UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA This is to certify that I have examined this bound copy of a doctoral thesis by JAMES WARREN MAERTENS and have found that it is complete and satisfactory in all respects, and that any and all revisions required by the final examining committee have been made ____________________________________________ Name of Faculty Adviser ____________________________________________ Signature of Faculty Adviser ____________________________________________ Date GRADUATE SCHOOL Promethean Desires The Technician-Hero and Myths of Masculinity in Nineteenth-Century Literature A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY James Warren Maertens IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY December 1993 VOLUME I © James Warren Maertens 1993 i Abstract Figures of scientists and engineers emerge during the nineteenth century as icons of masculinity distinct from either the figure of the magician or the figure of the military hero. I analyze these figures in three major works that trace an arc from myth to realism across the first half of the century. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s lyric drama Prometheus Unbound, Mary Godwin Shelley’s Frankenstein, and Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues under the Sea are the principal case studies. Additionally, I examine several other Verne novels and such texts as Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, H. G. Wells’s The Invisible Man and The Island of Dr. Moreau, and the works of Samuel Smiles, including Self-Help, Character, and The Lives of the Engineers. In these works, images of Prometheus, elemental fire and water, and the Phallus, as symbol of masculinity and male social power, express a struggle between the ideal of disembodied reason and the expression of embodied love for others. The technician-hero, whether he takes the form of a medical doctor or an engineer, such as Verne’s Captain Nemo, is chained in his body as he struggles to assume the archetypal father’s Law and control over Nature. The Promethean Complex is an extension of the Oedipal rivalry of father and son and the desire inscribed in sons to possess their father’s knowledge-power. As nineteenth-century bourgeois culture privileged a masculinity based on Logos and disciplined control over bodies and Nature, the mentality of the technician emerges as a distinct configuration. Constructed in opposition to Eros, the body, the feminine, and the unconscious, the technician ego-ideal generates a psychotic and paranoid subject, radically fragmented and unable to deal with its ultimate inability to achieve omnipotence. ii Acknowledgments Particular thanks are due to Toni McNaron who introduced me to feminist literary analysis and supported my interest in Jungian theory, and whose advice has been a constant corrective to a style too prone to copia. To Leo Duroche, whose course in theorizing masculinity first introduced me to the field of men’s studies and the application of feminist theory to the study of masculine gender formation. To Michael Hancher whose detailed reading and criticism of my work will always serve as an example to me of the kind of care and attention a scholar should give his or her students. To Mimi Sprengnether and Marty Roth whose courses in Freud introduced me to psychoanalysis and the feminist critique of Freud. To Mary Ann Matoon and the various fellow students at the Minnesota Jung Association for their inspiration and conversations on analytical psychology and myth. To Andy Elfenbein, for raising difficult questions and for patient and minute proofreading. To Robin Brown, Blaine Cross, and Sandy Herzan for their collegial advice, encouragement, and unflagging interest; to Peter Skjervold for long talks over coffee at Rick’s; and to Muffin and Melusina, for distracting me at regular intervals, batting at the keyboard, and patiently waiting for me to stop and play. A very special thanks to Sarah Peterson for her close reading, encouragement, remonstrations, emotional support, and patient understanding through the anxiety- filled final stages of composition. And, finally, to my parents, Warren and Ruth Maertens who sacrificed so much and supported me with so many gifts and prayers for so long. Without the Eros and Logos of these and many others, none of this would have been possible. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract.....................................................................................................................i Acknowledgments..................................................................................................ii Introduction: Deus ex Machina..............................................................................1 The Man-Machine .......................................................................................1 Between Scholarship and Boyhood Longing..........................................7 Organization and Scope of the Study ......................................................9 The Technician-Critic .................................................................................11 PART I Chapter I: Psyche—Self—Poesis..........................................................................17 (1) In the Gap Between Freud and Jung .................................................17 (2) An Anatomy of the Self ........................................................................26 Archetype.........................................................................................27 Complexes........................................................................................28 Ego.....................................................................................................29 Self.....................................................................................................31 The Shadow .....................................................................................33 The Persona......................................................................................34 The Contrasexual Complex ...........................................................35 Father—Mother—Child Complexes ............................................39 Individuation and Libido...............................................................40 (3) Archetype and Stereotype....................................................................44 Frye’s Archetypology .....................................................................44 Gilman’s Definition of Stereotype ................................................50 Anxiety and the Longing for Paradise.........................................53 Primary Narcissism and the Ego-Self Axis .................................54 Self and (M)Other ...........................................................................58 The Persistence of Infantile Fear and Longing ...........................60 Dramatis Personae, Grandiosity, and Shame .............................60 Chapter II: Masculinities.......................................................................................65 (1) The Essence of Masculinity..................................................................65 (2) Images and Ideologies ..........................................................................69 iv (3) Mastering the Mother—Mastering the Body ....................................73 (4) The Fortress Ego and the Brotherhood ..............................................76 (5) Anima......................................................................................................80 (6) Sex, Soul, and the Man-Machine.........................................................87 (7) The Disciplined Spirit ...........................................................................92 (8) Animus and Phallus..............................................................................98 (9) Inflation and The Puer Aeternus.........................................................105 (10) Phallus, Symbolic and Sacred............................................................111 Chapter III: Satanic Reason...................................................................................121 (1) Mapping Desire .....................................................................................123 Activity and Receptivity ................................................................126 Language and the Body .................................................................133 Spirit and Techne ............................................................................136 (2) Male Fantasies of Anger and the Body ..............................................139 (3) Heraclean Narcissism ...........................................................................145 (4) The Desire of the Disembodied Logos. ..............................................156 PART II Chapter IV: Promethean Fire................................................................................167 (1) The Romantic Heroic Ideal ..................................................................169 (2) Prometheus, Jupiter, and Phallological Fire......................................173 The Giant Man.................................................................................173 Fire-Knowledge...............................................................................175 Empedocles and Thanatos.............................................................181 Fire of Logos, Fire of Eros ..............................................................183 Father-Son Rivalry ..........................................................................189