Uncanny Dolls: Images of Death in Rilke and Freud Author(s): Eva-Maria Simms Reviewed work(s): Source: New Literary

History, Vol. 27, No. 4, Literature, Media, and the Law (Autumn, 1996), pp. 663-677 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20057382 . Accessed: 07/01/2012 13:00
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Uncanny

Dolls:

Images of Death
Eva-Maria

in Rilke and Freud

Simms

We

our dolls the bars of our along behind pulled them into the heavy folds of ill crib, dragged ness. They appeared and were tied up in dreams in the disasters of feverish nights. They did not any effort of their own; they were lying at filled with the edge of childhood sleep, maybe of falling off, and they let thoughts rudimentary themselves be dreamed. tomed else's to be power lived during Just tirelessly the day. Rainer as through accus they were someone

make

Maria

Rilke,

"Dolls"1

I. "Pulling The

her

from

pile

of more

sympathetic

things

..."

in many female featuring prominently although from the academic little attention lives, has found as in the history of In the history of psychoanalysis, community. the doll has not been found worthy of examina traditional psychology, of the uncanny because the doll in his discussion tion. Freud dismissed since issues very well.2 Psychoanalysts she did not symbolize Oedipal then who have worked with children discuss dolls in the context of play they, like other toys, allow the child to project uncon therapy, where and facilitate the resolution of conflicts which the child scious processes to articulate.3 Once in a while, we find a case history where a is unable is female child uses a doll in an aggressive manner (CS 226-27), which as a substitute for the absent penis, or where a little boy is interpreted to the therapist because he plays with dolls,4 which is inter brought as his pathological identification with the mother. Yet here, too, preted of the doll is not explored but taken for granted as a the phenomenon doll, children's the oedipal struggle of the preschooler. symbol within D. W. Winnicott groups the doll together with teddy bears, blankets, and other soft toys as transitional the gradual objects which make to the consistent, from the mother possible.5 The attachment separation transitional object allows the child to shift the cathexis away from the mother and so gains the child a certain amount of independence and
New Literary History, 1996, 27: 663-677

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control. In the attachment from theories, the doll is not differentiated other toys, and her particular symbolic place in the world of the child is not discussed. And like other transitional she represents the objects,
erotic attachment to the mother.

In the history
the "anatomically

of psychotherapy
correct doll"

the doll
in recent

of play
and

therapy has become

the controversy rages

years,

over whether these dolls are an appropriate tool for discerning sexual abuse in children.6 Here the focus is on the doll as a representation of the sexual body which allows the child's play to enact (or imagine?) to discern sexual relationships and allows the therapist symbolically, and disturbed sexual knowledge in the child. Yet no particu precocious is paid to the nongenital, lar attention of the doll, symbolic function which comprises most of her significance in the young girl's life. a the rise of feminism, With revisiting of the girl's toy corner is in order. Through the recent inclusion of the female subject in psychologi cal theory and practice the world of the female child attains new and the doll as a key carrier of female childhood prominence,7 fantasy of the doll in the girl's life ismore, needs to be examined. The presence tool for socializing than a patriarchal the mothers of the next though,
generation. She profoundly attracts the child's desire, evokes passionate

to articulate that are difficult in any love and hate, and fulfills needs other way than through play. In short, the doll barely exists in psychological theory. Dolls are not from other toys; they are identified either with the erotic distinguished or seen only as the girl's substitute penis field of the mother (doll= and their symbolic has been limited to the significance baby=penis), of the human body. Together with the sexual/genital representation of the female from the child, they have been dismissed psychology history of psychology. In the following like to invite you to follow the poet essay, I would Rainer Maria Rilke through the psychological world of the doll as he reveals it to us through poetry, short story, and essay. Rilke will show us that the doll in the symbolic universe of the child is a human body, but that itsmeaning goes beyond its sexual/erotic signification. He will draw the line that separates the doll from the rocking horse and the teddy bear, and will lead us into the dark and deadly reaches of the transitional of the doll at home in its pre-oedipal object, showing us the uncanniness of the doll is tinged And even though Rilke 's perception playground.
with aversion, and he makes no attempt to represent fairly all aspects of

the doll's light on experience

impact on the child's life, his work nevertheless the psychological reality of dolls and their of the child.

