believes that isolation is an origin rather than a synq>tom of Shannon's "pathological disturbance," he concurs that the solution toShannon's problem "must be sought in authentic human communication ..." (114-15).
Adamson, in Chapter Two ofMelville, Shame, and the Evil Eye, argues that Melville offers alternative responses (Adamson calls them "contrasting attitudes") to shame-related narcissistic injury, the one destructive (Ahab) and the other redenq>tive (Ishmael). This redemptive attitude echoes Williams's own solution to shame for it asserts that the "acceptance by one's fellow human beings" is of paramount importance to overcoming shame (32). (In the dedication that appears inLong Day’s Journey Into Night, O'Neill does not mention the word "shame," nor does he allude to it as a problem he faced when growing up. However, he indicates that, like Williams, he believed in foe redemptive power o f relationships to help one overcome shame's damaging effects. Addressing his wife, Carlotta, he writes: 'T mean it as a tribute to your love and tenderness which gave me the faith in love that enabled me to face my dead at last and write this play...". Again, O'Neill did not need to name shame as an origin of familial strife. His representations of it are clear enough.)
260 CHAPTER 6
THE MEANING BEHIND THE MASQUERADE:
NARCISSISM AND ILLUSION IN ^ STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE
AND THE DAY OF THE LOCUST
Loss of trust, exposure, failure, the feeling of homelessness —these experiences of shame—become still more unbearable if they lead to the feeling that there is no home ... anywhere.
Helen Merrell Lynd
This final chapter explores shame in two female characters—Blanche DuBois
(A Streetcar Named Desire) and Faye Greener (The Day o f the Locust) —both of whom exemplify the narcissistic responses to shame. Narcissism, the most prominent manifestation of shame exhibited by these characters, is an affective response leading to vanity, grandiosity, exhibitionism, dishonesty, fragmentation, and the creation of a false self. (The caricature self, a more specific form of the false self, also is discussed in this chapter because West's novel contains a character, Harry Greener, who may be the best exemplification of this dynamic in modem American literature.)
Intemalized shame affect is persistent and pervasive. As a result, most individuals beset with shame marshal more than one defensive strategy against it. This is the case with Blanche DuBois and Faye Greener. Both use illusion, and while each has
261 her own particular illusory esc^e—Blanche, like Amanda Wingfield, clings to a fantasy
of youthfid beauty, romance, and Southern Beaux, while Faye relies on a repertoire of
melodramatic daydreams in which she plays the role of damsel in distress—both are used
in an attempt to avoid the problems produced by shame. Additionally, illusions play a
significant role in the thematic context ofThe Day o f the Locust. Hollywood is an ideal backdrop for a portrait o f shame because o f its reliance on fantasy. There is an
identifiable reason why West's characters hide behind trees and inside houses or within the role of a slapstick clown: the long-term effects of hidden shame and its variants of humiliation and embarrassment. In West's Hollywood, as in Williams's varied milieus, illusions serve as a substitute for an unbearable reality endured by those who have been humiliated and then discarded.
While the primary focus of this chapter is on defensive responses to shame, one shame origin in particular, social weakness, also is considered. Social weakness includes the failure to be self-sufBcient or to realize some important cultural script or ideal, such as Southern womanhood (Blanche) or Hollywood stardom (Faye). The achievement of cultural scripts or ideals can be as important to a female character as it can be to a male character. Thus, when a female character fails to realize a coveted script or ideal in which she has made a considerable investment in terms of self-definition and desire, considerable shame may be experienced.
Finally, I discuss in this chapter shame symptoms experienced by these characters, including a response to shame that has not been identified in this study heretofore: neurasthenia. (An emotional response marshaled in defense of shame, neurasthenia is characterized by impaired fimctioning in interpersonal relationships.)
262 Williams gives us a dramatic example of the neurasthenic response in the character of
Blanche DuBois, whose ability to function is significantly impaired by shame. Other shame symptoms discussed below include compulsive behaviors, such as alcohol abuse and sexual promiscuity, alienation, isolation, and even homelessness, the creation of realistic shame (to defend against the intemalized aspect of this affect), and shame anxiety leading to vulnerability and, in some instances, victimization. While sexual behavior is not the primary focus of this chapter, I explore why sexual promiscuity is symptomatic of shame and why it has profound effects on these female characters.
A Streetcar Named Desire: Illusions, Compulsions,
and the Narcissistic Response
While Blanche is often considered the play's protagonist, a number of critics have demonstrated a tendency to see the play from an oppositional perspective, with Blanche and Stanley confined to a dichotomous relationship that can unwittingly limit the scope of the analysis. ^ While it is inarguably true that the "view of one character has invariably influenced how the other is seen" (Kolin 55), this kind of oppositional categorization can lead to the choosing o f sides, where one may feel compelled to favor, or sympathize with, one character at the expense o f the other.^ (Williams, it should be noted, preferred that
‘ Philip Kolin lists some of the dichotomies put forth by critics, including artist vs. brute, spirit vs. flesh, desire vs. law, death vs. desire, and fem inine virtues vs. "dark m asculine forces of socie^"(55).
~ O f course, one may reject them both. Bigsby, for example, suggests that when an audience is "offered a choice between decadence and brutality... [it] can hardly enter into an alliance with either" (qtd. in Kolin 55).
263 his audiences have sympathy with both Blanche and Stanley.)^ As it is not my objective
to argue whether Blanche or Stanley (or both) is the protagonist ofStreetcar, and as I
discuss Williams's characterization of Stanley at some length in the preceding chapter, in
this section I focus primarily on Blanche and her own responses to intemalized shame.
Through a combination of familial and individual behaviors, events, and
circumstances, many of which relate directly to shame, Blanche DuBois gradually lost
the last remaining remnants of her family's estate. Belle Reve. hi addition to the loss of her home, she has been fired firom her job as a schoolteacher for seducing a student. By the time she reaches New Orleans, she is destitute and approaching emotional collapse.
She also suffers firom the shame produced when one is unable to be self-sufficient and
independent. In Scene Five, Blanche says to Stella, "I never was hard or self-sufficient enough." Despite her denials to the contrary, Blanche does feel partly responsible for the
loss of Belle Reve, and her present situation is punctuated by homelessness, poverty, and loss. Her situation is desperate. As a result, she suffers additional humiliation and embarrassment, compounding her emotional instability.
^ A number of critics have looked into possible links between Williams and Blanche. (Many of these analyses were prompted by Williams's 1973 interview with Robert Jennings. During this interview, Williams said, "I can identify completely with Blanche ... we are both hysterics" [qtd. in Kolin 51]. For an in-depth analysis o f the events in William's life that relate and may have contributed to the creation ofA Streetcar Named Desire, see Lyle Leverich's Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams^ Jack Kroll argues that "[i]n this play as in no others, Williams was able to do his particular thmg, to take the fragments of his divided self and turn them into the dramatis personae of an ideal conflict," and Bigsby points out that "Williams and his creation Blanche are bodi alienated, both create fictions, and both use 'precipitate flight* as their 'central strategy"' (qtd. in Kolin 51). (A fragmented self is often an indication of internal shame [see Chapter One]. Shame-based individuals are alienated in part because they see themselves as unworthy and in part because they are hesitant to become engaged for fear of additional humiliation. In the thrall of this affect, individuals do take fright, fleeing the sight of injury to seek a safe haven [which proves elusive in the presence o f shame, hence the creation of illusions—fictional "safe houses"].)
