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The Return of the Repressed: Gothic Horror from the Castle of Otranto to Alien (Suny Series in Psychoanalysis and Culture)

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In this study Valdine Clemens argues from a Freudian/Jungian point of view that Gothic fiction describes in symbols the matters in our society that we'd rather not talk about, or that we 'repress', and that these novels actually change how we think and act about such matters. That is quite a claim, and terribly overdrawn.

Although the book starts out well enough, testifying that Clemens has gone through a lot of research, at a certain point "Return of the Repressed" starts to descend into absurdity. The first books she explores, "The Castle of Otranto", "The Mysteries of Udolpho", "The Monk", and "Frankenstein", and the times in which they were written show how interactive their themes are with social issues.

But, as she describes those issues, one can hardly view them as being 'repressed': she quotes newspapers, intellectuals of the times, and epistolarians, among others, in evoking them (for instance, the status of women, censorship, industrialization). Clearly there was a lot of discussion, and I'd say that it was this discussion that helped change society, and not these Gothic novels. No one will deny that the times are reflected in novels, whether they are Gothic or sentimental, as well as the writer's opinions, but Clemens makes her idea about repression not one time plausible.

From the end of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" things go wrong horribly. Although there were some superficial and over-simplistic conclusions that are typical of most Freudian studies on fiction prior to this chapter, suddenly Clemens starts assuming the most outrageous things. When Mr. Hyde starts destroying Jekyll's library and in the process tears the portrait of Jekyll senior off the wall, Clemens identifies it as "an attack on the Father" that already started with Otranto. Likewise, she identifies "Jekyll" is a pun, being "je kill", the meaning of which she alludes to but never fully explains.

In the chapter on Dracula she posits ludicrous interpretations (no doubt she feels justified by invoking 'Jungian archetypes') to fit it into a world that is rapidly losing its traditional value to science. At one point she interprets "Mina Harker" to mean "my heart", with as sole justification that in 'some' Scandinavian languages, "min" means "my". When she subsequently identifies Stephen King's "The Shining" as poignant critique on American history, she loses her entire grip on the subject.

What could have been an interesting study seems to be the dying rattle of the psychoanalytic critique on fantastic literature. The problem, I think, is that when dealing with such literature, there somehow has to be a justification for its existence other than simple pleasure in reading about anomalities and supernatural terrors. Most of the time such justifications result in absurd theories and interpretations so that the readers and writers don't appear as aberrant personalities, to which Clemens' study testifies.

This is a very readable, intellectually serious, and balanced approach to the importance of Gothic literature and film to our culture. Clemens takes what is essentially a Jungian or archetypal close-reading approach to a number of classic and some newer texts (The Castle of Otranto, Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dracula, The Shining, and Alien), but here's what sets this book apart: a thorough and fascinating grounding in social and political history, and a willingness to take the Gothic seriously even in its current manifestations.

It is especially refreshing to see an academic take Stephen King seriously. Maybe because academic critics can't stand to see a writer make so much money, or publish virtually everything he scribbles ..., it is rare to see King written about as if he were an important writer. He is really important, and it would have been nice to see some of his more recent work dealt with here as well, but the chapter on The Shining is excellent.

Clemens' awareness of social issues like the Infants' Custody Act of 1839 and the place of women and women readers in the English social sphere are especially revealing and enlightening. The combination of close textual reading with relevant social and historical observation leads to a provocative theory about how Gothic narrative art reveals certain dark truths about society.

The essay on Ridley Scott's film Alien is very interesting, as is the chapter on Dracula. It might have been fun to see more in the book on very recent Gothic works; also I would be interested in seeing some speculation from Clemens on the collapse of the market for commercial horror (or call it Gothic) fiction in the 1990s in North America. No doubt the repressed will return again, as this book convincingly and impressively argues.