can shed new in the place

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II. "The big blue

about Rilke 's relationships with dolls: he There is nothing ambiguous to anyone that is surprising and hated them with a passion despised concern for the world of familiar with Rilke 'susually reverent and gende a long time, and we things. The image of the doll had haunted Rilke for to cope with the terror which the doll find in his writing various attempts for example, in him since his childhood. Witness, the had inspired it into the Duino Elegies: following fragment which did not make
If there cover that it, it does not become the gruesome is a dead body in the room?

doll of the (childish) house that he does not play with it

erecting it, against. . . .8

The

essay

"Dolls,"

written

at

approximately

the

same

time

as

the

fourth of the Duino Elegies (which also tries to come to terms with pup of dolls pets and dolls), gives us Rilke 's reaction upon seeing a collection to the in Paris. It is a scathing critique of the doll's existence, addressed like one of those letters young adults sometimes doll itself and written to their fathers in order to even an old score, to write (but do not mail) the emotional of the past, to free themselves understand entanglements from a still haunting faced with presence. When images of angels, faced with dolls, Rilke 's Rilke 's terror is aesthetic and beautiful. When terror is urgent and real, and his emotions lie barely under the surface. At the root of Rilke's hatred of dolls lies his encounter with the dolls For the first years of his life Rilke 's of his childhood. mother raised her son like a little girl and, like a doll, dressed him in curls, dresses,
pinafores, and bows. He was named Rene, which is a boy's as well as a

called him Sophie for a while. He dusted the girl's name, and his mother piano and played with dolls.9 In "Dolls," Rilke struggles with the gender confusion of his early more masculine childhood the doll with the by contrasting rocking
horse:

how soul of the rocking lifted one up, into an horse, you up and further one heroic where hot and with his hair being, perished, irresistibly gloriously, next most to it, doll, and you did not have up. Then you terribly messed lay was to understand innocence that your the upon enough holy George rocking animal of your dullness, the dragon, who let our most become flooding feelings matter in you?a unbreakable indifferent, (W3:540) perfidious, thing. Oh,

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In this fantasy, the heroic boy almost violates and crushes the doll as he assigns her the role of the dragon to his St. George. But in her dullness the doll does not respond. She overcomes the "hero" in the end by her very to the existence The doll is indifferent of the child, unresponsiveness. and therein lies her power. to further analyze Rilke 's It would be possible to confusion, gender out the equation of doll with woman, to reveal Rilke 's idealization point of women and his inability to respond truly to them with love. We could his disturbed with his mother and the ensuing study relationship of the mother in his unfolding work. But Iwould image metamorphoses like to suggest a different the doll appears direction. When in Rilke 's work she is "lying around in our earliest uncanny loneliness" ( W3:534), she reveals herself "as something unknown, and everything familiar with which we had showered and filled her becomes in suddenly unknown her" (W3:539), and she is generally of empti accompanied by images the doll ness, death, and futility. The aura of uncanniness surrounding Rilke 's works, even the mature work of the Duino Elegies. And penetrates on the level of his work, the image of the doll becomes more than a of his disturbed true and childhood. Rilke perceives vestige something about the very existence of dolls. truly uncanny In 1899 Rilke wrote a strange, uncanny, and very "un-Rilkean" short almost journalistic story called "Frau Blaha's Maid." In a detached, style of an infant. The maid Rilke tells the story of the murder is a simple in country girl who lives her life inside the grey, dark walls of a kitchen she gives birth to a child whom the city. Unnoticed she by anyone, as her "big doll" in a strangles, wraps in a blue apron, and then hides
trunk. During one of the next days, she measures the corpse and

proceeds
which, alas,

to buy a puppet
are much

theater with a king, a peasant,

than her "doll." She sets up

and a tower but

the theater in

smaller

come to watch her perform the kitchen, children and the neighbors' "but they never turn out to be a real little dialogues and stiff movements, play."10 She tells them about her "really big doll," and they press her to show it to them:
Anushka and eyes fear run went to the back faced each to her other, trunk. very It was quiet already getting and alike. But dark. from The children

the puppets of the punch, swept over

which the

away. Anushka The hands trembled. had over gone. with Anushka her feet then,

open a sudden something terrifying, they expected so that without to scream children and exception they began came back with the big blue in her arms. Suddenly her thing were as if kitchen was not broke had afraid. all the was the big become She so quiet and softly which dark, after empty and kicked were she went meant about the the children theater the split

the wide

and

laughed thin boards

to be and

garden. open all

And

as the kitchen heads, also

the dolls'

completely blue one's.