264 Wunnser notes that shame is evoked when one becomes dependent on another or
others for support or charity: "[o]ne of the most common 'faults' regarded as shameful is
social weakness, whether it is poverty, dependency upon others, especially in the form of
accepting charity, or a reputation as a loser" (33). Blanche has lost her ability to be self-
sufScient. As a result, she has become dependent on Stanley for food and shelter, a
situation that both foightens and humiliates her. Her dependency not only produces
resentment but also evokes shame, and her contemptuous attitude is an indicator of this
piqued affect. Like Faye Greener, Blanche tries to transfer her shame to another in the
form of contempt. By concentrating on Stanley's character flaws and characterizing him
as a bmte, Blanche is able to mitigate further her inner shame.'*
Blanche's loss o f independence and self-sufhciency contributes to her shame in
yet another way: she finds herself in a state o f incongruity. Lynd notes the significance
of finding oneself in an incongruous situation: "Being taken unawares is shameful when
what is suddenly exposed is incongruous with, or glaringly inappropriate to, the situation,
or to our previous image of ourselves in it" (34). Once in New Orleans, Blanche comes
face to face with the incongruity of her new life, and she is stunned:
Blanche comes around the comer, carrying a valise. She looks at a slip o fpaper, then at the building [where Stella and Stanley Kowalski live], then again at the slip and again at the building. Her expression is one o f shocked disbelief. Her appearance is incongruous to this setting. She is daintily dressed in a white suit with a fluffy bodice, necklace and earrings ofpearl, white gloves and hat, looking as if she were arriving at a summer tea or cocktail party in the garden district. (5)
'* Related to Blanche's loss of self-su£Bciency is her sense of defeat and entrapment. While Blanche still clings to certain illusions, including that she will be rescued by the Texas millionaire Shep Huntleigh, "she caimot escape the realty o f her entrapment in the small flat with Stanley. For Mary A. Corrigan, Scene Ten 'depicts the total defeat of a woman whose existence depends on hermaintaining illusions about herself and the world"' (Londré 60).
265 Up to this point, Blanche has held on to the illusion that she remains the consummate
Southern Belle and lady of the estate; however, when confronted by her new
circumstances, she is disconcerted and embarrassed by the incongruity between illusion
and reality. Lynd says,
[i]t is this disconcertion that is the basis of the aspect of shame called embarrassment. Webster defines embarrass as: to hinder fimm liberty of thought or movement, to impede, perplex, or disconcert. Embarrassment is often an initial feeling in shame before shame is either covered up or explored as a means of further understanding of oneself and of the situation that gave rise to it. (38)
Blanche covers up her shame using a number of defenses, including certain
narcissistic and compulsive behaviors. While we are given only the barest of hints about
how Belle Reve was gradually lost, we do know that illicit sexual behavior played a role
in the family's inexorable decline and, thus, in the loss of the plantation. Blanche tells
Stanley that their (Stella's and her) "improvident grandfathers and father and uncles and brothers exchanged the land for their epic fornications ..." (44; scene 2). This is all we
are told. However, while we do not have a sufficient accoimt of Blanche's childhood to know with any certainty the origin of her early shame, we do know that, by late
adolescence, Blanche was engaging in compulsive sex. We also know that Blanche witnessed a number of deaths while at Belle Reve and helplessly stood by while the family fortune, including the plantation, was somehow lost in large measure through the
DuBois males' "epic fornications." On this point Blanche is quite blunt: "The four-letter word deprived us of our plantation ..." (44; scene 2). According to Blanche's account, these sexual affairs were endemic to the family, for she includes among the responsible her grandfathers, father, uncles and brothers. It is not unreasonable to conclude, therefore, that Blanche either heard accounts of these affairs or bore some passing
266 witness to them, events that would without doubt bring shame to bear on the young girl.
Furthermore, such knowledge was bound to strain her relationships with these significant
men, evoking even more shame. Therefore, this shameful behavior by respected others
was sure to evoke within Blanche the child a strong affective response. Blanche chose as
her primary defense against shame that which had been modeled for her for years: sexual promiscuity. The child becomes the adult. The adult passes to the child not only his
shame, but also the behavior that evoked it. Whether WilHams knew it or not, this is the death desire cannot overcome. (Cafagna, like a number of other critics including Philip
Kolin, mentions that Williams promoted the belief that desire was death's opposite, leading some to conclude that Blanche's sexual desires were a response to her experience with death and loss. While this is a reasonable conclusion, the apphcation of affect theory to this interpretive equation is revealing. Blanche's promiscuity has become compulsive. What some refer to as her desire, then, is actually an obsessive compulsive behavior, which is ofien a response to the primary affect of shame.)
Thus, Blanche has experienced the effects o f ruptured interpersonal relationships in part because her family included a number of men who disgraced and impoverished their family through iUicit sexual behavior. Surrounded by such men, including her father, it is quite unlikely that she experienced a normal, healthy relationship with her principal male caretakers. Afier Stanley gives Blanche the bus ticket to Laurel that he purchased for her (essentially kicking her out of the house), Stella tells him: "She is
[deUcate]. She was. You didn't know Blanche as a girl. Nobody, nobody, was tender and trusting as she was. But people like you abused her, and forced her to change" (136; scene 8). While Stella's tone may have a melodramatic ring to it, her observation is no
267 doubt correct. The interpersonal bridge connecting Blanche to her father or other
significant individuals may have been broken while she was still a child.
The death of her husband, Allan Grey, becomes the basis of additional shame.
Blanche discovers that Grey is a homosexual only after their marriage. On the day of the
discovery, Blanche, Allan, and his male lover drive out to the Moon Lake Casino, and
while Blanche and Allan dance, she tells him that he disgusts her. Coming firom the
woman he loves, this strong expression of disapproval evokes an immediate shame
response. (He runs fiom the casino and shoots himself moments later.) Blanche feels
responsible for Allan's death, and she suffers the corresponding guilt and shame, which
she tries to assuage with compulsive sex, her defense of choice:
Yes, I had many intimacies with strangers. After the death of Allan—intimacies with strangers was all I seemed able to fill my empty heart with.... I think it was panic, just panic, that drove me from one to another, hunting for some protection—here and there, in the most—unlikely places—even, at last, in a seventeen-year-old boy but—somebody wrote the superintendent about it—"This woman is morally unfit for her position!" (146; scene 9)
Thus, what begins as a defense against her shame becomes another origin of it.^ This is
in keeping with the use of obsessive-compulsive behaviors to ameliorate the painful
effects (including a sense of panic) of deeply internalized shame for, after awhile, the
compulsive activity breeds its own humiliation and embarrassment, and the initial relief
^ Because of their rejection of a significant other who was in need of their compassion and understanding, both Blanche and Brick Pollitt {Cat on a Hot Tin Roof) experience the evocation of guilt as well as a deep, abiding shame. Felicia Hardison Londré suggests that "Blanche is like Brick. .. Both loved someone who was probably homosexual and who committed suicide afier his implicit pleas for help met rejection. Just as Blanche carries a sense of guilt for what she said to Allan Grey on the dance floor. Brick knows that he was at fault for hanging up the phone on his fiiend Skipper" (47). While Londré picks up on the guilt aspect of these interactions, she, like the vast majority o f Williams's critics, overlooks the long-lasting shame affect that plagues both Blanche and Brick.
268 is replaced by additional inner turmoil. And, as Blanche's case reveals, the longer the
defending compulsive behavior is employed, the more difficult it is to stop. This cycle
becomes what Bradshaw and others call a shame bind: the individual's compulsive
behavior becomes bound to her shame in a repetitive cycle. Oftentimes, as in Blanche's
case, the cycle becomes a downward spiral, sucking the individual ever deeper not only
into her compulsion but also into her dark well of shame.
Blanche confesses to Mitch that she even had multiple sexual partners on the lawn
of Belle Reve, an admission that reveals just how far she had sunk into compulsive sex:
Not far ftom Belle Reve ... was a camp where they trained young soldiers. On Saturday nights they would go in town to get drunk... and on the way back they would stagger onto my lawn and call— "Blanche! Blanche!"—The deaf old lady remaining [her cousin Jessie] suspected nothing. But sometimes I slipped outside to answer their calls— Later the paddy-wagon would gather them up like daisies.... (149)
It should be noted that ruptured relationships, especially childhood-related ones, produce
an insatiable neediness that underlies and, therefore, fuels compulsive behavior.
