“There’s nothing wrong with loving who you are” She said, “‘Cause He made you perfect, babe” “So hold your head up, girl, and you’ll go far Listen to me when I say”
I’m beautiful in my way ‘Cause God makes no mistakes I’m on the right track, baby I was born this way Don’t hide yourself in regret Just love yourself and you’re set I’m on the right track, baby I was born this way (born this way)”
The above lyrics are from Lady Gaga’s iconic song “Born This Way”. In it she talks more broadly about acceptance as a whole, and her song for many was a turning point in accepting themselves.
Acceptance and normalization are both topics that play a huge role in “eight Bites” by Carmen Maria Machado, as the main idea of the text surrounds societal expectations of women and their bodies. The narrators body image is shaped by the society she lives in, as well as the people around her who enabled a negative self image to drive her actions.
This is exactly the type of situation Lady Gaga is shedding light on in her song. She may not explicitly state her criticism on society, but the nature of her song is self explanatory and the message is simple: Love yourself first and be who you are. If this was something taken to heart by the narrator of “Eight Bites” as well as the society that she lived in, the story would be one of a woman who wouldn’t have to face the inner demons that came with her negative image. Unfortunately, the society in “Eight Bites” is not far from the reality of our current society, but slowly strides in media and pop culture are being made to shift the unhealthy criticisms on individuals to a more accepting place, one song at a time.
While writing and English have never been subjects I struggled with, I know there is always room for improvement and I believe I have seen some during this semester. My biggest struggle in general has always been formatting my work appropriately, considering requirements change depending on who’s teaching the class I am in. In high school, the format of my papers was not the same from year to year, nevermind the requirements for a college course. That said, by the end of the semester I feel I am better equipped to adapt to such changes.
Secondly, my ability to form a thesis has also improved. Where in an essay a thesis goes as well as how long it should be is information that has never been consistent with my past teachers, though I feel this semester has helped me to better understand how to gauge how to style my writing. I also feel that, through trial and error, I have gotten a better grasp on where to start when forming a thesis as well as how to incorporate it into my essays.
The coherency of my essays has also felt easier to navigate. I tend to ramble when I write, often running with a concept or connection I have made to the point that it no longer becomes relevant. Often I leave it in my writing and find it difficult to connect back to my thesis or original intent with the subject, so one of my biggest improvements is my ability to cut things out and maintain relevance in my paper.
This all said, I do think there are still many things I need to work on in my writing. I continue to struggle with coherency at times, especially when connecting ideas to sources. For example, I will often find a source quote that I feel would be useful in my writing when proving a point, but I tend to have a hard time making the quote blend with what I am trying to say. I will make my point and reference the quote I have found, but there is still a disconnect between the quote and what I am trying to say. I need to do a better job breaking down quotes and sources in order to develop better connections.
Speaking of breaking things down, I also need to look deeper into what I am reading when thinking critically and analyzing meaning and symbolism. This is imperative in making connections between the text and other sources or my own analysis. Our discussions regarding rhetorical situations in the beginning of the semester helped a lot when it came to knowing what to look for in what I was reading, as well as how to develop my own writing. My understanding of it and how it has shifted the way I write is apparent.
For example, my S&R Essay was one of the first essays written during this course, and there is a clear difference between that and the Critical Research Analysis Essay. My writing was less constructed and underdeveloped. My understanding of how to connect ideas and analyze rhetoric is in clear need of improvement. In contrast, my most recent essay (the CRAE) has a much stronger structure. The planning that went into the writing for that essay was vastly different than that of the S&R Essay. It was planned and calculated, and involved a deeper level of critical thinking when writing and planning it. The experience of writing that essay was arguably easier given the structure. Making clear and coherent connections made it a little bit easier for me to construct the body of my essay and ultimately made the whole process go much smoother. This also allowed me to be more specific with the points and claims I bring up in my essays.
Writing this much has also made me more aware of grammar and punctuation. It has forced me to pay attention to every detail of my writing and double check that everything is coherent and makes sense grammatically. This has not only improved my writing, but has also given me the tools to give constructive feedback when peer reviewing the works of others.
