Bernard J. Paris

What Fools These Mortals Be

Shakespeare’s treatment of the self-effacing solution is complicated. Self-effacing traits are among the “king-becoming graces,” which include “Bounty ... mercy, lowliness, devotion,” and “patience” (Macbeth, IV, iii); but, as we saw in the case of Henry VI, a predominantly self-effacing leader is unable to cope with a world full of aggression. Since not only kings, but all men live in such a world, self-effacing tendencies are regarded by Shakespeare and his culture as dangerous for a man, and they must be either subordinated to other tendencies or repressed. Self-effacing women are often as vulnerable as the men in the realistic plays, but self-effacing behavior is glorified in them and is, indeed, equated with “womanliness.” The women who are treated most negatively are those who are deficient in self-effacing traits, and a number of the comedies castigate or tame aggressive women. Self-effacing men are treated differently in the comedies than they are in the histories and tragedies. Since these are domestic plays that are more concerned with love than with power, the males do not have to be so aggressive. There is mockery of self-effacing behavior toward the opposite sex, whether the lover be male or female, but many of the self-effacing males are presented in a positive way, especially in their relations with other men. The most fully developed self-effacing males in Shakespeare are the poet of the sonnets, Antonio in The Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, Duke Vincentio, Antony, Timon, and Prospero. The sonnets reveal how extremely self-effacing Shakespeare could be, which accounts for his sympathetic treatment of self-effacing males, and also how he hated this side of himself, which accounts for the mockery.

Response to reviews of Karen Horney: a psychoanalyst's search for self-understanding.

Karen Horney (1885-1952) is regarded by many as one of the most important psychoanalytic thinkers of the twentieth century. Her early work, in which she quarreled with Freuds views on female psychology, established her as the first great psychoanalytic feminist. In her later years, she developed a sophisticated theory of her own which provided powerful explanations of human behavior that have proved to be widely applicable. Yet through these years of intellectual achievement, Horney struggled with emotional problems. This engrossing study of Horneys life and work draws on newly discovered materials to explore the relation between her personal history and the evolution of her ideas. Bernard J. Paris argues that Horneys inner struggles-in particular her compulsive need for men-induced her to embark on a search for self-understanding, which she recorded first in her diaries and then in her covertly autobiographical psychoanalytic writings. Although this search brought Horney only partial relief from her problems, it led her to profound and original insights into the human psyche. Paris describes Horneys life-her childhood and adolescence in Germany, marriage to Oskar Horney, motherhood, analysis and self-analysis, emigration to the United States, founding of the American Institute for Psychoanalysis, ostracism by the psychoanalytic establishment, and her many romantic liaisons. At the same time he examines the various stages of Horneys thought, showing how her experiences influenced her ideas. Focusing particularly on Horneys later work, Paris shows her mature theory to be an important contribution to the study of literature, biography, gender and culture, as well as to psychoanalysis and psychology.

Bargains, Defenses, and Cultural Codes

Shakespeare’s tragic heroes and heroines are such compelling figures, I think, because they are confronting situations that throw them into a state of internal crisis. Bernard McElroy has observed this and has offered an historical explanation. According to McElroy, what happens in these plays is that “the world-picture” of the hero is “undermined” and then “torn by several equally possible concepts of reality or else plunged into a chaotic abyss,” he struggles “to reimpose upon the world” a “meaning which it must have if it is to be endurable” (1973, 28). Stressing the fact that “Shakespeare lived in an era of intellectual, religious, and social transition” (p. 9), McElroy sees the tensions in the tragic heroes as products of cultural and ideological conflicts. The heroes are susceptible to being undermined because of certain characteristics they all share, such as self-awareness, a tendency to universalize, and a craving for absolutes; but these are thematic necessities rather than traits of personality. A character’s behavior is to be understood as predicated much more “upon his world-view” (p. 20) than upon psychological “motives.”

Shakespeare’s Leap of Faith

Shakespeare’s attitude toward self-effacing behavior is complex and ambivalent. The code of martial and manly honor calls for the repression of “womanly” feelings; and, in a world full of personal ambition, to be direct and honest is not safe. His preoccupation with the theme of appearance versus reality derives, in large part, from his awareness that Machiavels try to manipulate self-effacing people by pretending to subscribe to their values. He is afraid also of his tendency to enter into compulsive love relationships, and he makes such relationships the subject of about a third of his plays, most of which were discussed in Chapter 7. Sometimes he satirizes such relationships, sometimes he glorifies them, and sometimes he does both. In Romeo and Juliet, for example, it is difficult to determine whether the protagonists are meant to be perceived as foolish, doting lovers or as grand, romantic figures. Through much of the play the rhetoric supports both perspectives, though, as in Antony and Cleopatra, the emphasis upon the external forces that contribute to the deaths of the lovers obscures the destructiveness of their mutual morbid dependency and makes the play seem, by the end, to be a tragedy of fate.

Shakespeare’s Conflicts

As J. B. Priestley has observed, “until his final years,” Shakespeare “was a deeply divided man, like nearly all great writers. There were profound opposites in his nature, and it is the relation between these opposites ... that gives energy and life to his work” (1964, 82). Critics have tended to define these opposites in terms of masculine and feminine traits. In The Personality of Shakespeare, Harold Grier McCurdy concluded that Shakespeare “was predominantly masculine, aggressive,” but that his “masculine aims have a way of running counter to the feminine components in him, which incline toward idealistic love and domestic virtues” (1953, 159). In Psychoanalysis and Shakespeare, Norman Holland presented a similar picture of Shakespeare. According to these critics, the division in Shakespeare’s personality is between an aggressive, vindictive, power-hungry side, that generates “images of ... violent action” (Holland 1966, 142), and a gentle, submissive, idealistic side, that dislikes cruelty and is given to loving-kindness and Christian charity. Shakespeare is afraid of his feminine side and employs “aggressive masculinity ... as a defense against it” (Holland 1966, 141–142); he can express tenderness and charity only when his aggressive needs have been fulfilled.