If a child's emotional needs cannot be met by the parent, then the parent's needs were not
likely met when he or she was a child. The neediness is perpetuated:
Needy, shame-based parents cannot possibly take care of their children's needs.... The child grows up and becomes an adult. But underneath the mask of adult behavior there is a child who was neglected. The needy child is insatiable. What that means is that when the child becomes an adult, there is a "hole in his soul." He can never get enough [love, attention, recognition, sex, success, money, etc.] as an adult. (Bradshaw 26)
Thus, Blanche's promiscuity may have multiple shame origins. This is how a shame cycle forms. The hole in the soul Bradshaw speaks of is the unfathomable need to be loved and accepted by one's principal caretakers. When this does not happen, shame
269 develops and becomes internalized. As an adult, the obsessively needy person tries
again and again to satisfy the emotional hunger. Unfortunately, such a hunger cannot be
satisfied through surrogate means.
Without knowing it, Adler describes the formation of an obsessive compulsive
disorder as a defensive response to shame effect when he views Blanche's behavior with
the soldiers as a "kind of desperate fiaüing about for gratification as a compensation for
powerlessness" (qtd. in Griffin 49). Alice Griffin asserts that Blanche's "intimacies with
strangers" had two sources: "protection through lovemaking" and a verification of her
existence. Regarding the issue o f protection, Griffin believes that "Blanche's quest for
security almost attains its goal through marriage to Mitch ..." (46). Such an observation
seems too simplistic because it assumes that Blanche's significant emotional problems
would be cured through marriage. While Blanche also subscribes to this magic bullet
theory of matrimony, marrying Mitch may solve temporarily her homelessness and
poverty, but, in the absence of a Hannah Jelkes-like spirit guide, it would not begin to
address her unidentified shame.
Blanche becomes a social outcast because of her promiscuous behavior. Wurmser notes that individuals who behave shamefully become anxious that they will be punished
in some way, usually through rejection and/or scorn. Blanche surely feels the significant shame anxiety Wurmser describes:
One fears one will be punished by "shaming" procedures after the exposure. What these procedures have in common is the affect tone of contempt, a specific type of rejection, regardless whether this shaming consists of looks, words, certain tones of speech, or outright pillorying.... "Shame sets one apart," as Hawthorne remarked about Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter-. She was under "the burden of her ignominy," "as much alone as if she inhabited another sphere." (52)
270 As Goldberg notes, "shame is an alienating feeling. It conveys an anxiety that all is not right with one's life, that one's existence is not safe and harmonious. It carries the opprobrium that the sufferer is unlovable and should be cast out of human company" (8).^
Blanche experiences such apaitness from her social sphere largely because she has committed multiple moral offenses, increasing her vulnerability to shame and intensifying her fear o f exposure.
Dianne Cafagna, in a discussion of illusion and reality in A Streetcar Named
Desire, notes correctly that Blanche "feels battered by exposed truths o f her deviant sexuality and failed marriage, collapsing with her homosexual husband's brutal suicide"
(121-22). Because Blanche's inappropriate sexual behavior has been exposed publicly in
Laurel, she is assaulted by negative affect, compounding the intensity o f her deeply internalized shame. This, then, is Blanche's emotional state when she steps off the streetcar "Desire" in New Orleans. While she has one foot planted tentatively on the street named Elysian Fields, she already has the other in her illusive Old South. It is no wonder that her behavior is a disturbing mixture o f illusion, grandiosity, hysteria and despair throughout the play.
Blanche DuBois's inappropriate sexual behavior also might be an example of what Wurmser calls active creation of realistic shame, which is engagement in shame-producing behavior as a way of deflecting one's attention away from the more
^ Lynd notes that "[l]oss o f trust, exposure, failure, the feeling of homelessness—these experiences of shame—become still more unbearable if they lead to the feeling that there is no home for anyone, anywhere.... Apprehension that one's own life may be cut off from others, empty, void of significance, is a terrifying thing; but fear that this same isolation is tme of others, and that the world itself may hold no meaning is infinitely worse" (56-57). 271 poignant internalized shame. When realistic shame is the result of compulsive behavior
(e.g., sexual promiscuity), it is difficult to tease apart the compulsive response from the
desire to evoke realistic shame. What must be kept in mind, however, is that these
processes operate on a subconscious level. Compulsive disorders often do work
temporarily to relieve one of the inner turmoil of internalized shame because the behavior
provokes an immediate, usually short-lived version of shame that draws the offender's
attention to it. In this way, the chronic, pervasive affect of the inner, unidentifred shame
is momentarily alleviated. It should be noted that one does not need an audience to create
realistic shame. That is, the offender does not need a Judging other to point out the
shameful behavior. The offender knows subconsciously that what he or she is doing is
shame-evoking (and it is this aspect of compulsive behavior that may contribute to its
self-generative nature). One relieves the unbearable torment o f one's toxic inner shame through repetitive behavior that temporarily draws attention to itself. The more the behavior is repeated, the more temporary relief is provided—to a point. Once the compulsion itself becomes a chronic problem, its potential to provide relief diminishes as the shame it evokes intensifies. Another shame cycle is established, which carries with it a significant destructive potential.^
’’ Kolin notes that "Blanche has been apotheosized for her love yet spumed for her lust.... Branding her love as dangerous lust, critics have ftequently condemned her as a nymphomaniac (Trewin)... or a sexual deviant (Kleb) Incapable of achieving intimacy, Blanche, for Berkman, bears an irrevocable responsibility* for her actions" (57). However, none of the dozens of critics surveyed by Kolin link Blanche's sexual behavior with compulsivity, just as none coimect her affectations and grand illusions to narcissism. Shame theory throws a new light on Blanche, revealing the primary origins of her mtemalized shame and the manifestations of it. (Berkman is quite correct, though, to argue that Blanche cannot achieve intimacy, for this is clearly a result of raptured interpersonal relationships.) 272 Just before Blanche entertains the idea of trying to seduce the paperboy—"Come
here. I want to kiss you, just once, softly and sweetly on your mouth!... Now run along,
now, quickly! It would be nice to keep you, but I've got to be good—and keep my hands
off children" (99; scene 5)— Stanley has upset her considerably, intimating that he has
learned about her ignominious recent past in Laurel. (After Stanley leaves the house, we
leam that Blanche "seems faint; looks about her with an expression of almost panic" [91;
scene 5].) Such intimations pique Blanche's deep inner shame, and her defensive
response is, first, to get drunk and, second, to seduce the boy. Between her getting drunk
and coming on to the youth, she becomes hysterical. When her hand shakes
uncontrollably and some Coke spills out of a glass she is holding, she gives a "piercing
cry" that shocks Stella. As we have seen, hysteria has a direct causal link to internalized
shame, and Blanche's behavior is symptomatic of an intensification of the affect.*
Thus, Blanche retreats to her compulsions—alcohol and sex—as a way of
ameliorating the effects of shame.^ The alcohol, of course, anesthetizes the pain
somewhat, and her contemplated seduction of the boy produces a rush of realistic shame,
^ Blanche starts to behave hysterically in Scene Five after Stanley tells her that he has information about her life in Laurel. She is mortified by anxiety, for she recognizes that revelation of her behavior will jeopardize her stay with Stella and other opportunities in New Orleans. She confesses to Stella that she "wasn't so good the last two years or so, after Belle Reve had started to slip through my fingers I never was hard or self-sufGcient enough" (91-92). Her growing state of hysteria is directly related to her increasing shame-anxiety, and her feelings of inadequacy and humiliation intensify her hidden shame.
