Back from the Dead: The Resurrected Body and the Uncanny

The subject of the Uncanny can be said to be as sprawling a topic as any ever propounded by Freud. Encompassing a myriad of emotions the gruesome, the ghastly, the eerie it would appear even the basest forms of horror are worthy of the label uncanny. And yet it is simultaneously an extremely prescriptive concept, just one of the many decisive paradoxes (NR34) that lay within the heart of the concept. For whilst Freuds uncanny (a quite deliberate genitive) is related to what is frightening (U339), so too does it lay deeper in the opposite of what is familiarwhat is not known. (U341). Perhaps then this is why the resurrected figure allies itself so well with the uncanny: the mobile, viable dead are at once the embodiment and overcoming of death, a sense of unfamiliarity which appears at the very heart of the familiar. (AB34). The resurrected figure is precisely the class of frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar(U340): death. The uncanny form is embodied in the oxymoron of the living dead, and responsible in the highest degree (U364) for feelings thereof. Perhaps this unfamiliarity at the very heart of the familiar inspires a kind of Jentschian uncanny. For after all, the resurrected figure blurs and distorts the naturally fundamental boundaries between life and death; one must doubt as to whether a lifeless object may not in fact be animate.(J8). Whilst Freud is emphatic in his denial of uncertainty in the realm of the uncertainty, dismissing it as quite irrelevant (U357), he is quite possible premature in such vigorous dismissal. Indeed, influential though his account is, Freud is by no means the repository of what makes for the uncanny. Indeed, he was preceded by both rank and Jentsch and succeeded many, Lacan and Royle included. Whilst Freud undoubtedly should be the foundation to any study of the uncanny, it may be worthwhile to observe what others have built upon it. Whereas Jentsch would emphasise the lack of orientation (J2) in the uncanny, Lacan would reject all prior French neologisms, speaking of the extimit (as he terms the uncanny) as the essential dimension of psychoanalysis ($6). Clearly here lies a rift in what is the uncanny, the intellectual versus the emotional. Ultimately, were one to seek a union between these opinions, divergent as they may be, one be best set to turn, as does Freud, to Schelling, and his assertion that the uncanny is the name for everything that ought to have remained secret and

hidden but has come to light. (U345). Herein lay the fundamental dimension of the uncanny that will be explored in this essay. It may be of worth, however, to initially define the potential paradigms the uncanny resurrected may entail. Asides from the aforesaid intellectual uncertainty, the concept of the resurrected figure inevitably seems to give rise to dead man [becoming] the enemy of his survivor. (U365). Could it be potentially due the resurrected signalling in some way the return of the repressed, or in Schellings terms, the psychology that ought never to have been unveiled. For whilst it is true that no human being really grasps [death] (U364), the resurrected figure serves as an inevitable, literal reminder of our ultimate fate. Alternatively, the resurrected figure may, in fact, become some form of double to those in whom he produces such feelings of uncanniness. This would seem to have root in the basis of Freuds general canon since dualistic tendency is fundamental to Freudian thought. (LP96). Yet as ***** goes on to clarify, this duality exists in pairs of opposites. (LP96). Perhaps this accounts for the further paradox this duality creates, in making the resurrected the double of the very opposite, the living. But beyond such superficial duality, the double pierces further. For in the double we see a sense of ourselves as double, split, at odds with ourselves. (NR6). And again, in that beautiful circularity belonging exclusively to great art and great artists, we find ourselves returned yet again to the realm of intellectual uncertainty. For the subject identifies with someone else, so that he is in doubt as to which he is. (U356). As seen Poes William Wilson, this can extend even to a disturbance of ones so called own name.(NR1). Indeed, even Frankenstein, the novel which will form the basis of this essay, suffers from exactly this metafictionally: the actual owner of the name has been superseded by his creation, until now in the public consciousness it is the monster whose name is Frankenstein, with the doctor melting into obscurity. Before penetrating too rapidly into the precise physicality of the anatomy of the uncanny, it would be perhaps best to consider how the anatomy can create the uncanny; that is to see, what can the superficial do to create the uncanny? Freuds intimates towards this when, in giving the various etymologies of unheimlich he refers to the English derivations as including both ghastly and a repulsive fellow. (U341). And indeed, in describing the monster, Shelley certainly evokes a ghoulish air, with the creatures gigantic stature, and the deformity of its aspect. (F91). Indeed, this repulsiveness forms an almost tragic irony; as Frankenstein reflects, in his vainglory, I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful Great God! (F68). Frankensteins ejaculation leads into a description of his newly revived creature, and how, despite lustrous