(4:629)

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can only transcend the This is the sudden end of the story. Anushka confines of her life through an act of violence. The puppets never truly come to life; they stiffly bow before each other and knock each other over. This strange and ritualistic limitation of imaginative possibilities, act of this inability to truly enter into play is deeply linked to Anushka's are nothing but the receptacle fail because violence. The puppets they creations. She does not know what to do with of Anushka's imaginative as she does not know what to do with the newborn. in them, Imprisoned the kitchen, alienated from the social and cultural life of the city, she has sense out of her life in the act of no reference system for making playing. to her, and she bears a Even her own biological identity is undisclosed that she is pregnant and murders the newborn child without knowing or moral is the ultimate emotional without Violence response. any answer to a world which does not respond. and absurdity of her actions, which are not explained by to the uncanny and depressing effect of the tale. Her is not premeditated, and we even feel pity for this coldness, though, who is homesick and and longs for music, companionship, human beast, the splendor of a king's life as she, almost in passing, murders her child. coldness the story, lead The The but logic of the tale is like the logic of the dream: meaningful senseless on the surface but pointing toward a deeper, inconsistent,
order.

unconscious

Examined work
woman

critically as a piece of fiction, the character because of the maid

have sexual intercourse on various

"Frau Blaha's Maid" is not convincing.

occasions without

does not Could a

knowing

that she does, especially if she grew up in the country and watched the of animals? Could she be pregnant for nine months and not procreation know it, bear a child as if it suddenly fell out of her? Could she strangle it cries and then go into the parlor and serve Sunday the child because a few minutes breakfast?all after delivery? And furthermore, morning is drawn without the character of the maid while it seems conviction, that Rilke also does not care about the logic of the plot of this story. We are never asked to understand or to identify with her. As she Anushka wraps the corpse in the blue apron, converts the dead child into the big blue doll, and finally destroys the puppet theater and all the dolls, we of the story arbitrary and baffling. Rilke 's language find the progression remains cool and detached. He does not convey to us an understanding of the girl's feelings and motives, to reveal the and makes no attempt for her gruesome motives deed. psychological the failure of the tale should give us pause However, we have to admit that despite its literary inconsistencies
certain mood of strangeness, depressiveness, and

for thought, for it still conveys a

While

uncanniness.

poetically

it may

be a failure,

psychologically

it seems

to work.

The

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narrator surface

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of distant objectivity as he retells the gives us the impression events of the story. The is too style of storytelling, though, we notice an indifference to be convincing, and whenever indifferent to the traumatic content of the story that seems to be out of proportion we suspect an overcompensation of extremely disturbing emotions. told, has been repressed. Something

III.

". . . spreading

herself

like

a boorish

Danae

. . ."

For a psychological reading of this tale, let me turn to Freud's work on some of the haunted and uncanny "The Uncanny" which discusses a careful study of a series of Through qualities of dolls (SE 17:217-52). Freud uncanny images and tales from the stories of E. T. A. Hoffmann, in literature. He explores of uncanniness the examines the production structure of the uncanny, which has as its core function a psychological to the repressed: it conceals very particular and paradoxical relationship
and reveals it at the same time.

of dolls in the context of an argument refers to the uncanniness author of the study Zur Psychologie des has with E. Jentsch, of uncanniness is a claims that the key element Unheimlichen. Jentsch Freud that he
confusion between animate and inanimate processes, which leads to an

in the reader. Referring intellectual uncertainty character of the doll Olympia, Jentsch writes:

particularly

to Hoffman's

a one of the most for easily successful devices In telling uncanny creating story a in the whether in uncertainty the reader is to leave effects particular figure or an automaton; to do that his it in such a way and is a human story being so that he may not be this uncertainty, is not directly focused attention upon to go into the matter it up since and clear that, as we have immediately, urged E. T. A. of the thing. the peculiar emotional effect said, would dissipate quickly success in his with this artifice has repeatedly Hoffman psychological employed in SE 17:227) fantastic narratives, (quoted

