How can we use psychoanalysis to explore issues of fear and anxiety in literary texts?
Abstract
Psychoanalysis teaches that there is a vast portion of unknowable material in every individual
psyche. The presence of this ‘unconscious mind’ – a concept commonly accredited to Freud
– constructs human beings as creatures of divided subjectivity. In Edgar Allan Poe’s
‘William Wilson’ (1839) and Joseph Conrad’s ‘The Secret Sharer’ (1910), the narrators are
confronted with ‘doubles’ of themselves which can be interpreted as manifestations of
conflicting aspects of the psyche. Both authors narrate the conflict between unconscious id
and conscious ego, suggesting an anxiety surrounding the paradoxical instinct to both
assimilate and reject the mind’s ‘threatening’ aspects. It is this conflict which Freud situates
as the centre of human subjectivity; this paper argues that the fear and anxiety which arises
from this conflict is also at the ‘heart of our being’. Framed by a reading of Freud’s ‘The
Uncanny’ (1919), I begin my discussion by exploring how Poe and Conrad seem to anticipate
many Freudian ideas regarding fear and anxiety in relation to space and spaces. Following
this, I engage more fully with the psychoanalytic idea of the double and, briefly, the lessfrequently traversed ground of what might be called ‘sartorial psychoanalysis’. Finally, my
paper moves ‘beyond the uncanny’ to more post-Freudian discussions, arguing that both
discussed short stories ultimately regulate or reject the double which threatens the boundaries
of the narrators’ individual subjectivity, in attempts to gain psychical mastery over the fears
and anxieties represented by their doubles.
1
How can we use psychoanalysis to explore issues of fear and anxiety in literary texts?
Psychoanalysis teaches that there is a vast portion of unknowable material in every individual
psyche. The presence of this ‘unconscious mind’ – a concept commonly accredited to Freud
– constructs human beings as creatures of divided subjectivity; as Mark Cousins phrases it,
‘the very existence of the unconscious […] alienate[s] the subject from his own
consciousness’.1 In Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘William Wilson’ (1839) and Joseph Conrad’s ‘The
Secret Sharer’ (1910), both narrators are confronted with ‘doubles’ of themselves which can
be interpreted as manifestations of conflicting aspects of the psyche. Poe’s narrator represents
the id, the chaotic pleasure-seeker, whilst Conrad’s acts as a more regulated, regulatory
(super)ego. In both stories, the authors narrate the conflict between unconscious id and
conscious ego, suggesting an anxiety surrounding the paradoxical instinct to both assimilate
and reject the mind’s ‘threatening’ aspects. It is this conflict which Freud situates as the
centre of human struggle and subjectivity. As such, I will argue throughout this essay that,
not only is this ‘contrast […] between the coherent ego and the repressed’2 at the heart of our
being, so too is the fear and anxiety which arises from this conflict. Framed by a reading of
Freud’s ‘The Uncanny’ (1919), I will explore how Poe and Conrad seem to anticipate many
Freudian ideas regarding fear and anxiety in relation to space and doubling, before moving
‘beyond the uncanny’ to discuss how both stories ultimately regulate or reject the double
which threatens the boundaries of the narrators’ individual subjectivity.
First, it is necessary to define ‘fear’ and ‘anxiety’. Freud writes that fear and anxiety
are ‘capable of clear distinction in their relation to danger. Anxiety describes a particular
state of expecting the danger or preparing for it, even though it may be an unknown one. Fear
Mark Cousins, ‘Introduction’, in Sigmund Freud, The Unconscious, trans. Graham Frankland (London:
Penguin, 2005), p. 9.
2
Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), trans. James Strachey (Seattle, WA: Pacific, 2010), p.