^ That Blanche is an alcoholic is indisputable. Early in Scene One, "[s]he pours a half tumbler of whiskey and tosses it down" (10). A moment later, she says to Stella, "Open your pretfy mouth and talk while I look around for some liquor" (11). Then, she has another drink, tellmg Stella'T am going to take just one little tiny nip more ..." (IS), hr Scene Three, Blanche is so inebriated her speech is slurred, and in Scene Six she is still pourmg herself drinks at 2 am . hi Scene Nine, Mitch warns her; "You ought to lay off his [Stanley's] liquor. He says you been lapping it up all summer like a wild-cat!" (143)
273 further defending against her inner turmoil. The fiict that she does not consummatethe seduction does not negate the evocation of realistic shame. She has engaged the dynamic and experienced its effect. (Blanche is aware that she is running out of alternatives, and she realizes that she must take care not to engage in any morally offensive behavior.
After kissing the paper boy on the lips, she says, "Now run along, now, quickly! It would be nice to keep you, but I've got to be good—and keep my hands off children" [99; scene
5]-)
Earlier in this study, we discussed shame's connection to pride, conceit, vanity and other narcissistic behaviors. Blanche DuBois exhibits these narcissistic responses, about which Wurmser writes:
Conceit can be viewed as the opposite of shyness: it is an incessant, quite compulsive attempt to demonstrate "I must not be ashamed; just the contrary! Look how great I am!" Vanity is synonymous with conceit. Vanity is described by Nietzsche as the behavior o f "creatures that try to elicit a good opinion about themselves which they themselves do not have nor deserve, yet who still afterwards believe in this good opinion." (51)
Blanche is quite vain, and we see an example of this early in Scene One, Just after
Blanche arrives at Stella's: "I want you to look atmy figure! You know I haven't put on one ounce in ten years, Stella?" (15) In Scene Two, just before Stanley and Blanche meet for the first time, Stella tells Stanley, "When she comes in be sure to say something nice about her appearance.... And admire her dress and tell her she's looking wonderful.
That's important with Blanche. Her little weakness" (31). Stella recognizes Blanche's vanity, and she asks her husband to play along with it. While there are other examples of her vanity, the point is clear: it is a behavior that is symptomatic of internalized shame.
274 Blanche does not have a good opinion of herself; thus, she attempts to elicit it from others. She even admits to Stanley that she was "fishing for a compliment" (38; scene 2).
Real is sensitive to the relationship between shame and narcissism. He notes that one employs certain compensatory defenses to improve one's worth and self-esteem, including vanity, conceit and other grandiose behaviors (55). Blanche is obsessed with clothing and jewelry; she is fixated on her physical self. She goes to great lengths to present herself always in the most favorable way, as exemplified in Scene One when she tells Stella, "And turn that over-light ofifi Turn that off! I won't be looked at in this merciless glare" (11). hi Scene Nine, Mitch, the man Blanche has been dating, notes that she avoids well-lit places: "You never want to go out till afrar six and then it's always some place that's not lighted much" (144; scene 9). Her narcissism forces her to be seen only in the most positive light.
Blanche also creates a false self, a persona that serves as a protective shield against additional shame. Goldberg understands the origin of such narcissistic-based poses, for he writes:
For shame-debilitated people ... an inner sense of deficit and worthlessness contaminates the reflective glass [of a mirror].... In order not to become overcome and demoralized by our vulnerability to suffering, we fashion through the years an image of ourselves that conceals our doubts and insecurities. This is the face we present to the world and to ourselves. (36)^°
10 This may help to explain the merger (masochistic) element of the sadomasochistic relationship. The passive paitner merges with the sadistic one as a way of hiding herself in the other. The masochistic partner is codependent on the other, surrendering a substantial part of the self to the abusive partner. This also might explain why some spouses (more often than not women are the abused spouse), afier enduring an abusive relationshÿ, end up m another: they continue to try to hide from their shame by mergmg with a more powerful, "protective" other.
275 Shame lies beneath Blanche's feelings of deficit and worthlessness, and she attempts to
cover them up through illusion and the false self.
Cafagna explains that "Williams understood Blanche's flights o f illusion as both a
form of suicide at social displacement and an attempt to regain the lost premises of her aristocratic birth" (120). It is understandable that Williams may have understood Blanche in this way. One does escape to an illusive world because the real one has become too painful to confiront.A s a result, it feels as though something inside oneself is about to die, and relief is sought through illusion. (This is how Rev. Hightower sought escape firom both personal and cultural shame.) Thus, in this context, the "flights of illusion" are taken to escape a reality that may be pushing one toward suicide. Blanche's illusions serve the same purpose as Mary Tyrone's manic episode in the final scene ofLong Day's
Journey Into Night: because neither woman can cope any longer with her problems, she flees to the only safe place available to her—the world of illusion. Paradoxically, while such flight does represent a kind of death, it also preserves the physical life of the one in distress. In this sense, the use o f illusion is a life-saving defense because actual suicide is postponed if not prevented.
Lying, too, can be used as a shame defense. One of Wurmser's patients told him that every slight felt "as if it hit me like a knife." Wurmser sums up his patient's experience by noting that "[t]he consequence was, 'Because I'm so afiraid to be hurt and cut down, I always have to pretend I'm better than I am. Shame inhibits me firom being honest....'" (26). While Blanche has not achieved such a conscious awareness of her shame, she does recognize her propensity to avoid the truth when it reflects badly on her:
"I don't want realism. I want magicl [MtcA/augAs] Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to
276 people. I misrepresent things to them. I don't tell truth, I tell what owgAr to be truth. And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it!— Don't turn the light on!" (145; scene 9)
Of course, Mitch does turn the light on, provoking Blanche to cry out and cover her face in shame. Her false self is pierced by tiie bright light of reality, and she is humiliated in the presence of a respected other. Her tenuous grip on reality is loosened even more, setting her up for her traumatic meeting with Stanley in the following scene.
While in New Orleans, Blanche suffers 6om neurasthenia, an emotional disorder characterized by impaired functioning in interpersonal relationships and by fatigue, depression, and low self-esteem. (What the dictionary does not tell us is that this disorder has its origin in internalized shame. The symptoms—fatigue, depression, low self-esteem, problems with interpersonal relationships—are dead giveaways.) She exhibits a lack of vitality, and her tiredness borders on clinical fatigue: "I was so exhausted by what I'd been through—nerves broke. I was on the verge of lunacy— almost!" (14; scene 1) hi Scene Two, she "seems faint with exhaustion" (43); in Scene
Six we leam that "[t]he utter exhaustion which only a neurasthenic personality can know is evident in Blanche's voice and manner" (100). In addition to this condition, she has been spumed by Mitch and humiliated by Stanley, who has given her a bus ticket back to
Laurel, the town out o f which she was driven. Thus, she is not only penniless, but homeless again as well. Her situation is desperate, and her shame anxiety has reached crisis proportions. At this moment in her life, it would not take much to effect a complete emotional shut-down.
Stanley's rape of Blanche is, o f course, the most dramatic incident of Williams's play and, for Blanche, it is yet another traumatic event in a long line of traumatic
277 events/ ^ It is no wonder, then, that Blanche's shame anxiety is at a critical level.
Wurmser defines shame anxiety as
a specific form o f anxiety evoked by the imminent danger of unexpected exposure, humiliation, and rejection. Shame anxiety, like all anxiety, is twofold. Either it is a response to the overwhelming trauma of helplessness adready experienced, like the trauma of massive exposure and rejection in the Emily scene firomDavid Copperfield ... [or the scene with Sutpen and the Negro butler in Absaloml Absaloml], or the humiliation that led to Ajax's suicide in Sophocles' play [or Willy Loman's inDeath o f a Salesman^ (49-50)
Stanley's rape of Blanche is a final defeat, an emotional coup de grâce that intensifies her shame anxiety to the point that she can no longer tolerate the possibility of additional exposure to shame or any of its related affects. Thus, her psyche suspends its functioning, closing off all interactions with the external environment. She experiences firagmentation, a splitting off of a part of herself, making recovery ever more difficult.