to push our understanding of the uncanny beyond a dynamic and introduce of intellectual confusion Jentsch's And al conscious and unconscious includes which model processes. Freud quotes at length from Jentsch's book, he plays down his though I hope that most "But I cannot think?and argument by introjecting: the theme of the doll, readers of the story will agree with me?that a the is by any means who is to all appearance living being, Olympia, atmo to be held responsible for the quite unparalleled element only the story evokes; or, indeed, that it is the which sphere of uncanniness Freud wants notion

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the doll, Freud most them" (SE 17:227). Discarding important among to him more on to discuss a different, moves and according terrifying, the hero with threatens Sand-Man, who repeatedly figure, Hoffman's castration. At home at last with the Oedipus complex, barely disguised to explore the uncanny on familiar turf and continues Freud is through childhood wounds of eros. the terrifying but forgotten Rilke 's uncanny dolls, and Yet we are still in need of understanding seems to deny us his psychological Freud insight by refusing to take the as an uncanny character. Yet Freud's abrupt dismissal of doll seriously turn toward the familiar castration issues make the doll and the quick at work which not an unconscious me wonder undercurrent if there is the kind of flow of Freud's disturbs the smooth thought. Maybe to entertain her the doll evokes has to do with the refusal uncanniness is not sufficient to I agree with Freud that Jentsch's argument seriously? or better, that nature of the doll experience, the dreadful penetrate which is still touches a certain level of psychological experience Jentsch Rilke 's "Frau Blaha's of consciousness. tied to the function Through that one of the technical observation Maid," we can affirm Jentsch's is that the story of the uncanny elements which support our experience from the intellectual uncertainty whether we are distracts our attention a doll or a corpse. Rilke euphemistically calls the dead dealing with "the big blue one," and the story gives us no pause for child/doll on the cruel transformation the living child and the between reflection effect of inanimate doll. But Jentsch still leaves the "particular emotional is that Freud refuses to look at the Our dilemma the thing" unexplained.
doll, uncanny: while Jentsch's both authors glance either only touches or the surface. the It is almost repress rationalize emotional

impact of the doll.

IV. ". . . the this Since Freud and larger denies

the first to inflict she was doll, us . . ." silence than human upon us a quick

answer, we are forced to take some the labyrinth of Freud's other through we will come out at the other end into the uncanny. Hopefully insights Let us begin of the doll's uncanniness. with a deeper understanding the thread by looking at the doll's rival, the Sand-Man/ unraveling castrator. The image of the Sand-Man is uncanny because he touches a fear from our early childhood. from this Freud generalizes upon scene is evoked by an to say that a fear or a wish from the Oedipal insight or wish can also have its origins in infancy, uncanny image. The fear detours, those lead us

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in the fall from the grandeur of the infant's early narcissistic namely is evoked the image of the double in uncanny world, which through tales. Freud writes: "The other forms of ego-disturbance exploited by can easily be estimated Hoffman along the same lines as the theme of are a harking-back to particular the 'double.' They in the phases a evolution of the self-regarding to a time when the feeling, regression itself off sharply from the external world and ego had not yet marked I believe that these factors are pardy responsible from other people. for the impression of uncanniness, it is not easy to isolate and although determine exactiy their share of it" (SE 17:236). is the key word in this passage, and it implies a disturbance Regression in the ego's sense of time. The ego regresses to an earlier identity to reality different from the formation which ismarked by a relationship
adult's ego, namely to a developmental stage where self-perception and

of the world are not clearly distinguished. perception With of Freud lead us to the respect to the doll, these reflections what is the nature of the repression concealed following questions: by of Rilke 'sdolls? Or, to ask more directly: what the uncanny atmosphere is reactivated through Rilke 'sdescrip stage of infantile ego development tion of the doll? "Frau Blaha's Maid" conceals the regression, but the "Dolls" gives us many clues as to the psychological and essay presence function of the doll in childhood In the lives of many development. as in Rilke 's childhood, the encounter with the doll is of children, and set apart from the play with other toys. As we primary importance saw before, part of the terror the doll inspires in Rilke comes from her to the child's lifelessness and her indifference and unresponsiveness emotions. too, are without life, but they, as Rilke says, almost Things, acquire
human

a heart
existence.