26. Emphasis added.
1
2
requires a definite object of which to be afraid.’3 ‘William Wilson’ and ‘The Secret Sharer’
demonstrate this distinction at work, though not straightforwardly so. The narrators both
experience anxiety about their doubles being discovered, and as such, these doubles become
the ‘object’ of fear. They do not necessarily inspire fear in and of themselves, but in relation
to their potential for social disruption and exposure.4
Freud begins his essay on the uncanny with an etymological exploration of the
German word unheimlich, which translates literally into English as ‘unhomely’. ‘The
uncanny (das Unheimliche, ‘the unhomely’)’, he concludes, ‘is in some way a species of the
familiar (das Heimliche, ‘the homely’).’5 The uncanny refers, then, to the effect caused by the
defamiliarisation of something that was once familiar, and the consequent blurring of the
boundary between the seemingly dichotomous familiar and unfamiliar. The fact that Freud
begins this piece with a discussion of the heimlich/unheimlich immediately contextualises the
uncanny in terms of space; specifically, the space of the home. Following Freud’s example,
this essay will begin with a discussion of the spatial uncanny. Though neither ‘William
Wilson’ nor ‘The Secret Sharer’ incorporate any real or traditional image of the domestic
space of the ‘home’, they do explore how the uncanny operates in their narrative equivalent to
the traditional home. In both stories, there is some disjunction between the narrator and their
substitute ‘homes’, whose ‘uncanniness’ is exacerbated by the presence of their respective
doubles, who serve to enhance their sense of social anxiety.
In ‘William Wilson’, Poe stylises the ‘large, rambling, Elizabethan house’ which
constitutes his narrator’s school in typically gothic terms.6 It is located in ‘a misty-looking
village’ with a ‘dusky atmosphere’, and enclosed by ‘a high and solid brick wall, topped with
3
Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, p. 12.
The narrators’ desperation for secrecy will be discussed later in this essay.
5
Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny, trans. David McLintock (London: Penguin, 2003), p. 134.
6
Edgar Allan Poe, ‘William Wilson’, in Edgar Allan Poe: Selected Tales, ed. Julian Symons (Oxford and New
York: Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 79-96 (p. 80). All further references are to this edition, and page
numbers will be given parenthetically throughout the body of the essay.
4
3
a bed of mortar and broken glass’ (p. 80). The school is described in this ominous language,
characterised as a ‘prison-like rampart’ (p. 80), yet does not itself produce fear or anxiety in
the narrator. Rather, he exclaims, ‘how quaint an old building was this! – to me how veritably
a palace of enchantment!’ (p. 81). Instead of creating an immediate sense of dread (as is the
case with many of Poe’s gothic spaces), the schoolhouse is elevated to a quasi-mystical level.
At the same moment, however, the narrator qualifies this elevation by his personal standards
(‘to me’): it is not yet uncanny because he does not feel it to be. Following the work of Ernst
Jentsch, Freud comments that ‘people differ greatly in their sensitivity’ to uncanny
sensations.7 The uncanny, therefore, is necessarily subjective, an idea which the narrator
Wilson seems to demonstrate with his fond remembrance of a space which might otherwise
be received as – and is, indeed, presented as – uncanny. Arguably, he is not uneasy about this
space because he has become master of it, describing his influence as a kind of ‘despotism’
(p. 83). It is no coincidence, then, that Wilson’s anxiety should arise from (or perhaps be
displaced onto) the only ‘exception’ to his ‘ascendancy’ over this uncanny space (p. 83): the
double who shares his name. If ‘something must be added to the novel and the unfamiliar if it
is to become uncanny’,8 in ‘William Wilson’, that ‘something’ is the narrator’s double.9
If the aesthetically uncanny space of the school initially refuses to be a source of
anxiety in ‘William Wilson’, the opposite is true of Conrad’s ‘The Secret Sharer’. The ship,
the domain of the narrator’s professional and private life, should, perhaps, be less likely to
lend itself to uncanniness than a space created by Poe. However, the narrator – the ship’s
captain – describes his anxiety onboard the ship from the offset. He repeatedly refers to
himself as a ‘stranger’ to the ship,10 and though he objectively acknowledges that the vessel is
7
Freud, The Uncanny, p. 124.