Most importantly, I learned above anything else no NEVER start a conclusion with “In conclusion…”. Obviously this is unprofessional writing either way, but the mention of this throughout this course truly stressed the importance of not using a phrase that lessens the integrity of my writing. My overall vocabulary has improved as well as a result of the mindfulness I have adapted to over the semester. I definitely did not (effectively) learn as much as I should have during this semester, but that is only at the fault of online learning. As a student I personally find it extremely difficult to function remotely, so the fact that there is any improvement in my writing at all is something to source inspiration from if and when I feel unmotivated again next semester.
“Miss Emily met them at the door, dressed as usual and with no trace of grief on her face. She told them that her father was not dead. She did that for three days…”(Faulkner, 3)
In this quote, it is clear that Emily is in complete denial that her father is dead. It is made clear in the text that her father kept her from living a normal life by keeping her in the house and refusing any guy that came to introduce himself to her. In her fathers death, she clings to him since he never let her close to anyone else. Her denial is her desperate attempt to repress the reality that now everything she had was gone. Freud defines this in his lectures, stating “…the end of this internal struggle was that the idea which had appeared before consciousness as the vehicle of this irreconcilable wish fell a victim to repression, was pushed out of consciousness with all its attached memories, and was forgotten.”(Freud, 2212). This desperation to cling to something/someone is what ultimately drives her to keep Homer Barron’s body in her room until her death, releasing her repressed desires in the act of keeping his corpse.
I chose this quote from the text because I felt it was an important moment for the reader where bits and pieces of her emotional state were coming together. Throughout the text, her story is told and more and more context is given in order to reach the end of the story. This quote is the first moment we see Emily’s raw reaction to her trauma, and in looking at the story as a whole it sets the stage for how she copes with the rest of her life. It ties together the events of her life that follow.
“Eight Bites” by Carmen Maria Machado is a short story that illustrates an issue with women and how their bodies are viewed both on an individual level and through a societal lense. The narrator of the story experiences the side effects that result from these toxic ideas about the female body; ideas that she is more familiar with than her own self. She eventually takes action to change herself to suit her insecurities, and her impulsive decision is enabled by the environment she lives in. The process that the narrator goes through as she struggles with her image can be analyzed using Freud’s ideas about repression, as well as the superego and its influencers.
In the very beginning of the text, the narrator recalls her mothers eating habits. While it is obvious that her habits were disorderly, her mothers obsession over eating only eight bites per meal is glossed over in order to highlight that she maintained a slim waist. Her body, shaped by an eating disorder, is described as “just normal” (Machado, 3). Above anything else, this is clear commentary on the way the female body is viewed. This is done not just via her mothers own obsession about her size, but also by making it clear that the only acceptable or “normal” standard for a woman’s body is a skinny one. This is also pointed out in a research article published by the University of Groningen, stating “The exposure to societal pressures related to body shape and weight (e.g., media promoting thin bodies; objectification of female bodies) and to aversive experiences (e.g., childhood trauma; body-related bullying) have been identified as risk factors for the development of a negative body image/body dissatisfaction”(Department of Clinical Psychology and Experimental Psychopathology, 2). Inevitably (and obviously, given her mention of it), this fixation on the female body and how it should look is passed down to the narrator. Needless to say, this heavily influences her negative body image when her body changes with age, resulting in something that does not meet society’s – nor her subsequent- standards of how skinny she should be. She becomes increasingly insecure about her body, and feels pressure to follow in the footsteps of her three sisters, who have all gotten surgery to reduce the size of “[their] bodies that needed surgery” (Machado, 3). All of these external influences contribute to the disgust that ultimately shapes her body image. In the same paper published by the University of Groningen, it is explained that this habitual display of a negative image on others is likely to be projected onto oneself. It states, “Previous research has found that people with a relatively strong habitual inclination to respond with disgust to any given stimulus or situation (i.e., high disgust propensity) are more likely to exhibit self-disgust” (Department of Clinical Psychology and Experimental Psychopathology, 2). All of this is to say that the blame for the narrators self hate and negative body image does not fall on her, but rather a society that pushes a notion onto women that their bodies need to fit criteria in order to be acceptable.