by being
They are

the silent
"thankful

companions
for

and memorabilia
and, although

of

tenderness"

fading
caresses"

and vanishing
of the

with use,
wear":

they come

to life under

the "demanding

"hardest

If we pulling would

would her

become from a

aware

of

all

this,

and

at

this

very

moment of our

would old

find? dolls:

she pile sympathetic things?one us her thick The which terrible, hatred, upset forgetfulness. by a has always been with flare her, would part of our unconsciously relationship as that gruesome lie before and she would alien us, finally without up, disguise: we have wasted our purest as that for which warmth; painted body superficially drowned lifted and carried of our tenderness until it dried corpse, by the floods almost out and we forgot it somewhere in the bushes. ( W3:535-36)

of more

Here,

again,

we

see

the

confusion

between

toy

and

corpse,

and

the

rage and hatred

which

this image

inspires.

If the doll

is this unrespon

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such a answer doll to human
our

alien body, why do we give sive, thickly forgetful, hate-inspiring to the child? Rilke asked himself the same question, and his toy we give the is startling and reveals a deep psychological insight: our child because the soul of the child would get lost in a
presence. ing" he "The says, simplest exchange so we, as children, and of love far exceeded our our existence practice

understand and

The doll exists on ( unloving doll W3:536). loving with the unresponsive, the threshold of ego-identity, where subject and object are undifferenti in an erotic fusion. At a certain point in the child's ated and merge narcissism poses the threat of self-annihilation in development primal the child would the narcissistic union with the mother. While "get lost" in the other by "pressing itself into her" (W3:536), the doll does not of emotion. She does respond to the child's cries and other outpourings not mirror the young self, does not smile, does not affirm good or bad, does not take the infant into her arms. In fact, she is usually smaller than is to be an object against which the child and her function the child must assert its own identity. She stands at the threshold of narcissism, the child to assume an identity of his own, and to distinguish forcing between I and the world: "We were forced to assert ourselves against the for if we gave ourselves up for her nobody would be left over. She doll, in the position of taking did not respond, and hence we found ourselves our slowly widening over tasks for her. We in part and split being and kept, so to say, the world at bay through her, which counterpart, and merged with us" (W3:536). before was unlimited In terms of regression, the doll in Rilke 'swork evokes the period of
awakening self-consciousness in the child. Self-consciousness comes with

the severing of the narcissistic, and is symbiotic union with the mother, a painful and terrifying process which with it feelings of helpless brings ness and limitation. Where before was the engulfing love of the mother
who was the world, there is now an absence, an abyss. And the doll can

take the place of the mother. I think that a large part of the rage, and aggression the doll is the memory of the lost union hatred, against for which the doll ismerely a poor substitute. with the mother, The position of play in Freud's work is central to his understanding of and the psychological for coping with mechanisms loss. The of his grandson's "Fort-Da" child, as Freud points out in the discussion fills with fantasies the space of the absent mother and symbolizes game, of his wishes. The doll, as do other toys, offers itself as an the fulfillment for the attachment of the child's erotic and aggressive fantasies. object Her very unresponsiveness, it does not gratify the child's although effort on the part of the child to invent an leads to a continuous desires, satisfaction: imaginary world and to hallucinate desire

never

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we mixed in a sample in her what to us before glass happened recognition, we saw it color even and boil up. That this we invented again, is, change so for she was without that our became bottomlessly fantasy imagination in her. For hours, us to inexhaustible for whole weeks itmight the satisfy drape first silk of our heart into folds around this I but feathery quiet mannequin, cannot it otherwise than that there were certain endless afternoons imagine there we grew tired of our doubled ideas and when we suddenly faced her and

when

expected

something.