Freud, The Uncanny, p. 125.
9
I will return to this idea of the double later in the essay.
10
Joseph Conrad, ‘The Secret Sharer’, in The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’ and Other Stories, eds. J. H. Stape and
Allan H. Simmons (London: Penguin, 2007), pp. 171-214 (p. 175, p. 176). All further references are to this
edition, and page numbers will be given parenthetically throughout the body of the essay.
8
4
‘very fine, very roomy for her size, and very inviting’ (p. 177), he does not feel at home in a
space which should be familiar by the fact that it allows the sea-captain’s connection with the
sea and facilitates processes which ‘were familiar enough to [him]’ (p. 177). Thus, there is
something inherently unfamiliar about this ship, though the source of this uneasy feeling is
never apparent to narrator or reader. The narrator remains isolated from his crew, and only
feels more comfortable when he is ‘alone on [the ship’s] decks’ (p. 174). It is from a series of
negatives – ‘There was not a sound […] nothing moved, nothing lived, not a canoe on the
water, not a bird in the air, not a cloud in the sky’ (p. 174) – and a sense of serene isolation
that the idea of the ship as a ‘trusted friend’ (p. 174) arises. The moment of familiarity, of the
ship as Freud’s das Heimliche, is brief, destroyed even by the stars and ‘the disturbing
sounds’ of the normal onboard activity (p. 174). The narrator oscillates between feelings of
familiarity and exclusion, of comfort and discomfort, at an almost frenetic pace. The arrival
of Leggatt makes this unsteady straddling of the boundary between comfort and anxiety more
prominent, with the narrator often experiencing both sensations simultaneously. The space at
the heart of the ‘The Secret Sharer’ exemplifies Freud’s assertion that, in one definition of
‘heimlich’, the term ‘merges with its formal antonym, unheimlich, so that what is called
heimlich becomes unheimlich’.11 At the same time, Conrad’s story shows this merging in
reverse, as the narrator describes an immediate affinity with Leggatt – ‘I felt less torn in two
when I was with him’, he later admits (p. 199) – this familiar double seeming to make the
uncanny space more homely for Conrad’s narrator, at the same time as he distracts him from
his duties onboard.
One of the definitions of heimlich Freud mentions at the beginning of ‘The Uncanny’
emphasises the secret aspect of the supposedly-familiar: for Freud, the heimlich is something
which is ‘concealed, kept hidden’, it is ‘to do or engage in something secretly’.12 The notion
11
12
Freud, The Uncanny, p. 132.
Freud, The Uncanny, p. 128.
5
that the familiar is essentially secretive is somewhat paradoxical, situating something uncanny
at the centre of the theory. This theoretical paradox is reflected by the architectural space of
the bedroom: the bedroom is the most intimate and familiar part of the home, but it is also
uncanny because of this intimacy, which calls to mind the ‘secret’ activities of private and
conjugal lives. Though, as mentioned, Poe’s and Conrad’s short stories do not incorporate the
conventional home, they do incorporate the private bedroom. Indeed, secrecy plays a central
role in both stories, and is reflected spatially. In ‘The Secret Sharer’, the narrator conceals
Leggatt in his cabin, and ‘at night [he] would smuggle him into [his] bed-place, and [they]
would whisper together’ (p. 202). Wilson, conversely, is the figure who ‘stole through a
wilderness of narrow passages from [his] own bedroom to that of [his] rival’ and looks on him
as he sleeps (pp. 87-88). In both cases, the id figure penetrates the heart of the heimlich – the
bedroom, and moreover, the bed itself. The words ‘smuggle’ and ‘stole’ reiterate the secrecy
of both moments, and combined with the invasion of the bed, it is possible to read these
scenes as examples of (latent or repressed)13 homosexual desire, a desire which is uncanny
because it is ‘calls everything that was meant to remain secret and hidden […] into the
open’,14 even if that exposure is only to the self.
