VIRGINIA WOOLF AND OEDIPUS COMPLEX

INTRODUCTION

In Freudian Theory:

"The complex of emotions aroused in a young child, typically around the age of four, by an unconscious sexual desire for the parent of the opposite sex and wishes to exclude the parent of the same sex. The term was originally applied to boys, the equivalent in girls being called the Electra complex." 

(Schuller)

Freud's theory of Oedipus complex has become a major theme for various renowned English novelists like example: - D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers, Shakespeare's Hamlet, Eugene O'Neill's Desire Under the Elms, Sophocles’s Oedipus the King  and last but not the least Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, Orlando etc.

Another thing apart from all the literary techniques, which caught attention while reading To the Lighthouse is the language that Virginia uses to describe James and her mother Mrs. Ramsay’s relationship. One can easily forget that James is Mrs. Ramsay's six year old son and think that there is some kind of sexual tension between them. It was assumed that Woolf would extend the oedipal complex throughout the novel. Although she does in a way but it was assumed that it would be more prevalent other than this language in ‘The Window’ the text loses all indications of the notion until ‘The Lighthouse’. Before, stopping to the theme of Oedipus complex in To the Lighthouse it’s essential to know the meaning and origin of the term.

OEDIPUS COMPLEX AND IT'S ORIGIN

"Oedipus complex"(CC BY 2.0) by trix0r

The term used by Sigmund Freud in his psychoanalytical theory comes from the Greek myth of Sophocles Oedipus Rex this is about Oedipus who kills his father Laius and marries his mother, Jocasta. the fate of the Gods is upon Oedipus to kill his father and marry his mother, It’s from this myth that Freud draws his idea about the Oedipus complex in his psychoanalytical theory here he claims that it is a group of largely unconscious ideas and feeling which concentrate on the desire to posses the parent of the opposite sex and illuminate the parent of the same sex.

According to classical psychoanalytic theory the Oedipus complex happens during the ‘Oedipal phase’ of libidinal and ego development. This is usually between the ages of three and five years through oedipal manifestation may be detected earlier. Freud spoke of the mythical Oedipus in these terms:-

"His destiny moves us only because it might have been ours – because the oracle laid the same curse upon us before our birth as upon him. It is the fate of all of us, perhaps, to direct our first sexual impulse towards our mother and out fist hatred and our murderous with against our father. Our dreams convince us that is so."

 (Freud)

Freud asserts that just like king Oedipus in Sophocles Oedipus Rex, human beings are under the same cruse or fate either to direct their affections and first sexual impulses that is our mother or father depending on the sex. It is on this fate, child's mind is built right from the womb as they pull their sexual impulse to either of their parents. This results to nothing but either the oedipal complex or the Electra complex.

According to Simone De Beauvoir's Second Sex the boy child becomes fixing to his mother and refuses to identify himself with his father. The aggressiveness towards father develops but at the same time the child interiorizes the father's authority. Freud does not just limit the Oedipus complex to the male child. He believes that it is for more complexes in the female development than in the male. He calls it the Electra complex, where female later shift their desires from their mother to their fathers. Freud says: -

"That what we have said about the Oedipus complex applies with complete strictness to the male child only that we are right in rejecting the term "Electra" complex which seeks to emphasize the analogy between the attitudes of the two sexes."

(Bruehl)

This shows that Freud puts the two complexes is Oedipus and Electra on an equal platform and that the only thing that seems to be different between the two is the differences in sex, though he later claims that, the Electra complex is more complicated than that of the male i.e. Oedipus complex.

OEDIPUS COMPLEX IN VIRGINIA WOOLF'S TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

It can be said that the idea discussed in above excerpt is evident in Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse. Woolf uses James Ramsay to portray the oedipal complex effect. This impact on the Oedipal complex has a positive influence on Mr. Ramsay in the novel To the Lighthouse it is the lighthouse only which stands as a stable and stagnant reminder of James Ramsay's Oedipal dreams not becoming a reality, consequently, it is through the process of understanding the significance of the lighthouse to James that this sudden sexuality becomes fully observable.

