ccording to Sigmund Freud, the Uncanny is a particular type of fear that is both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time,
‘the uncanny is the class of the terrifying which leads back to something long known to us, once very familiar.’
Freud explains the origins of the Uncanny to be infantile memories, desires and murderous thoughts have been repressed into the unconscious, something which has to happen in order for humans to be socialised into society. This essay will argue that the Uncanny has revolutionary potential, as it is the return of that which makes us uncivilised, and that could have very dangerous consequences. It will then go on to discuss the revolutionary potential of the Uncanny figure of the female, something in which Hélène Cixous argues that women have to reclaim in order to free women from the repression they face in life and in writing.
Instances of the Uncanny have particular revolutionary potential as they blur the boundaries between what is real and what is not,
‘uncanniness could be defined as occurring when ‘real’ everyday life suddenly takes on a disturbing ‘literary’ or ‘fictional’ quality.’
Furthermore, the Uncanny is particularly prevalent in literature. Freud associates the Uncanny with ‘unexpected doubles, severed limbs, bodies buried alive, the return of the dead, magical thinking.’ However, despite the imaginative nature of these themes, he notes that it can only occur when the author makes a pretence to reality,
‘he accepts as well all the conditions operating to produce uncanny feelings in real life; and everything that would have an uncanny effect in reality has it in his story. But in this case he can even increase his effect and multiply it far and beyond what could happen in reality […] fiction presents more opportunities for creating uncanny feelings than are possible in real life.
Thus, In literature the Uncanny brings about that which has been repressed more often, and much more forcefully than could occur in reality. Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royle add to this,
the uncanny has to do, most of all, with effects of reading, with the experience of the reader. The uncanny is not so much in the text we are reading, rather it is like a foreign body within ourselves.
Therefore, the revolutionary potential of the Uncanny in literature is that as readers, we realise that which makes the text uncanny is not something within the text, but something within ourselves. The presence of the uncanny in literature heightens our awareness to the fact that we have something at odds with the world hidden within our subconscious.
Furthermore, Freud discusses the uncanny feelings surrounding the omnipotence of thoughts, secret powers and the return of the dead,
We – our primitive forefathers – once believed that these possibilities were realities, and were convinced that they actually happened. Nowadays we no longer believe them, we have surmounted these modes of thought: but we do not feel quite sure of our new beliefs, and the old ones still exist within us ready to seize upon any confirmation As soon as something actually happens in our lives which seems to confirm the old, discarded beliefs we get a feeling of the uncanny.
Thus, the Uncanny has revolutionary potential, as it will lead us to question the core values and beliefs that our society is built upon, ultimately resulting in potential for the destruction of society as we know it. Royle neatly sums up this point, arguing that the Uncanny is ‘a crisis of the natural, touching upon everything that one might have thought was ‘part of nature’: one’s own nature, human nature, the nature of reality and the world.’ Therefore, the revolutionary potential of the uncanny lies in its ability to expose and challenge established truths that have been assumed about the world.
The revolutionary potential of the Uncanny is that it leads to a crisis of identity. Freud himself gives an example of this,
One cannot help having a slightly disagreeable feeling when one comes across one’s own name in a stranger. Recently I was sharply aware of it when a Herr S. Freud presented himself to me in my consulting hour.
Here, it is demonstrated that the Uncanny makes us question our identity, causing us to realise that our identity is not a stable or coherent concept. This idea is further developed in George Orwell’s novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four,
He had stopped because he was frightened. A bowed, gray-coloured, skeleton-like thing was coming towards him. Its actual appearance was frightening, and not merely the fact that he knew it to be himself.
Despite the fact Orwell calls it a ‘thing’ rather than a reflection, this is actually an eerie description of the central character, Winston, seeing his own reflection for the first time since being imprisoned. What is unsettling here is that Winston does not instantly recognise the reflection as himself, and it actually frightens him. This deeply uncanny moment can be seen as a play on Freud’s idea of the double,
the quality of the uncanniness can only come from the fact of the ‘double’ being a creation dating back to a very early mental stage, long since surmounted – a stage incidentally at which it wore a more friendly aspect. The double has become a thing of terror.
This demonstrates the revolutionary potential of the Uncanny, as the ‘terror’ that the double creates is the terror of an identity crisis, forcing us to question our entire existence. Another example of doubling can be seen in The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg. The Uncanny is represented in the novel through the characters of Robert and his alter-ego, Gil-Martin, with Gil-Martin stating that ‘I am wedded to you so closely, that I feel as if I were the same person’ Again this is revolutionary as it reveals the truth about our divided nature of our identity.
The revolutionary potential of the Uncanny can be fully recognised when we understand the return of the repressed as being the return of the repressed woman. In her essay ‘The Laugh of The Medusa’, Hélène Cixous argues that, in literature, the female body ‘has been more than confiscated from her… has been turned into the uncanny stranger on display – the ailing or dead figure which so often turns out to be the nasty companion.’ Female bodies have been discussed far more by men than by women, and men have portrayed the female body and sexuality as something that is dangerously uncanny. Cixous attempts to reclaim this uncanny figure of the woman,
‘In redescribing Medusa as beautiful rather than horrible, Cixous is revising the notion of femininity itself.’