Indeed, in both stories, the presence of the narrators’ doubles is felt acutely only by
the narrators themselves. It is the desire to maintain this secrecy or privacy which engenders
an anxiety about being discovered. Wilson and his double share the same name, birthday, and
are ‘singularly alike in general contour of a person and outline of feature’ (p. 85), matching
Freud’s description of the Doppelgänger, which is cited as a prime example of the uncanny.15
Wilson certainly experiences an uncanny aversion to his double, confessing that he ‘secretly
felt that [he] feared him’ (p. 83), and that he experiences a ‘continual anxiety occasioned […]
by the rivalry of Wilson’ (p. 84). He finds ‘but one consolation’ in the fact that their
13
I will discuss repression later in the essay.
Freud, The Uncanny, p. 132.
15
Freud, The Uncanny, p. 141.
14
6
similarity ‘was noticed by [himself] alone’ (p. 86). Throughout the story, the narrator
articulates his anxiety about the social effects of his double’s discovery, whose physical
presence transforms this anxiety into a real fear. As such, Wilson strives to dissociate himself
from his double. Despite his revulsion, however, Wilson admits that he ‘could not bring
himself to hate him altogether’ (p. 84). He thus articulates the ambivalent nature of the
uncanny effect produced by the double, an ambivalence captured in Freud’s essay by the fact
that uncanniness depends on familiarity, and familiarity is often associated with pleasure and
comfort. Conrad’s narrator experiences a similar ambivalence towards Leggatt, though his
affinity is more immediate and consistent. The initial ‘horrid, frostbound sensation’ he
experiences at the sight of what he thinks is a ‘headless corpse’ (p. 178) quickly segues into
the acceptance of the living-Leggatt, who he immediately and repeatedly describes as his
‘double’, a figure he imagines as his ‘reflection’ (p. 181). Still, despite his attraction to
Leggatt, the captain experiences ‘the confused sensation of being in two places at once’ (p.
189) and is ‘doubly vexed […] dual more than ever’ (p. 190) as a result of his presence. Like
Wilson, Conrad’s narrator is ‘very much concerned to prevent’ discovery (p. 183), with the
importance of secrecy further emphasised by the story’s title. Though both doubles produce
anxiety, fear arises – not from the double itself – but from anxiety about its discovery.16
A result of the secrecy, in both narratives, is that the narrators face some degree of
alienation from the external world. ‘William Wilson’ and ‘The Secret Sharer’ both show Otto
Rank’s notion that ‘the double figure acts to impede the main character’s friendships and love
relationships’ in operation.17 The narrators’ anxieties surrounding the secrecy of their doubles
often borders on obsession, and, thus consumed, they are prevented from wholly partaking in
their everyday lives. Further, in reading Wilson’s double as the ‘objectified conscience of the
Whereas Poe’s narrator’s anxiety arises from an intense desire for individuality and an embarrassment at being
associated so closely with another, discovery, for Conrad’s narrator, would also mean the exposure of criminal
activity, as Leggatt has admitted to committing murder.
17
Valdine Clemens, The Return of the Repressed (New York: State University of New York Press, 1999), p.
100.
16
7
libertine first Wilson’18 (an ego-figure) and Leggatt as the narrator’s darker ‘unconscious
self’19 (the chaotic id), we return to the idea of anxiety arising from humanity’s essentially
divided subjectivity. Both doubles force the narrators to confront this division, and their
disruptive presence can be read as depictions of the Freudian return of the repressed.