"Woolf opens To the Lighthouse by restaging the scene of interruption is Mrs. Dalloway. Mrs. Ramsay and James in the window replace Sally and Clarissa as the terrace; the bond to be broken links the traditional psychoanalytic couple, mother and son, rather than female friends who enact the relationship of mother and daughter. Mr. Ramsay's sudden appearance at the window and his abrupt declaration, ‘But it won’t be fine’ reiterates Peter Walsh's sudden appearance at the window and his abrupt question, 'star-gazing'? The literal father has replaced his surrogate in the oedipal drama Woolf has transferred to the son and seemingly rendered canonical."

(Abel 48)

Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay along with their eight children and six guests are spending a summer in the Island of Skye, in the Hebrides by the west coast of Scotland. They have their own house. As the novel opens, James youngest of the eight children is seen sitting with his mother by the Window which overlooks the lawns and the sea at a distance. James wanted to visit to the lighthouse. Mrs. Ramsay promises him if the weather will be fine, he would be taken to there. His joy has no bounds as he sits there on the floor cutting out pictures from the illustrated catalog of the Army and Navy stores.

"The male violence that revises the oedipal story in Mrs. Dalloway confirms it in To the Lighthouse. James's response to his father's interruption, ‘Had there been an axe handy or a poker, any weapon that would have gashed a hole in his father's breast and killed him, there and then, James would have seized it,’ is more overtly violent than Clarissa's ‘It was like running one's face against a granite wall in the darkness! It was shocking; it was horrible!’ Yet the connectional oedipal rhetoric easily contains James's fantasy of violence within familiar contours.” 

(Abel 48)

There are the rivalry feelings of James towards his father when his hopes are dashed to the ground by his father; who has been strolling for sometime on the terrace on the other side of the window, comes and declares that the weather would not be fine next day. James got excited and the word of his father makes him furious. He is so much angered that he feels, had there been an axe handy, a poker or any other weapon, he would have gashed a hole in his father's breast and killed him then and there. In this way the novelists has stressed the antagonism between James and his father. Such are the emotions that Mr. Ramsay excites not only in James but in other children also, children don’t like him.

"James reads his developmental story as a positive accession to his father's philosophical realism. By grafting the oedipal narrative onto the epistemological quarrel that traverses To the Lighthouse, Woolf seems to endorse his interpretation. In the parental debate about the weather, Mr. Ramsay intervenes between mother and son, bans the pleasure principle they implicitly assume (that nature mirrors human desire; thus Mrs. Ramsay's reassurance, ‘But it may be fine – I expect it will be fine’, and claims his son for ‘reality’ (But it won’t be fine)’". 

(Abel 49)

Mr. Ramsay used to make sarcastic remarks for his children and takes a strange pleasure in disillusioning them and pouring ridicule upon his wife who, the children think, is a thousand times better in every way than him. He has a high opinion of his own accuracy of judgment, and never alters a disagreeable word to suit the pleasure of others. The children resent. He wants to know that life is difficult and to face it needs courage, truth and power to endure. On the other hand, Mrs. Ramsay has a common sense approach of life and its problems.

James imagination reverts to the novels opening scene, the narrative interlude parallels the scene of Clarissa Dalloway's withdrawal from the party : A retrospective moment rewrites the interruption in the past Woolf's Oedipal plot requires this division : to be resolved, the Oedipal scene must be recalled and revised; the narrative splits between two moments, the second of which rewrites the first. That recognition should occur through recollection is faithful to the structure of the Oedipus story and to that of psychoanalysis itself, but Woolf insists recollection is revision. 

(Abel 50)

The first part of the novel To the Lighthouse has Mrs. Ramsay and the Window at its center, Mrs. Ramsay provides structurally and psychologically a cohesive force which gives a sense of unity and meaning to the lines of people around her. She is the center around which all the actions and movements are built. The window gives access to the center. It’s as a slow moving camera were swinging alternately from outside the window or the lawn to within the window or the drawing room. In this way the two – the interior and exterior are focused together.

Bibliography;

• Abel, Elizabeth. Virginia Woolf and the Fiction of Psychoanalysis. London: University of Chicago Press, 1989.Print.
• Bruehl, Elisabeth Young. Freud on Women. London: Random House, 2013. Print.
• Freud, Sigmund. Beyond the Pleasure Principle. New York: Courier Corporation, 2014.    Print.
• Schuller, Morgan. "Psychosexual Theory." Prezi.com.16 Jan. 2014. Web. 25 Mar. 2015.