Kaufinan understands the connection between shame and poignant trauma, especially that which has a sexual origin. With fi’agmentation, the individual disowns that part of the self that has experienced the trauma and the affects evoked by it: "When the experience of violation, helplessness, and betrayal is disowned, the self withdraws deeper inside to escape the agony of exposure. Alternatively, the self torments the self brutally with disgust and contempt turned against the self, thereby causing the actual splitting of the self' (The Psychology o f Shame 124). Blanche is rendered completely powerless. She enters a state of hopelessness and withdraws deeper inside herself in an
' ' While some critics contend that Blanche's fliitatious behavior and a past sullied by promiscuity excuse to some extent Stanley's sexual relations with her, most critics, mcludmg Cafagna, Griffin, Kolin, and Londré, consider it a rape.
278 attempt to avoid further exposure to humiliation and helplessness.M orrison contributes to our understanding o f Blanche's collapse, noting that "[w]hen concerns of
fragmentation predominate, rather than those o f depletion and absence o f ideals, patients do not have the luxury to register shame" (57). That is, when one splits off or disowns a part of the self, one has no room for additional shame. Exposure m ust not be limited but eliminated. Thus, when Blanche's final fantasy (being rescued by a former lover, Shep
Huntleigh) fails to materialize, she slips over the edge;
I can smell the sea air. The rest o f my time I'm going to spend on the sea. And when I die, Tm going to die on the sea. I will die—with my hand in the hand of some nice-looking ship's doctor, a very young one with a small blond mustache and a big silver watch.... And I'll be buried at sea sewn up in a clean white sack and dropped overboard—at noon—in the blaze of summer—and into an ocean as ... blue as my first love's eyes! (170; scene 11)
Blanche's soliloquy-like reverie suggests that she has an unconscious awareness that a part of her has experienced something akin to death. Her disowned self must be buried, simply and romantically in keeping with her idealized vision of life. In the end, she is, like so many other characters in modem American literature, the victim of unidentified shame.
Stanley's rape of Blanche is profoundly final for, through this one act, he effectively destroys her, if not for the remainder of her life, then at least for the
Kaufinan also notes that "[i]t is not only the victim of incest or rape who responds with a shame reaction or becomes shame-based as a person. The perpetrator of the assault or violation is equally shame-based. Such acts are of power and revenge, bom of impotence and fueled by shame. The rapist is haunted by scenes of torment and is driven to reenact them, this time in the role of tormentor. The roles are reversed, thereby recasting the scene— By defeating and humiliating the victim, the perpetrator momentarily becomes fireed of shame. Fundamentally, thens is a shame-based relationship” (125). In the absence of background information about Stanley's childhood, early origins of shame are purely speculative. However, Stanley exhibits a number of behaviors that are symptomatic of shame, and any comprehensive analysis of him should consider these behaviors.
279 foreseeable future/^ Stanley’s behavior is, no doubt, a retaliatory act (an expression
of the righting tendency), and it leaves Blanche confounded. She is completely
traumatized because Stanley has rendered her life and her self incongruous in a few
significant ways. First, although her sexual encounter with Stanley was assaultive,
she has participated nevertheless in a betrayal of Stella, her last living relative. Because
of this singular act of forcible sex, the door between them is closed forever. (Stella tells
Eunice, "I couldn’t believe her story and go on living with Stanley” [105; scene 11].) In
this sense, she is homeless. Second, she is left homeless in a realistic sense. She
recognizes that she cannot live with Stella and Stanley any longer. As she is penniless
and without a home of her own, she is literally homeless, a fact that does not escape her.
This is the position of incongruity in which she finds herself. Her grandiosity can no
longer sustain her illusion of a young, beautiful Southern Belle on holiday. All is lost—
dignity, reputation, property, profession, family, home—and the hopelessness of her
situation juxtaposed against the illusions of her crumbling defenses leaves her firagmented and alone.
" A number of critics reach the conclusion that, by the end of the play, Blanche is mad. Some critics, such as Jacqueline O'Connor, contend that her "mental instability" is evident throughout the play. O'Connor's interpretation o f Blanche's institutionalization is cast in a feminist context—O'Connor links Blanche's collapse to "her female sexuality, powerlessness, confinement, and lack of'economic resources'" (Kolin 57)—and thus reveals, in light o f my discussion of shame theory, the fundamental compatibility of the shame and feminist contexts. (Sadly, other critics overlook, underestimate, or discount altogether Blanche's serious emotional problems and their implications on her behavior. In a sense, this is a kind of literary malpractice, for it fails to take mto serious account the psychodynamics o f the human affect system. [This kind of misguided analysis aboimds. For example, Calvin Bedient asserts sarcastically that Blanche is the "Mona Lisa of dread," while Sidney Homan denounces her "verbal imagination" and declares that she represents "a fraudulent art" (Kolin 57). Such an absence of sympathy is likely bom of a misapprehension of Blanche's emotional instability and its cause.] Ruby Cohn is quite correct, however, when she says that "Blanche never understands the deep division within her" [qtd. in Kolin 52]. Ihtemalized shame does produce divisions within the self that are difficult to recognize, let alone diagnose.)
280 The Day o fthe Locust:
Shame, Self-hatred, and the Masquerade
There is no clear critical consensus on either the genre into which West's fiction
fits or the principal themes that dominate that fiction.In an attem pt to identify m ajor
thematic elements running throughout West's fi>ur novels, Malin reviews a number of
critical interpretations focusing on Jewishness, sexual tensions (and other aspects of
Freudian psychology), anti-capitalism, and more. Concerning major motifs in the context
of West's heroes and their reactions to their experiences. Malin concludes that
"narcissism is closer to the missing source of their reactions than homosexuality,
castration etc.... They are in love-and-hate with their physical being ___They are caught
in a vicious cycle. They hate what they need to live with. This psychological
phenomenon is the novelistic axiom" (155). While Malin does not discuss narcissism in
the context of affect theory, his focus on it is apt. Shame breeds self-contempt.
Narcissism is marshaled as a defense to confiront the self-hatred with exaggerated self-
love. It is cyclical, of course, because it is a kind of shame cycle or bind. West's
characters hate that part of themselves (or their lives) that causes humiliation; they react
to shame affect with a defensive response—illusion, narcissism, compulsive activity, and
In his book-length study of West's major works, Randall Reid notes how daunting a task it is to categorize the author. Reid observes that many of the words we use to describe modem literature ”— 'violence,' the grotesque,' 'decadence,' 'dream,' irony,' 'allusion,' 'distortion,' 'realism,' 'tradition,' 'experiment'—are all applicable to his woric." However, while West both incorporated existing trends into and anticipated new trends in his work, one of his most important contributions to American literature was his understanding and accurate revelation of "the nature of our favorite lies" (10-11). West had an intuitive understanding of and personal experience with not only the dream-making machinery of Hollywood, but also the compulsive need fbr these fantasy-laden illusions.
281 so on—which, unconsciously, they know is artificial. However, because it is a
psychological defense against damaging negative affect, they cannot relinquish the
behavior.
Malin believes that West does not reveal where the narcissism begins because he
omits in his novels "parental training, childhood rituals of excretion, Oedipal romance ...
[because] [h]e destroys the past" (155). While West may destroy the past—or simply
decide against revealing more o f it—he does provide just enough background
information to allow one to connect the origin of affect with its manifestations. Through
the application of affect theory, one can marshal a convincing argument explaining
Harry's adoption of the caricature self and Faye's promiscuity, narcissism, and fi-equent
recreation of stock day dreams. In the absence of an articulated shame theory that can be
used as a tool of literary interpretation, it is no wonder that critics have expressed so much difficulty trying to define West's themes and to analyze his characters.