(W3:536-37)

But why is it the doll, and not the rocking horse or any of the other as this primary entry into the world of the toys, that functions imagina tion? The answer, I think, lies in the fact that the doll, among all the toys, comes closest to imitating the child's own body. Because the body of the doll resembles the human body it lends itself to an imaginative represen tation of the human world. The child plays family, school, grocery store, and so on. During play the doll can assume the child's place in the adult the child plays all the others: mother, world, while father, teacher, the doll the child can explore some of the parameters grocer. Through of the adult world. Rilke would of the doll's agree with this sociological explanation
function in the child's universe. In "Dolls" he expresses a very similar

the doll. By nature she was idea: "We found our orientation through lower than we were, and so we could gradually flow down into her and
collect ourselves and recognize, although somewhat dimly, our new

surrounding world" (W3:539). But Rilke also reminds us of another, less aspect of the doll which does not fit into the slick picture of optimistic to be an adult with her doll. What the child practicing about those ideas and when "endless afternoons when we grew tired of our doubled we suddenly faced her and expected W3:539)? What when ( something" tears apart and she suddenly the fabric of the child's fantasy world that through the web of fiction she is faced by a lifeless body? recognizes Rilke thinks, that the child glimpses an It is in those terrifying moments, even adults find difficult to accept. When of human existence the aspect ceases to perpetuate sets in, the world when boredom itself, imagination takes on dark and unfamiliar that we had taken for granted suddenly to it we sense a threatening hues. Behind which emptiness begins permeate doll:
When when

the solid floor,

the walls,

the chair, the rocking

horse,

and the

nothing that idle

was

lying creature

around continued

to

did not know Danae who peasant our I could I wish remember feelings: was that our patience that monster

our train of thoughts, and change captivate to and heavily like a itself spread stupidly rain of else but the infinite anything golden whether at an end? we started Whether up we did in anger not and face told her,

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post for post, what all this wealth??Then she was with doing she was silent,

with trembling all our warmth not because of a

to know, rage, and wanted of and what had become

was made

was her continuous excuse but silence she because arrogance, stuff?was silent and good-for-nothing, completely irresponsible even to be proud not of it provided think her with did it, although great in a world where fate and even God himself have become famous for importance an effort us with to us At a time where silence. made facing everybody give quick us suffer answers the doll was the first who made and this immense soothing of silence stepped experienced feeling, which on later the for this pause Nature creatures inclinations on would of our time often breathe at us out her that of as certain limits the of first existence. (or am space whenever at us she stared hollowness we we

Facing I wrong?)

in our

the heart would

far-reaching not strange first tender

one would in which if not the whole, soft, perish across the abyss. Are we carry us like a lifeless thing to invest our that we obey and let ourselves be instructed must where remain unsatisfied? (W3:537-38) they

the doll has become a harbinger of a universe unresponsive Suddenly to the human cry for meaning. In her the absurdity of and indifferent in our feeling" and the life finds its first dark abode. The "hollowness breathless "pause of the heart" bespeak an instant of utter terror. A sense of futility and helplessness the newly found interrupts identity of the to annihilate not in a blissful all boundaries?yet child and threatens union with the motherly universe, but through a sudden ceasing of the structure of reality. The great fear which the doll meaningful inspires is the fear of a silence and emptiness at the heart of our existence. It grasps of transcendence, the possible absence the possible of a unreality of our life beyond invisible realm, the possible meaninglessness spiritual in Rilke 's work the angel the fragile clearing of the present. While affirms existence and without human beings, the doll, in her beyond small and silent way, denies being itself.

V. lifted But

". . . that and in more

drowned corpse, painted superficially carried the floods of our tenderness ..." by

than one way the doll is a harbinger of the death in Rilke 's work. We already saw how her unresponsiveness principle the imaginative supports and destroys reality of the child's play. We at the child through the doll's examined how nothingness glares glassy of boredom. But there is another connection between eyes in moments the doll and death, one which we have hinted at and which is so obvious that it is easily overlooked. The doll is a dead body, an inanimate child,
an unresponsive, rigid corpse.