Repression is the ‘preliminary phase of condemnation’ of instincts which might ‘produce
“pain” instead of pleasure’, the psychical ‘function of rejecting and keeping something out of
consciousness’.20 In a reverse of Freud’s conception of the repressed id, it is the ego-figure
which threatens pain instead of pleasure in ‘William Wilson’, having an ‘imperious
domination’ (p. 95) which challenges Wilson’s hedonistic lifestyle. What Wilson fails to
keep ‘out of consciousness’ is conscience personified; the repressed double breaks through
these psychical barriers, often emerging symbolically from the dark to shock and unnerve
Wilson. Leggatt lends himself more straightforwardly to a reading of repression, since he is
characterised as a passionate, charismatic criminal, the id to the captain’s ego.21 Leggatt
‘appear[s] as if he had risen from the bottom of the sea’ (p. 179), breaking through the barrier
of consciousness, symbolised by the water. If we accept that the emergence of the doubles
signifies the return of the repressed, then it is unsurprising that the narrators should
experience anxiety in trying to contain the threat by concealing it from wider society. 22
Concealment as a shield of protection to minimise feelings of anxiety and fear is
something which ‘The Secret Sharer’ also reflects sartorially. When Leggatt starts to board
the ship, the narrator’s first instinct is to ‘hasten[s] away to fetch come clothes’ so that
Leggatt might ‘conceal [his] damp body’ (p. 180). As Siamak Movahedi and Gohar
Robert L. Carringer, ‘Poe’s Tales: The Circumscription of Space’, in The Tales of Poe, ed. Harold Bloom
(New York: Chelsea House, 1987), pp. 17-23 (p. 21)
19
Ian Watt, Essays on Conrad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 131.
20
Sigmund Freud, ‘Repression’ (1915), trans. Cecil M. Baines, in General Psychological Theory: Papers on
Metapsychology (New York: Simon and Schuester, 2008), pp. 95-108 (p. 95, p. 96). Emphasis in original.
21
The captain describes himself in terms of regulation and control throughout the story, but particularly at its
beginning, when he claims that ‘exactitude in small matters is the very soul of discipline’ (p. 177).
22
The return of the repressed is an uncanny process because, as mentioned above, it summons ‘everyhitng that
was meant to remain secret and hidden […] into the open’. See Freud, The Uncanny, p. 132.
18
8
Homayounpour point out, in The Psychology of Clothes, J. C. Flügel identifies three functions
of clothing: ‘protecting the body against cold, covering up feelings of shame, and its
decorative function’.23 The moment of dressing the ‘naked man from the sea’ (p. 180) at the
beginning of Conrad’s story demonstrates these first two functions. Though dressing Leggatt
is, indeed, functional, it is also an interesting moment in psychoanalytical terms. Flügel
writes that clothes can be read as:
compensation for an extreme intolerance of the naked body, an intolerance that is
itself founded on a strong castration complex. If this should prove to be generally
true, it would seem that persons of this type […] cling desperately to a satisfaction in
clothes, because these, in virtue of their phallic symbolism, give reassurance against
the fear of phallic loss.24
The degree of urgency suggested by the words ‘hasten’ and ‘conceal’ suggests that Conrad’s
narrator indeed lacks tolerance for Leggatt’s naked, ichthyic body. This is made the more
apparent after his confrontation with the seemingly-decapitated body, which does not
necessarily constitute the ‘realisation of his castration fears’,25 but reminds of the potential of
castration. By covering Leggatt’s body, the narrator – consciously or otherwise – assuages
some of the castration fears which Freud claims are present in everyone.26 By clothing
Leggatt in the ‘same’ item ‘[he] was wearing’ (p. 180), the narrator also identifies himself
sartorially with his ‘second self’ (p. 192), perhaps with the unconscious aim of aligning
himself with, thereby protecting himself against, the potential threat to his physical self.
Siamak Movahedi and Gohar Homayounpour, ‘Fort!/Da! Through the Chador: The Paradox of the Woman’s
Invisibility and Visibility’, in Psychoanalysis, Monotheism and Morality, eds. Wolfgang Müller-Funk, Inge
Scholz-Strasser, and Herman Westerink (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2013), pp. 113-132 (p. 119).