When her self image is analyzed through a Freudian filter, it is clear that the concept of the superego plays a role. The superego, according to Freud, is developed through a collection of morals and ideals provided by society and parental influences. He states, “The super-ego applies the strictest moral standard to the helpless ego which is at its mercy; in general it represents the claims of morality, and we realize all at once that our moral sense of guilt is the expression of the tension between the ego and the super-ego.”(Freud, 3). In this case, the narrator’s superego not only reflects all the aforementioned notions about a woman’s body, but in turn directly influences her beliefs and thus how she conducts herself. It is her superego that shapes her perception of herself, and it is also what ultimately drives her to get medically unnecessary bariatric surgery.
The power of the superego is also demonstrated within the text. Her daughter, Cal, for whom she blames for her weight gain, no longer talks to her. Upon hearing about her mothers surgery, Cal makes it very clear to her mother that in hating her body she is also hating her daughter’s body, which is described to resemble that of her mothers. That said, Cal makes no effort to change her own body. It seems that in separating herself from her mother she has also separated herself from the ideas of what her body should be, thus preventing her own superego from having such a negative impact on her own body image. That said, Cal is still distraught over the idea of her mother hating her body, and her own disdain indicates that her mother has already had enough of an impact on her superego to affect how she views herself (i.e. projecting her mothers hate onto herself). When the narrator sits down to eat her final meal before the surgery, she states, “for the third time that week I worried about my moral compass, or lack thereof”(Machado, 6). This suggests that she recognizes that she feels misguided and almost forced to proceed with the unnecessary procedure, but the ideals and morals tied so tightly to her superego continue to drive her actions. In “Kant’s ‘I’ in ‘I Ought To’ and Freud’s Superego” by Béatrice Longuenesse, a text that reflects on this Freudian concept, the effect of the superego as mentioned previously is discussed, stating “even though moral commands come to be discursively formulated in terms that are rationally comprehensible to the subject, their motivating force remains, throughout, premised on the emotional force they derive [unconsciously]…”(Béatrice Longuenesse, 18). In essence, the narrator’s actions, influenced by her superego, are resulting from ideas rooted so deeply in her conscious that they seem rational, even when they are not (like feeling guilty about her body to the point of getting the surgery).
This creates a conflict that is apparent immediately after the narrator has her surgery. It was clear from the start that she did not enjoy the idea of changing herself, and it was evident that her surgery was something she felt she had to do rather than doing it on her own behalf/for herself. Her surgery, however, was irreversible, and her decision was final. Instead of feeling relief she felt a struggle to feel connected to herself. This struggle is represented in the story as an entity in her basement, described as “a body with nothing it needs: no stomach or bones or mouth.” (Machado, 12). This imagery is imperative in understanding that this disconnect between who she was and what she’s become results from her inability to take care of her image, as well as the neglect of her sense of self in exchange for a “better” body.
On page 13, the narrator kicks and screams at the entity, and makes an effort to forget about it afterwards. Viewing this action through a Freudian lens once again, one can see how this act of pushing this discomfort away (or in this case beating it up) is representative of Freud’s idea of repression. This is explained in Freud’s lectures, stating “…the end of this internal struggle was that the idea which had appeared before consciousness as the vehicle of this irreconcilable wish fell a victim to repression, was pushed out of consciousness with all its attached memories, and was forgotten.”(Freud, 2212). Along with this explanation, it is also mentioned by Freud that though the mind will do its best to repress this discomfort, it will eventually manifest back into the conscious mind at some point. At the very end of the short story, the entity is once again present at the death of the narrator, symbolizing a common female struggle, as indicated by the quote, “She will outlive my daughter, and my daughter’s daughter, and the earth will teem with her and her kind, their inscrutable forms and unknowable destinies.” (Machado, 16). The narrator realizes at the very end her grave mistake in neglecting herself, though it is too late and the entity walks her towards her death, away from the body she leaves behind. The shame she feels just then is rooted in the discomfort she repressed metaphorically in her basement.