In some important regards. West's characters, particularly those outcasts who
spend a considerable part of their lives pretending to be someone or something that they are not, are a reflection of his own anxieties, disappointments, and anger. A number of critics suggest that West was ashamed of certain aspects of himself, including his
Jewishness, his lack of athletic ability, and his unpopularity with women. For example,
Kingsley Widmer, in his text on West's use of the masquerade in his novels, asserts that, as the son of Russian Jewish immigrants. West, whose real name was Nathan Weinstein, could not "escape the fear, the anxiety, and the denigrating self-consciousness which result firom such [anti-Semitic] prejudice" (3). Widmer also suggests that West may have suffered the "saddest vengeance o f prejudice—self-hatred ...". West, it seems, tried to
282 distance himself from his Jewishness through anti-Semitic remarks and jokes and an engagement in his own masquerade: a distinctly unJewish cultivation o f a "monied conservative social image (Brooks Brothers clothes, etc.), even to the rolled umbrella and unexpressive demeanor" (5). It appears quite likely that West, like Harry Greener, developed a kind o f caricature self, his own mask to conceal his shame.
West was unhappy with himself, and "devoted much o f his short life to running away from his identity" (Siegel I). Siegel refers to West’s "Jewish self-hatred," noting that ”[a]t Brown he strived mightily to avoid being identified as Jewish. .." (2). But West also hated his physical self because he thought himself unattractive to women: "All my acting has but one purpose, the attraction of the female. If it had been possible for me to attract by exhibiting a series of physical charms, my hatred would have been less. But I found it necessary to substitute strange conceits, wise and witty sayings, peculiar conduct. Art, for the muscles, teeth, hair o f my rivals" (5). Here, West expresses the self contempt of shame. He has experienced rejection, and his defenses against the resulting humiliation include the adoption o f a role that he hoped would make him more appealing to women: "All this much-exhibited intelligence is but a development o f the instinct to please" (5). (This compulsive desire to please should be considered in the context of the observation o f his acquaintances that W est was a "sexual loser.")^®
It is interesting to note the similarities between West's description of his own masquerading and Tod Hacketfs description of Faye's. While in his fiction West concentrates on "the deceitfulness o f dreams" and tries to determine "how to satirize illusions," knowing full well that "each illusion seemed to lead only to 'the proliferation' of even greater ones" (Siegel 4), he also was satirizing himself. He was aware that he converted everything mto "fantastic entertainment" and this practice had become an obsession. His art became one defense against his shame.
A few critics, including Victor Comerchero and Stanley Edgar Hyman, apply a Freudian reading (perhaps too obsessively) to Wesfs work. Comerchero suggests that "For West, sex was such a primary
283 West’s reaction to humiliation was the creation of fictions (for his characters as well as for himselQ. Like William Faulkner, Arthur Miller, Eugene O’Neill and
Tennessee Williams, West recognized that illusion had the power not only to distort reality, but to hide it as well. A number of critics, including David Fine, have identified a propensity in West’s characters to blur the distinction between fiction and reality. Fine notes that, in The Day o f the Locust, the line ’’between living and acting has disappeared.
Life has been reduced to a series of roles. One becomes what one pretends to be.” He also notes that ’’illusion breeds disillusion, and disillusion breeds violence.. .. When
Hollywood dreams fail to materialize, a feeling o f betrayal sets in ...” (194). West understood the relationship between personal humiliation and the obsessive need for illusion, and his final portrait o f Hollywood, which resembles Tod Hackett’s painting in progress entitled ’’The Burning of Los Angeles,” is the orgiastic mob violence that follows collective disillusionment. West seems to be asking, ”What if every disillusioned
American awoke firom his or her dream at the same time?” When the ultimate defense against a purposeless, wasted life breaks down, ’’all those tired, jaded Midwesterners who
"had come to California to die’” can no longer disguise their disappointments and failures.
The dream collapses, and their humiliation can no longer be hidden from themselves. It is not implausible to conclude, therefore, that the cultural collapse West envisioned had at least one of its roots in shame. When all those people who had led finstrating lives—
motivating force that it shaped, if it did not determme, most human behavior’ (qtd. in Malin 154). While sex would be of indisputable interest to a yoimg Nathanael West, interpreting bA work in the strict context of Freudian drive theory omits a host o f other possibilities, not the least o f which is affect theory. If West was a "sexual loser," h^ primary affective experience would have been the humiliation produced by the rejection. While unfulfilled sexual desire carries its own potential problems, rejection and humiliation are boimd to result in internalized shame. Wesfs understanding of and conq)assion for the rejected and the forgotten grew out of his own affective experience. 284 "They were savage and bitter, especially the middle-age and the old, and had been made so by boredom and disappointment They realize that they've been tricked and bum with resentment" (177-178)—come face to face with undisguised reality, their rage may not be containable.
It should be noted that, as West’s protagonist. Tod Hackett has a compassion for the mob and understands its pent-up rage. Tod, imagining how Alessandro Magnasco would paint the "embittered members" o f the crowd, thinks: "He would not satirize them as Hogarth or Daumier might, nor would he pity them. He would paint their fury with respect, appreciating its awful, anarchic power and aware that they had it in them to destroy civilization" (qtd. in Reid 117). West empathized with these depressed, downtrodden people because he knew the origin of their pain. In some ways, he was like them. He was familiar with the rage bom of humiliation, and he had experienced the despair of rejection. He understood the impetus behind illusion and role playing, for he, too, had created a false self that was more acceptable to his culture. In a very real sense.
West wrote out of his shame-based self
The crowds o f people that constantly mill about popular Hollywood venues, with the hope of catching a glimpse of movie stars or other notables, are o f pivotal importance to an understanding of West's work. Reid's concise summary of these people is on target: "Politically, the dissatisfied audience becomes a mob eager for violence and ripe for fascism" (120). Those who feel unimportant and disenfianchised, like those who people Wesfs mob in the climatic scene ofThe Day o f the Locusts, gather on the culture's periphery as irritable onlookers living life vicariously. The myth of success, inscribed in the American culture as a script to be performed, "only enqihasizes the reality o f their failure" (Reid 120). Their inferiority and social unimportance is inescapable. As a result, t h ^ cany the unidentified sham e wrought by individual and cultural failure. Unappreciated and unacknowledged by a culture that idolizes the rich and the beautiful, these forgotten, finstrated mobs were, to Wesfs mind, susceptible not only to the escapist fantasies of a corrupt and insincere Hollywood, but also to the allure of a fascistic ideology with its own set of illusory promises: power, greatness, superiority, recognition, and prestige. West knew that fantasy and fascism bad a certain allure to the humiliated masses.
285 However, the members of them illing mob are not the only ones inThe D ay o f the
Locust affected by disillusionment. Both Harry Greener and this daughter Faye don their own masquerade as a way o f defending against the internalization o f negative affect resulting from embarrassment, humiliation, and even generational shame. Harry and
Faye characterize those who, because they are ashamed o f some aspect of themselves, pretend to be something that they are not. While Faye, already the highly affected would-be starlet, moves from one damsel-in-distress daydream to another, Harry has lost the ability to distinguish between his long-practiced role of burlesque clown and his true identity. (Max Schulz argues that both Faye and Harry "have maintained their theatrical poses of movie siren and vaudeville clown so long that, in the words of Comerchero, each "has been dispossessed of his personality—of his identity—through disuse"' [ISO].)
Each character, though, is responding to a poignant sense of shame. Self-hatred is involved, and both are pervaded by feelings of failure and inadequacy.
While a number of critics focus on West’s characters' masquerades, none connect them to shame affect. Widmer correctly relates this masquerading to role-playing, taking on "fantasy identities ... for such motives as defensiveness or aggrandizement or inadequacy or belonging or self-hatred or transcendence, to be other than the actual self
(1-2). Malin focuses on the escapist aspect of illusory behavior, noting that W est's heroes are "out of place in the adult world" and experience danger "[wjherever they turn for comfort and instruction." He concludes that "[i]t is no wonder that they retreat into their bodies (or shells or enclosures).... [TJhese various.endings [of his novels] rehearse the flight into sleep, dreams, the womb of self (156). These observations, while astute, tell us only what these characters do, not why. Characterizing their behavior as a kind of
286 flight from reality seems entirely plausible; however, this analysis overlooks theo r ig in behind the impetus to flee. One predominant and repetitive danger is the potential to be humiliated again, to be labeled a failure or a flop (as a sexual partner, as an actor, as a parent), hi The Day o f the Locust, as well as in West's other novels, characters are riddled with shame anxiety, and it is this that triggers the variety of behavior that critics variously call absurd, aberrant, or grotesque.
