Something, nothing : space, substance, and sexual identity in Shakespeare
- Creators
- Splitter, Randolph
Abstract
This paper argues that early, "preoedipal" anxieties about dependency, autonomy, the boundaries of the self, the dangerous interpenetration of inner and outer worlds--the outer world contaminating the inner self, the self afraid of losing the precious "substance" that keeps it alive--play a significant role in Shakespeare's plays, specifically Hamlet and King Lear. It argues further that childhood dependence on a mother influences later feelings about the opposite sex and sexual conflicts revive early anxieties about autonomy and independence, so that the attempt to establish a proper balance between inner and outer worlds is inextricably tied (in the plays) to conceptions of sexual identity. In broader social terms, these plays reflect the problem of being (1) a separate, self-conscious individual at a time when the old values of an ordered, hierar"chical society were giving way to a new, middle-class, Protestant ethic of "individualism" and (2) a man at a time when sexual roles were becoming polarized in new ways. As the plays themselves imply--and as the paper tries to show--we can't understand the dilemmas of modern "individualism" without understanding the sexual parameters (learned in early childhood, reinforced by social experience) in terms of which these dilenrnas are lived out.
Attached Files
Published - HumsWP-0058.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 14997
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20090812-153756482
- Created
-
2009-08-17Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2019-10-03Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Humanities Working Papers
- Series Name
- Humanities Working Paper
- Series Volume or Issue Number
- 58