Therefore, Cixous aims to revolutionise they way in which women have been portrayed. She then calls for women to engage with their own bodies and write about their experiences,
‘Woman must write her self: must write about women and bring women to writing, from which they have been driven away as violently as from their bodies.’
If women write, reclaiming their uncanny bodies, women will place themselves in positions of power. However, women cannot do so if they allow themselves to remain repressed. Just as the repressed within the self that Freud discusses hauntingly forces its way back into the world, the repressed female has to forcefully reclaim her body, and therefore identity, through her writing. Cixous illustrates the image of the repressed female,
Here they are, returning, arriving over and again, because the unconscious is impregnable. They have wandered around in circles, confined to the narrow room in which they’ve been given a deadly brainwashing. You can incarcerate them, slow them down, get away with the old Apartheid routine, but for a time only.
It is clear that Cixous is comparing the otherness of the woman to the otherness of people of colour. Cixous’ repetition of the word ‘dark’ strongly evokes the Uncanny,
‘Dark is dangerous. You can’t see anything in the dark, you’re afraid. Don’t move, you might fall.’
Her argument here is that due to fear of their ‘darkness’, women, just like people of colour, are isolated and separated from society. In this boldly anti-phallic text, darkness can be understood as a metaphor for female genitalia. While the phallus is erect, external, and out in the open, the womb and vagina are hidden internally, in darkness. They are not visible or as easy to access as the phallus. Freud himself notes that there is something uncanny about the female body,
‘It often happens that neurotic men declare that they feel there is something uncanny about the female genital organs. This unheimlich place, however, is the entrance to the former heim [home] of all human beings, to the place where each one of us lived once upon a time and in the beginning.’
The Uncanny is fundamentally concerned with that which has been ‘concealed, kept from sight’, and with the context of the female genitalia as discussed above, it is clear that the female and the Uncanny are inextricably interwoven.
However, just like the repressed memories and feelings Freud discussed, Women’s writings will be repressed for ‘a time only.’ The woman will return,
When the “repressed” of their culture and their society returns, it’s an explosive, utterly destructive, staggering return, with a force never yet unleashed and equal to the most forbidding of suppressions. For when the Phallic period comes to an end, women will have been either annihilated or borne up to the highest and most violent incandescence. Muffled throughout their history, they have lived in dreams, in bodies (though muted), in silences, in aphonic revolts.’
We see this ‘explosive, utterly destructive, staggering return’ of the repressed woman In The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkin Gliman. The protagonist has been isolated, due to a mental illness she is apparently suffering from after giving birth. She becomes convinced that there is a woman behind the wallpaper, and begins to see this trapped woman everywhere she goes,
‘By daylight she is subdued, quiet. I fancy it is the pattern that keeps her so still. It is so puzzling. It keeps me quiet by the hour.’
Thus, it is the female body that is most uncanny in the story because it is on display, the protagonist talks about it and knows it is there, yet at the same time concealed behind the wallpaper. We hear that that when the protagonist, along with the woman in the wallpaper, are isolated and repressed, she cannot write,
I think sometimes that if I were only well enough to write a little it would relieve the press of ideas and rest me.
But I find I get pretty tired when I try.
At this point, it is clear that the protagonist is still ‘confined to the narrow room in which they’ve been given a deadly brainwashing.’ Her inability to write represents her inability to have power over her body and identity. The most uncanny image comes at the end, however, when we see the release of the repressed female,
I kept on creeping just the same, but I looked at him over my shoulder. ‘I’ve got out at last! said I, ‘in spite of you Jane. And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!’ Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time!
Here, it becomes clear that trapped woman and the protagonist are in fact the same person. In creating a double for herself, she has actually managed to free herself from repression. Thus, the double here is not a ‘harbinger of death’ but a harbinger of freedom. Despite having been isolated and separated from society for some time, it was for ‘a time only’ as Cixous predicted earlier. The Uncanny has been employed here in order to demonstrate the power of the freed woman, she has the power to make men faint. The revolutionary potential of the Uncanny lies in the fact that it can give the woman the ability to liberate her body. She has freedom within society, but more importantly the ability to write, she is no longer ‘the servant of the militant male, in his shadow.’
In conclusion, the revolutionary potential of the Uncanny lies not only in the fact that it is the return of that which makes us uncivilised, but in the fact that the uncanny forces us to question our own identity and leads us to the realisation that, if our identity isn’t a stable thing, then nothing is. It then ultimately leads us to question the core values and beliefs that our society is built upon. This includes the patriarchal structure of society and place of women in society. The figure of the Uncanny female has been reclaimed and revolutionised in women’s writing by the likes of Hélène Cixous and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Cixous, for example, reclaims the uncanny figure of Medusa, making her uncanniness something to be admired rather than feared. Therefore the revolutionary potential of the Uncanny in women’s writing is the potential to challenge the established power imbalance between men and women, to ’smash everything, to shatter the framework of institutions, to blow up the law, to break up the ‘truth’ with laughter.’ The Uncanny ultimately exposes and challenges established truths that have been assumed about the world, and that is something which is truly revolutionary.