Faye exhibits a number of behaviors symptomatic o f shame, including those of the narcissistic personality: "Her compulsive sexual gestures were so completely meaningless, almost formal, that she seemed like a dancer rather than an affected actress'.... Much o f the time she mechanically, self-lovingly postures before mirrors"
(Widmer 74).^® Clearly, Faye's shame—the origins include childhood abandonment, generational shame, family poverty, parent-related humiliation—underlies her narcissistic behavior as well as other defense responses, including the creation of illusions (her carefully constructed, often repeated daydreams) and exhibitionism. Of course, she is on her way to becoming a compulsive sex addict, another manifestation o f hidden shame.
Faye's life has been punctuated by a number of shame-producing experiences of such serious proportions that, while still a teenager, she has relinquished her actual self (and
While Widmer declares that Faye "is simply not a real person" (76) and uses the word "narcissistic"— "narcissistic (the ftagment of mirror on top [of the gilded cork Tod pictiues her as]), partially exempt ftom the natural order in her very denaturing (uncapturable by the destroctive sea), subject only to one of her parodistic South Sea romance scripts, turned back into properly whotish reality " (77)—to describe her, he does not connect her behavior (illusory, narcissistic, exhibitionistic, self-centered) to an origm or cause. He obscurely senses the origm when he says that Faye "gets carefully delineated with touches of shame, anger ... These can only be incidental to her masquerading, which is most o f the essential self she has" (76).
287 the intense pain associated with it) for a series o f scripts, a series o f false selves that exist without the knowledge of or ability to express real emotion.
Like Harry, Faye is an act. Tod finds her affectations "completely artificial"
(103). "Like other perhaps sincerely firaudulent people ..., her body language disconnects firom her words, "her gestures and expressions didn't really illustrate what she was saying'" (Widmer 74). Like a number o f other characters influenced by shame, including Gail Hightower, Amanda Wingfield, and Blanche DuBois, Faye lives in an
ülusory world, and her behavior and emotions are less genuine than staged. Tod
"believed that while she often recognized the falseness of an attitude, she persisted ia it because she didn't know how to be simpler or more honest." Additionally, like
Hightower, she could lose herself in her portfolio of daydreams, which she would sort through "as though they were a pack of cards" until she found the one that suited her mood.
Faye is a self-absorbed exhibitionist who has begun to abuse alcohol. (Homer
Simpson tells Tod Hackett, "She's drinking an awful lot lately" [161].) After the cock fight in Homer Simpson's garage, the men come into the house, where Faye's exhibitionism becomes apparent:
She was wearing a pair of green silk lounging pajamas and green mules with large pompoms and very high heels. The top three buttons of her jacket were open and a good deal of her chest was exposed.... Faye alone remaining [sic] standing. She was completely self-possessed despite their stares. She stood with one hip thrown out and her hand on it.... Tod joined them, then Earl and Miguel came over. Claude did the courting while the others stood by and stared at her. (156-58)
Later the same evening, Faye dances first with Miguel and then with Earle as the others look on: "She and the Mexican were doing a slow tango to music firom the phonograph.
288 He held her very tight, one of his legs thrust between hers.... All the buttons on her lounging pajamas were open and the arm he had around her waist was inside her clothes"
(163). Moments later there is a fight, and Faye's pajamas are tom:
One of the sleeves had been pulled almost ofi^ and her shoulder stuck through it. The trousers were also tom. While he stared at her, she undid the top o f the trousers and stepped out of them. She was wearing tight black lace drawers. Tod took a step toward her and hesitated. She threw the pajama bottoms over her arm, tumed slowly and walked toward the door. (165)
Clearly, Faye is exhibitionistic. According to Wurmser, such behavior has a basis in shame. One tries to exhibit the self as an object for admiration, thus improving the value of the shamed self (51).
Morrison sees a connection between shame and exhibitionism, which is another kind o f narcissistic defense. Shame anxiety is a signal of potential or impending shame, and one can live in a state of perpetual shame anxiety. To protect the self against additional humiliation, shame anxiety evokes certain defenses. The shame-based individual is said to have shame vulnerability, which is "closely related to narcissistic vulnerability and ... underscores the inevitable relationship of shame to narcissism.
Nacissistic vulnerability is the 'underside' o f exhibitionism, grandiosity, and haughtiness—the low self-esteem, self-doubt, and firagility of self-cohesion that defines the narcissistic condition" (14-15). Thus, Faye's exhibitionistic behavior is a narcissistic defense marshaled against her intemalized shame. Like Blanche DuBois, she also can be haughty, vain, and conceited, behaviors also associated with the narcissistic response.
She is compelled to gamer the admiration of others as a way of elevating her low self-esteem.
289 How, then, has Faye come to be shame-based? As with Blanche DuBofs, we are
given virtually no background information on Faye or her family. What we do know,
though, is that her mother was a beautifhl dancer and her father was a starving idealist
whose only desire was "to share his art with the world." However, his dreams started to
dissolve when he leams o f his wife's infidelity:
[H]e returned home unexpectedly to find her in the arms o f a head usher. Forgive, as he forgave, out of the goodness of his heart and the greatness of his love. Then laugh, tasting the bitter gall, when the very next night he found her in the arms of a booking agent. Again he forgave her and again she sinned. Even then he didn't cast her out, no, though she jeered, mocked and even struck him repeatedly with an umbrella. But she ran off with a foreigner, a swarthy magician follow. Behind she left memories and their baby daughter. He made his audience shadow him still as misfortune followed misfortune and, a middle-aged man, he haunted the booking offices, only a ghost of his former self. He who had hoped to play Hamlet, Lear, Othello, must needs become the Co. in an act called Nat Plumstone & Co., light quips and breezy patter. (120-21)
Here, then, is a history o f extensive shame condensed into a short, semi-comical report
revealing experiences that were to have serious consequences on both Harry and Faye.
Harry was abandoned by his promiscuous wife, an event that evokes significant shame.
Equally troubling in terms of this affect, Harry never realized his life-long dream to
become an accomplished actor; instead, he endured the embarrassment and humiliation of clownish roles performed in third-rate vaudeville venues, a job he needed to support his young daughter. When he died, he and Faye were still living hand-to-mouth in a cheap apartment house, and he supported them both by peddling homemade silver polish door- to-door. Theirs was a shame-bound existence, punctuated by broken interpersonal relationships, poverty, and unfulfilled promise. It is no wonder, then, that Faye exhibits clear shame manifestations. She is not only humiliated by her circumstances, she also is carrying her father's deep shame. Additionally, as an abandoned child, she has suffered
290 the severest form of internalized shame, the ruptured interpersonal bond. From the
begmmng of her life, then, Faye suffered the effects o f unidentified shame, and it
influenced every aspect o f her life.
It is inevitable that Harry Greener would be overwhelmed eventually by shame
affect given the profound humiliations he has endured. He exemplifies a shame-based
concept not addressed heretofore: the caricature self. (He may be the paradigmatic
example of this shame dynamic in modem American literature.) Kaufman addresses this
concept, noting that "The [shamed] self is in the process of adaptation, gripped
inexorably by its scenes, creating either caricature selves, partial or multiple selves, a
patchwork self, an easily firagmented self.... Humor coupled with contempt produces
self-deprecatory humor, another identic script analog" (117). Harry creates a caricature
self to hide behind, reducing exposure of his real self to further humiliation.