24
J. C. Flügel, The Psychology of Clothes (1930), qtd. in Kathryn Bond Stockton, ‘Cloth Wounds: Queer
Aesthetics of Debasement’, in Aesthetic Subjects, eds. Pamela R. Matthews and David McWhirter (Minneapolis,
MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2003).
25
Barbara Johnson and Marjorie Garber, ‘Secret Sharing: Reading Conrad Psychoanalytically’, College English
49.6 (1987), 628-640 (p. 633).
26
Freud discusses the castration complex at various points throughout his work, including in his Three Essays on
the Theory of Sexuality. In this, he argues that the castration complex manifests itself in early childhood, with
the female child experiencing a ‘lack’ and ‘envy for the penis’ when she sees the little boy’s penis; the little boy
reads the little girl’s ‘lack’ as evidence of the reality of castration. See Sigmund Freud, ‘Infantile Sexuality’, in
Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, ed. and trans. James Strachey (New York: Basic Books, 2000), pp. 3972 (p. 61).
23
9
Despite the resulting anxiety and even horror, the narrators in ‘William Wilson’ and
‘The Secret Sharer’ willingly engage in (potentially) destructive behaviours.27 They appear to
demonstrate Freud’s ‘death instinct’ – which runs alongside the pleasure principle – at work.
In Conrad’s story, this is most apparent when Leggatt’s formed shipmate Captain Archbold
comes onboard to enquire about the prisoner. Faced with questions about Leggatt, the
narrator is ‘utterly incapable of playing the part of ignorance properly’ (p. 196) and, as the
‘solution’ to the resulting suspicion, he ‘invite[s] [Archbold] to have a look round’ (p. 197)
perilously close to where Leggatt hides.28 Whether Leggatt is a corporeal presence or a
product of the narrator’s imagination is irrelevant, for the narrator believes him to be real and
still proceeds to initiate a ‘tour’ which could reveal his dangerous secret. The death instinct
operates more thoroughly in ‘William Wilson’, not least because the title character is
governed by an id which is usually repressed for the purpose of self-preservation.29
Throughout the story, the second Wilson disrupts the first’s hedonism, announcing that he is
‘but fulfilling a duty’ (p. 92); Wilson repeatedly refuses to accept his double’s advice and
direction, instead ‘fle[eing] in vain’ (p. 94; emphasis in original). Continuing on this path of
vice despite being aware of its destructiveness is reminiscent of Freud’s idea that life’s
ultimate goal is death, and that ‘the organism wishes to die only in its own fashion’.30 Indeed,
Wilson ultimately achieves this goal (though not without a degree of horror, perhaps a result
of the sublimated nature of the death instinct)31 when he violently attacks his double, which
seems to psychically collapse into Wilson as he is told:
27
Indeed, both narrators also seem to experience a subversive thrill as they partake in such behaviours.
There is certainly enough material, therefore, to argue that Leggatt is but a product of the captain’s psyche.
Indeed, he admits that the presence of his ‘secret self’ makes him ‘very much like being mad, only it was worse
because one was aware of it ‘(p. 191), and though he does not acknowledge an unreality in Leggatt, we can
nonetheless call his mental stability and reliability into question.
29
Freud posits civilisation and society as being of central importance to humanity. This is what necessitates the
repression of any instincts which may disrupt an individual’s relationship with society.
30
Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, p. 65.
31
Freud argues that ‘the theoretical importance of the instincts of self-preservation’ are ‘component instincts
whose function it is to assure that the organism shall follow its own path to death, and to ward off any possible
ways of returning to inorganic existence, other than those that are immanent in the organism itself’. That is, the
28
10
You have conquered, and I yield. Yet, henceforward art thou also dead […] In me
didst thou exist – and, in my death, see by this image, which is thine own, how utterly
thou hast murdered thyself. (p. 96; emphasis in original)
As in Conrad, the reality of the double is less important than the narrator’s response to the
double. In seeking to destroy the Other, Wilson instead condemns himself in a moment
which seems to (rather literally) anticipate Freud’s assertion that ‘masochism […] must be
regarded as sadism that has been turned around upon the subject’s own ego’.32 To conquer
the source of his anxiety and fear, Wilson destroys his double; in doing so, he rejects the ego
entirely and, arguably, it is this which facilitates the ruin of his (social) self.