This morbid

sense of the doll can clearly be seen in the fragment

from

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before. It gives the discarded early fifth Duino Elegy which we mentioned a warning to the adult to be aware of the child's naive confusion of the and the doll, and the advice to cover the dead body lest the child corpse picture that Rilke play with it like she plays with her doll. The gruesome here of a child playing house with a corpse and erecting it against paints as if the an unspecified surface comes to a sudden stop in mid-sentence, aware of the absurdity and terrifying importance poet suddenly became
of this uncanny, dream-like scene.

at this point and remember his psychodynamic a dead but of the uncanny. The uncanniness inspired by explanation us of a primitive period in our alive object is that it reminds seemingly the I where the boundaries between personal and cultural development it in the He summarizes less clearly defined. and the world were occurs when either infantile experience following way: "An uncanny are once more revived by some which have been repressed complexes or when primitive surmounted beliefs which have been impression, to be confirmed" seem once more (SE 17:249). The child of the above Let us return to Freud between the doll and the corpse, and does not distinguish fragment in "Frau Blaha's Maid." Both of them cross the neither does Anushka the life and death and break the taboos surrounding boundary between For us as and simplemindedness. out of ignorance human corpse the nature of death is this failure to respect and understand observers it reminds us of a developmental because stage uncanny extremely life and death was not as clear cut as it between the distinction where is a threat to seems to be to the adult mind. Yet to blur the distinction our continuous effort to keep death at bay through technology and
medicine.

the concept In one of the papers developing Freud of Masochism," Problem "The Economic that at an early stage of human development

actually the primary instinct ruling the organism, a fundamental regress to an inorganic state expresses
forms:

of the death instinct, the thought expresses is instinct the death and that the desire to tendency of all life

In

destruction, cellular

(multi-cellular) which organism and

living beings is dominant [composing it fulfills with the the it]

the in

libido and the

meets which of

the seeks

instinct to

of

death,

or the

them into

disintegrate stability

state

inorganic instinct

(relative

though this may be). The

innocuous, outwards?soon

libido has the task of making

by diverting the of special help world. in the external for mastery, in the service or of task that

the destroying

instinct

apparatus?towards destructive instinct, the instinct is placed

objects the instinct directly

organic The instinct the will the sexual

to a great extent the muscular system, then A is called the of portion it has where

to power. function,

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does portion the organism and, with described becomes above, we have to recognize the Another not share

part important in this transposition of the accompanying bound erotogenic Ultimate there. It masochism.

an

to

play.

This

is sadism it remains excitation portion

outwards; sexual is in this

proper. inside

the help libidinally original,

that

(SE 19:163-64) would be a to a state of

regression

regression

primary

which is characterized masochism, by the absence of Eros and the desire to level all tensions through "inorganic stability," that is death. As narcissism is the first stage of erotic development, primary primary the death instinct, masochism represents Eros's primordial counterpart, in its early and unsublimated form. we have come a step Freud's concept of primary masochism Through the uncanniness of the doll. Through closer to understanding her "thick her unresponsiveness, her coldness, her inanimate body forgetfulness," an image of the human form in the ultimate realization of we encounter the death instinct: inorganic stability. Prior to the threat of annihilation of one's gender through as a major cause of our sense Freud mentions tion?which the threat of the body uncanny?comes niness of the doll in Rilke 's work has
primary masochism, which is a regression

castra of the uncan to

of

to annihilate itself. The its roots in this regression

to an even earlier

stage

than the love triangle of the castration complex. development As Rilke 's child stares at the doll through the window of boredom, he faces the final futility of Eros's imaginative constructions. unconsciously The undercurrent of destruction from within the world, within the body, out the heart of his world to render hollows and threatens slowly the work of Eros. The child's response to this threat is meaningless hatred directed against the silence of the doll and rage against the waste on a being that assumes the human form of affection and imagination but is ultimately without love. The aggressive response, though, directs the destructive impulse away
from one's own body and toward an object "out there." Remember the

of the little boy with the tousled hair about phantasizing the doll under the rails of the rocking horse, or Anushka crushing her puppets and splitting open her baby-doll's head in the destroying darkness of the deserted kitchen: both acts seem to say that if the image, the representation of the human form, does not fulfill its promise of warmth and companionship, it will be destroyed. to rip the Better fiction and bring about an absolute and unthinkable dark comforting ness that knows no pain than to suffer the futility of one's own creative act. Especially with Anushka we get the that her final act of impression is not just a destruction violence of a puppet theater, but the symbolic