Harry plays the clown for a reason. "Clowning often serves as a combination of
the self-protective and the self-punitive masquerade (as we often recognize in the
adolescent 'class clown ). But clowning can become compulsive, the masquerade turning
into an entrapping mechanism" (Widmer 71). Through Tod Hackett, West demonstrates
a clear understanding of the relationship between shame and the caricature self. Tod tells us that "When Harry had first begun his stage career, he had probably restricted his clowning to the boards, but now he clowned continuously. It was his sole method of defense" (77).^^ Harry was a complete failure on the stage and he knew it. As he told
Widmer notes that this idea o f the masquerade—which, in Hairy Greener, at least, exemplifies the psychological concept of the caricature self—is widely (mis)interpreted. For example, he notes that A. M. Tibbets argues that "the book is a dance of masks, only" in his polemic against West, and R. W. B. Lewis misses the point altogether by inteipretmg Harry’s compulsive, nearly imcontroUable clowning as positive (128). While Widmer is quite correct to view Hairy's behavior as psychologically defensive, he, too, misses a finer point; it is clearly a manifestation of internalized shame that threatens to overpower him.
291 Tod, he "stank finm hunger" (78). While it was the character who absorbed the embarrassment, it was the actor who eventually internalized shame related to professional and personal failure.
Harry resembles Lem, a character in West's A Cool Million, who, in the final scenes, plays "a masochistic stooge to the audience’s sadistic guffaws" (Widmer 72).
Harry's clown act comprises both the physical and psychological characteristics of masochism:
Homer was astonished when he bowed again, did several quick jig steps, then let his derby hat roll down his arm. It fell to the floor. He stooped to retrieve it, straightening up with a jerk as though he had been kicked, then rubbed the seat of his trousers ruefully.... He assumed a gallant smile and took a few unsteady steps toward the couch, tiien tripped himself. (90)
Harry's humor is based on self-mockery and self-contempt. Because his shame anxiety is both chronic and pervasive, he cannot get out of role. Thus, he is in a shame bind.
Additionally, he can no longer distinguish between his act and his actual self. He has lost the ability to feel genuine emotion. When he suffers a heart attack during the performance he gives for Homer Simpson, Harry
can only think and respond in terms of "performance." While playing faint, he shockingly discovers tiiat he really "is faint." Having role-played so much, he can no longer tell when his is acting pain and feeling pain, pretending suffering and really suffering. .. The masquerade has become all ... |He is] all pose with little person left over. (Widmer 73)
He is the perpetual clown, directing humiliation at his false self in order to deflect it away fi-om his deeply wounded inner self. Lacking an awareness of his inner shame and constructive ways to deal with it, his predicament is irreversible. He is his false identity, and, tragically, he dies a clown.
292 Like many modem American writers, both Williams and West had compassion
for those o f their characters who had experienced humiliation and the despair produced
by it- Both knew first hand the potentially destructive nature of human relationships and
behavior, and both understood the defensive purposes of illusion and narcissism.
Blanche DuBois, like Amanda Wingfield, clings desperately to her idealized illusions of life in the Old South as a way of repelling her extensive shame and the anxiety produced by it. Humiliated by past experiences and embarrassed by present circumstances,
Blanche finds herself in a terrifyingly insecure and potentially life-threatening situation that serves to intensify negative affect.
In The Day o f the Locust, West reveals both personal and cultural shame origins and the behavior engendered as a result. Faye Greener displays a wide range of narcissistic responses, including exhibitionism, while her father, Harry, is perhaps the best example of the caricature self in modem American literature. From a cultural point of view. West understood not only the attraction o f fantasy and the industry that mass produced it, but also the origins of hopeless desperation that made the quest for illusion such a compulsive activity. While critics continue to find West's characters grotesque and absurd, it might be more useful to interpret them in the context of affect theory.
More often than not, aberrant behavior in West's fiction is the direct result of negative affect, particularly shame.
Thus, by reading for shame in Williams's and West's works, we can demonstrate that shame is linked fundamentally to a number o f observable behaviors, including grandiosity, rage, flight, and the creation of illusory worlds. By privileging affect theory in our investigation of these works, they reveal certain significant dynamics pertaining to
293 the individual's relationship to others and to his/her culture. These texts, then, when interpreted through the analytic firamework o f shame psychology, illuminate the origins and symptoms of pathologies that have not been fully understood heretofore in the context of literary analysis.
294 CONCLUSION
The characters addressed by this dissertatioii are important representations of
modem existence and deserve to be fully understood. Complicated by their interactions
with a complex modem industrial culture that redefined both manhood and womanhood,
these characters are confironted by an entirely new set of expectations and other novel
demands that expose them to additional pressures. For an analysis of such complex
characters to be accurate and complete, we need a new analytic methodology, one that
can uncover both the origins and the responses to unidentified affect, particularly shame.
Heretofore, traditional psychoanalysis, whose narrow focus on Freudian drive
theory overlooks a host of affect-related responses and their interpersonal and cultural
origins, has been unable to reveal the full complexity of these characters. As a result, we
were not privileged to the full text o f what these writers had to tell us, including the effect
that shame and its variants, including humihation and embarrassment, has on these
characters. When we analyze these characters using affect theory, however, we arrive at
a fuller analysis, one that demonstrates that they are more comphcated and interesting than previous interpretations have presented them to be. As Lev Raphael argues in his discussion o f Edith Wharton's fiction, the apphcation of shame theory allows one to achieve a new perspective on character motivation. From this vantage point, he was able
295 to comprehend more fiiUy "the decisions o f her characters that have been misinterpreted, or dismissed as artistically unconvincing or flawed" (viii).
Ultimately, shame psychology revises traditional views o f these characters and the narratives that they inhabit. Through affect theory we not only can identify connections between a character and certain intervening pressures (including those arising from interpersonal relationships and interactions with the culture), but we also can demonstrate the effects o f these intervening pressures on the character and those close to him or her. Suddenly, motivations that have been misunderstood or misdiagnosed by earlier analyses are clearly connected to shame or one of its variants. Likewise, behaviors that once were ascribed generally to such things as heredity, immorality, insanity, nervous breakdowns, pathological reactions and so forth can now be traced quite accurately to shame affoct and responses to it.
Affect theory also allows us to go beyond naturalistic interpretations of character that, in many instances, rely on an overly simplistic idea of heredity and environment.
The characters discussed above are inarguably influenced by their environment; however, the point that has been overlooked is that they have been formed largely in the crucible of shame. Because the authors addressed in this dissertation understood the extent to which the psyche can be affected through its interaction with others, they give us characters who are more representative of real twentieth-century human beings.
Finally, affect theory helps us to interpret the profound message these writers have to tell us regarding the interaction of the individual with modem culture. The works addressed herein include many shame-based characters and shame-bound families, a clear indication that there is in the modem cultural landscape a condition or element that
296 fosters shame's creation and maintenance. As Foucault notes, early in the Industrial
Revolution shame was used as a tool in the discipline of control to force one into compliance. At first, the application ofshame was not as subtle as it is today, and the misfits, poor performers, and misbehavers were identified in such a way that attention was drawn to their shortcomings. Gradually, however, overt shaming became less necessary as external expectations and other pressures took the place of more direct means of discipline and control, hi this way, overt, external control was replaced by subtle, internal control, which relied on the ever-present, aU-seeing internal critic, with its built-in ability to shame the self back into conformance. Shame thus became a potent but invisible affective force within each individual.
When shame goes unindentified by literary critics, as it does in the characters analyzed in this dissertation, the problems underlying compulsive, inappropriate and even self-destmctive behavior are misidentified. Each character analyzed above is responding to internalized shame, and each shame-related analysis reveals a more complicated, distressed, and in many cases tortured character than previous interpretations have provided. Thus, we must by necessity read for shame if we are to understand fully the important message that each of these characters bears firom the writer who created him/her.
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