black hair and teeth of a pearly whiteness these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes. (F68). Whilst the creature was beautiful in the stillness of death, the very animus of life, the very essence of re-existing, confer upon him an unbearable aspect. The unearthly ugliness (F91) may simply be the manifestation, as Dollar phrases it, of horror at the unsplit world. ($14). For in becoming the embodiment of the paradox the resurrected occupy, the monster inevitably becomes fundamentally repulsive. The creature manages to fulfil three of Royles uncanny forms in his very being. He is an animistic and anthropomorphic. He appears to live and breathe and do so in human form. And yet there is a degree of automatism in the opacity of his eye, occluding his motives lending not just a degree of uncertainty to his thoughts, but the degree to which he is actually alive. The latter particularly relates to Jentschs definition of what it is to be uncanny, of the doubts whether a lifeless object may not in fact be alive. (U347) Indeed, unremitting though he generally is, Freud is forced to concede that in the realm of the deceased are we justified in entirely ignoring intellectual uncertainty, seeing that we have admitted its importance in relation to death? (U370). And yet perhaps Freud is correct in refusing to fully ally the realm of the uncannt with intellectual uncertainty. For whilst the intellectual uncertainty surrounding the creature may account for its immediate orbit of uncanniness, the more resounding uncanny surrounding its genesis lies prior to its creation, not following it. After all, the uncanny is largely covered and veiled by the sacred and untouchable. ($7) Dollars implication here would appear to be that what that an objects being sacrosanct only thinly veils its fundamental uncanniness. Suitable enough, in his myriad of etymologies for heimlich Freud lists used of knowledge mystical, allegorical. (U346). What is unheimlich and by extension, the uncanny - is not what is not mystical, but what has been made unmystical. The uncanny emerges from what does not seem to come in Gods name (NR20); as Freud appositely observes, the resuscitation of the dead in the New Testament elicits feelings quite unrelated to the uncanny. (U369). What is done in Gods name is Heimlich, but Victors insidious ambition of dominion over the elemental foes of our race (F32) are an attempt at subverting the course of nature. This deviancy is manifest in the quasi-maternal role Victor plays in assembling and creating the creature: he is Frankenstines foetus mise en abyme (NC76). The foetal element is particularly highlighted Kenneth Brannaghs film, the creature being brought to life submerged within a tank of amniotic fluid. In this respect, Frankenstein becomes a malemother (NC74) forcing the barriers of the normal, the Heimlich to

breaking point. In defining the uncanny, Freud links birth and death, human beings as endings. (M79). Here is, perhaps, the perfect embodiment of that statement: a mother-father imparting life to something already dead. Although he is ot perhaps squarely responsible for the entirety of the uncanniness within the novel, it is certainly true that Victor Frankenstein is accountable to a fair share before the monster has rebreathed his first breath of life. However, Frankensteins maternal creation of his monster may have a deeper uncanny implication. In creating the monster, Frankenstein in fact becomes mother to his own self-image. (NC74). Herein the novel expands into the realm of the double, a trope that only rose to prominence in Gothic literature. (C124). Alongside the corpse, the doubling, dividing and interchanging of the self (U356) lay in the extraordinarily strong feeling of something uncanny. (NC74). There is an added layer of irony located in the doubling of Victor. For whilst the creature may initially be only an abstract mirroring of Victors ego he ultimately comes to resemble the creature to whom he gave life. Walton is confronted with the decaying frame of [a] stranger (F31) whose limbs were nearly frozen and dreadfully emaciated. (F29). And beyond the novel, even the doctors name is subsumed, since a name is capable of outliving its bearer the name itself becomes a harbinger. (NR 191). The term Frankenstein has lived beyond its bearer and its creator, to become synonymous with a corpse, with resurrection and the unknown: to forever be associated with the double. Is it therefore possible that the monster initially functions as some sort reflection on the manifest ego? The double is closely related to its narcissistic meaning (TD69) since it must, after all, be the double of something. Indeed, in the terms of the uncanny, the double is a relation to the primary narcissism of oneself (U357). And in Lacanian terms this narcissism is overcome in the figure of the double since it is only by virtue of ones mirror image that one can become endowed with an ego. ($12) However, the mirror image is supposed to be brief, fleeting. As Freud reflects at the dismay and dislike (U371) of a fleeting glance at his double, that is to say his unbidden self. But this case of mistaken identity can, by its very nature, only be brief; it takes one the merest fraction of a second to recognise who it is we are staring at. Frankenstein, however, is confronted with a manifest, autonomous embodiment of his ego. As Dollar phrases it, there is a split. I cannot recognize myself and at the same time be one with myself. ($13). On confrontation with ones double, ones sense of so-called personality seems strangely questionable. (NR1).