The destruction of the second Wilson can also be read in Kristevan terms, as an
expulsion of the abject. The abject, literally meaning ‘throwing off’, is that which straddles
the boundary between object and subject, exemplifying the ‘ambiguous opposition I/Other,
Inside/Outside’, and thus producing horror in those it confronts.33 As such, it must be
‘expel[led]’ in order to fortify the boundaries of the self. 34 Though Wilson’s double is not a
clearly horrific example of the abject, he produces horror in Wilson (p. 79, p. 96), breaches
the boundary between them, and ‘does not cease challenging its master’,35 fulfilling enough
conditions to make him an abject figure. However, Wilson is unable to ‘cast away’ this figure
because he is also abject, the thing that:
disturbs identity, system, order. What does not respect borders, positions, rules. The
in-between, the ambiguous, the composite. The traitor, the liar, the criminal with a
good conscience […] the killer who claims he is a saviour.36
Instead of assimilating ego and id, Wilson attempts to expel the abject, uncanny cause of his
fear and anxiety, and in doing so, fulfils the Freudian death instinct. The narrator of ‘The
individual wishes to die in their own terms or as a result of nature taking its course. Thus, the death instinct
which drives us alongside the pleasure principle must be sublimated – repressed and made useful – so as not to
consume us. See Beyond the Pleasure Principle, p. 65.
32
Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, p. 94.
33
Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection trans. Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1982), p. 7.
34
Kristeva, Powers of Horror, p. 3.
35
Kristeva, Powers of Horror, p. 2.
36
Kristeva, Powers of Horror, p. 4.
11
Secret Sharer’, on the other hand, is able to expel the abject Leggatt. Though, as discussed,
Leggatt does not produce such violent feelings of anxiety and horror as seen in ‘William
Wilson’, he disturbs the narrator’s identity precisely because he elicits an uneasy
attraction/revulsion. Indeed, Kristeva’s above description of the abject seems to summarise
Leggatt, whose crimes are figured as noble and righteous through the narrator’s praise and
Leggatt’s passivity when voicing them (he says ‘[s]omebody would have got killed’, instead
of ‘I would have killed somebody’, for example; p. 187). The narrator can be seen to attempt
to assimilate the Other, accepting some of its chaotic instincts into his regulated self, before it
becomes necessary to expel Leggatt. At the end of the story, he becomes the ‘jettisoned’
abject,37 literally ‘cast off’ the ship and banished from both narrator and society. After
accepting his id as part of his subjectivity and consequently discarding it, the narrator claims a
victory over his fear and anxiety about the darker aspects of his psyche, finally declaring ‘I
was alone with [the ship]. Nothing! no one in the world should stand now between us’ (p.
214). Where the captain’s relationship with the external world is restored, Wilson remains
unable to assimilate his double. He cannot ‘flee’ from him, nor throw him off. Ultimately, he
is literally locked in a room, alone but for the ‘mirror’ of his own fears and anxieties: the
other half of his divided subjectivity, which he cannot and will not accept or understand.
A psychoanalytic lens affords the opportunity to explore the potential mental,
unconscious sources of fear and anxiety. In ‘William Wilson’ and ‘The Secret Sharer’,
confrontation with the (Othered) double forces the narrators to also confront the fact that ‘the
self’ is essentially fragmented. They experience anxiety at the prospect of the social
discovery of this division, and the presence of the double becoming a source of fear as it
invades the narrators’ lives psychologically and spatially. As such, the double must be
37
Kristeva, Powers of Horror, p. 69.
12
‘thrown off’, the fear and anxiety is causes expelled from the self in order to fortify both
psychical health and social relationships.
4,345
13
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