sadistic

scene

676

NEW

LITERARY

HISTORY

annihilation of everything that gives comfort and meaning to her life. She destroys her world. And although directed the object, the against seems to have the ultimate aim of self-destruction destructive impulse by to human survival. the world necessary abolishing to this rage against the world. The doll, There is an absurd element in itself and apart from the world of play, reveals that there experienced is a limit to life, that brute matter cares very little for human feeling, and that death is everywhere. It also shows that our involvement with the material stuff of the universe constitutes its meaningful structure. the child's compassion and imagination, Without the doll is a corpse. in the meaningful structures of the world Rage denies this participation and tries to raze the limits of our imagination and the boundaries of our life. It tries to overcome death and destruction by willingly killing and of death and destruction. the very harbingers destroying In a strange and disconcerting way Rilke 's doll seems to share an inhuman with the figure of the angel. The angel is the idealized, space and differentiation into pure form of Eros prior to organic involvement of primary narcissism. sexes?the The doll, on the archetypal image over the life the victory of death and destruction other hand, embodies of the organism?the While archetypal image of primary masochism. achievement of perfect being, the the angel is the ideal, unattainable Both can paralyze the imagination: doll is the grim threat of nonbeing. and by revealing the angel by luring the soul into dreams of paradise, on the our human and ultimate fallibility, insufficiency, dependence fear of death and the doll by inspiring a petrifying material world; of the self in The one leads to narcissistic dispersal meaninglessness. and search of the impossible ideal, the other to masochistic depression a doing away with the terrifying human body. on Eros and Thanatos the images of angel Our reflections through the goal of both instincts is and doll pose the starding question whether not the same, namely narcissistic union with the universe?which is first and then the fusion with the earth in death. the fusion with the mother
In terms of Freud's work we can understand now that primary masoch

ism comes distinction

ism, on the It

prior to primary sadism, for sadism already between body and world. The self-destruction
other attempts hand, to comes restore a before state the prior awareness to "organic of

a presupposes of the organ

the world as or instability,"

separate.

void of tension toward a narcissistic wholeness life, and is retrogressive is the shadow side of original narcissism, movement. the Masochism and dark side turned away from the blissful smile of Eros. We could call of the death instinct. masochism by another name: narcissism is that primary masochism of the doll is a reminder The uncanniness still familiar and present, albeit repressed and forgotten. Although

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dismissed
other than

by Freud,
Eros.

the doll

can show us the vicissitudes

reveals and conceals the

of an instinct
dynamics of

Its uncanniness

the death

instinct. Duquesne NOTES University

Rainer Maria Rilke, cited "Dolls," in Werke (Frankfurt a/Main, 1966), 3:534; hereafter from Rilke 'sworks are mine. and page number. All translations in text as Why volume The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works 2 Sigmund Freud, "The 'Uncanny,'" cited in hereafter (London, 1953-1966), 17:219-52; of Sigmund Freud, ed. James Strachey text as SE by volume and page number. 1 Melanie cited in text as CS; See Erik Erikson, Childhood and Society (New York, 1950), hereafter The Uses of Klein, Narrative (New York, 1961); Bruno Bettelheim, of a Child Analysis Enchantment (New York, 1975). 351 4 E. Kirsten Dahl, "Fantasies of Gender," Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 43 (1988), 65. 3

5 See D. W. Winnicott, The Family and Individual Development (London, 1965); and his (London, 1971). Playing and Reality "A Review of Clinical Data on Practices and Research 6 See Sue White and Gail Santili, Anatomical Dolls," Journal Violence, 3, no. 4 (December 1988), 430-42; of Interpersonal Correct Dolls: Should They Be Used as the Alayne Yates and Lenore C. Terr, "Anatomically Testimony?" Journal of the American 2 (March 1988), 254-57. Psychiatry, In a Different Voice: Psychological 7 See Carol Gilligan, Mass., 1982). (Cambridge, 8 Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies, in S?mtliche Werke Basis for Expert 27, no. hereafter cited Academy Theory of Child and Adolescent

and Women's

Development

a/Main, (Frankfurt 1965), 3:461; and page number. in text as SWby volume Rilke: A Life, tr. Russell M. Stockman 9 Wolfgang (New York, 1984). Leppmann, in S?mtliche Werke, 4:629; hereafter "Frau Blaha's Maid," cited in 10 Rainer Marie Rilke text by volume and page number.