Indeed, the many confrontations with his creation lead Victor only to greater anguish and self-doubt. The monster carries out repressed desires from the Id and he acts with a malevolence typical of the superego. ($12). After all each time the creature confronts Victor he makes the same demand: you must create a female for me. (F173). And Victors constant denials lead to a perfectly foreseeable dnouement, the constant reoccurrence of the same thing. (U356). Victor displays the hall marks of the daemonic (ULP98) compulsion to repeat. His constant denials of the creature lead to the continual, and predictable, death of his loved ones, with each murder bearing the same features on character the same vicissitudes, the same crimes. (U360). Indeed, in a fever induced rant Victor proclaims himself as the murderer of William, of Justine and of Clerval.(F211). His past inescapably clings to him and becomes his fate as soon as he tries to get rid of it. (TD 6). And yet every time a murder is committed, and Victor is forced to observe a grin on the face of the monster (F234) he is himself grinning. (NC 77). This grin implies that beneath the visage of both the creature and its creator lay something more, something repressed. After all, the image is more fundamental than its owner ($12): should one wish to observe the repressed Victor, one need only look at the unrepressed creature. The creature within Frankenstein (NC75)- is the corporel secret intention of doing harm. (U362). However, this secret intention may not necessarily need to be solely directed extrovertly. The desire to rid oneself of the double in a violent manner is one of the essential features of the motif. (TD16). Yet simultaneously the slaying of the double is really suicidal. (TD79.) Victors constant refusal to cede to the monsters wishes in itself a compulsion to repeat leads to a vicious cycle wherein he will eventually be forced into hunting himself to death; he falls victim to the Nietzschean energy of death that kills. (NC 227). And he does just that, hunting himself to the point of his own extinction. Part of the uncanniness of Frankensteins creature is its embodiment of the inner psyche. In this respect he truly represents everything that ought to exist hidden and out of sight. He is literally the Heimlich that which is reserved and private made manifest and autonomous. Continuing with the theme of repressed desires, one must also and ultimately consider the element of love with Frankenstein. It is the uncanny that is exactly what bars sexual relations. ($10) And within the novel it is both the love for a mother than inspires the creation and the love of a wife that inspires the loss of a life. Victors betrothal to Elizabeth is underlied by a buried incest motif. (CG58). Despite being Victors more than sister (F42) the two are betrothed by their parents, M. Frankenstein remarking I have always looked forward to your marriage

with our dear Elizabeth. (F180). The situation complicates further when one consider that Frankenstein repudiates other women for the sake of the mother. (NC74). Indeed, the Oedipal Paradigm (MG1) is played out to its full extent when one considers two major events in the novel. The first is the death of Mme. Frankenstein, wherein, upon her deathbed, she instructs Elizabeth to supply my place to my younger children. (F37) Elizabeth, therefore, effectively becomes the mother to Victors younger brothers. Secondly, almost immediately upon the creation of the creature, Victor falls into a restless sleep, dreaming or running to Elizabeth, fully garbed in wedding dress. And yet as I imprinted the first kiss her features appeared to change and I thought I held the corpse of my dead mother. (F51). ***** suggests that this dream is a sublimation for Frankenstein, who, fearing sexual contact, wants the woman dead. (NC77). However, it could also be the result that after narcissism, the distinction between sexual instincts and death tends to disappear. (LP99). Having created a man in his image surely the ultimate act of narcissistic self-indulgence Victor has accomplished his ultimate aim; as he stated earlier life and death appear to me ideal bounds. (F64). Having overcome both, the boundaries become blurred, female absence becomes erotic male presence. (M62). [MONSTER SEEING MOTHERS POTRAIT] This Oedipal relationship manages to survive unbounded until the night of wedding, wherein the consummation would have taken place. It is typically here that Victors sublimated ego-self appears and destroys the mother image of Elizabeth. In denying Victor what would be his only chance at viable sexual conquest, the creature effectively castrates him, not especially surprising since the mirror dimension introduces the element of castration. ($13). This emasculation is foreshadowed earlier in the novel when upon their first encounter the monster placed his hated hands before my eyes Thus I take from you the sight which thee abhor. (F121). As Freud notes in his analysis of Hoffmans The Sandman that self-blinding is a mitigated form of the punishment of castration. (U352). Effectively Victor is attempting to blind himself, with his ego taking the active role. The sight that thee abhor is effectively Victors self ultimately he is being castrated by his own narcissistic ego. The route of this psychic disturbance may hearken back to the death of Victors mother. In this respect the monster becomes an uncanny figure, insofar as he is the manifestation of the process of mourning and melancholia. It is indisputable that Victor routinely falls into fits of depression throughout the novel. However, Freud is very specific in outlining the ontological differences between mourning and melancholia. Whilst both can stem as a reaction to the loss of a beloved object (MM312), the abstraction that takes place in Victors work on resurrection

following his mothers demise would seemingly point to an initial bout of depression. This raises the interesting implication that in acting as a malemother to the figure of his own ego, he is effectively returning to the phantasy [of] intra-uterine existence. (U367). Indeed, there is an absorption of the ego on the mourning work (MM312) as does happen to Victor as he focusses increasingly furiously upon his work to the detriment of his familial and social lives. The final completion of his work is both a success and a failure: he conquers death, but the result is far removed from the beauty he lost in his mother. However, there is inevitably an imprint of the ego on the now abandoned object. And yet, because Frankenstein cannot escape the objects narcissitic identification the creature, after all, begins to associate him with a kind of father then hatred goes to work on this substitute object, insulting it, humiliating it, making it suffer and deriving a sadistic pleasure from that suffering. (MM318). Such is the case in Frankensteins frequent dismissals of the creatures entreaties and his ultimate destruction of the creatures wouldbe companion. To some extent, then the monster is again an anthropomorphic psychological process. It is the embodiment of Victors coping with the mourning of his mother.