Using Freud to analyze this story, Machados commentary on society is clear. The problematic notions of what a woman’s body should be can and will influence her self image, and it is a problem all women will face as long as their bodies are viewed objectively.
-2018: University of Groningen Research Article: Negative body image: Relationships with heightened disgust propensity, disgust sensitivity, and self-directed disgust
Lilly Tzanides Exploratory Essay on “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe
Among Freud’s five lectures on psychoanalysis is the discussion of “wishful impulse”, which is described as an urge or idea that doesn’t necessarily agree with a person’s own morals or beliefs (Freud, 2212). In short, Freud provokes the idea that when a thought becomes repressed due to it being incompatible with the conscious mind, a person will feel the need to act upon it because they know they don’t want to, and that the impulse continues to exist unconsciously (Freud, 2213). The series of events that take place in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” suggests that the narrator experiences the repression and subsequent impulse mentioned and described by Freud.
One of the biggest characteristics of the narrator in “The Balck Cat” is that he has a strong appreciation for animals, as illustrated when he says “I was especially fond of animals, and was indulged by my parents with a great variety of pets. With these I spent most of my time, and never was so happy as when feeding and caressing them.” (Poe, paragraph 2). As he lists the numerous animals he cared for in his adult life, the reader will quickly notice how especially enamored the narrator is with his cat, Pluto. It is made obvious from the start that his appreciation for his animals is critical to who he is as a person, and that taking care of his pets is an impression of his happiness.
Later in the text however, it is clear that this parallel between him and his pets is not only a reflection of his desires to care for them, but that it also reflects his state, such that the animals’ conditions will be directly influenced by the condition of the narrator. This is explained when it is revealed that he developed a drinking problem, to the point where “[his] pets, of course, were made to feel the change in [his] disposition. [He] not only neglected, but ill-used them” (Poe, paragraph 6). While it is not clear what initially triggered his alcoholism, it is evident that that which he loved most received the brunt of his emotional imbalance that resulted from his alcohol use.
Going back to Freud’s third lecture, the narrator’s actions seem to line up with the idea of wishful impulse. His love for animals was something not only a part of him, but important enough to the core of his being that others identified him by that trait alone. And yet, his actions following his alcoholism seem to express the complete opposite. This reaches an extreme point when he fully takes it out on Pluto and cuts one of his eyes from the socket (Poe, paragraph 7). Though he quickly realizes the horror of what he has done, the cat’s subsequent avoidant behavior begins to annoy him, and eventually this makes him angry enough to hang the cat on a tree. It is arguable that he repressed what initially drove him to abuse the animal out of fear and shame, only for him to impulsively act on it again when the cat’s fear pushed him to a breaking point. He even states directly that he “hung it because [he] knew that in so doing [he] was committing a sin” (poe, paragraph 9), directly relating his actions to Freud’s definition of wishful impulse.
Following these events, the narrator’s house burns down mysteriously, and by the only preserved wall lies the cat he hung just the night before. This image and symbolism seems to terrify the narrator, and this caused him to have a brief shift in his state of mind. He began to regret the loss of Pluto, and began trying to correct his actions. He states, “ I went so far as to regret the loss of the animal, and to look about me, among the vile haunts which I now habitually frequented, for another pet of the same species, and of somewhat similar appearance, with which to supply its place” (Poe, paragraph 13). This feeling, however, doesn’t last for long. Once he does in fact find such a cat, he very quickly begins to despise it. That said, he begins to deeply repress the urges to hurt it, given his previous crimes and a fear of this particular cat that he later mentions. He hides and represses these feelings until once again he is pushed over the edge and attempts to murder this cat. Nonetheless, he is stopped this time by his wife, whom he married because they shared an interest in animals. When he is stopped, his rage suddenly shifts focus from his cat to his wife, and he ends up murdering her in cold blood in the midst of his anger.
This too ties back to Freud. The narrator clearly must have loved his wife, considering she shared with him the quality of loving animals, which was presented to be something vital to the narrator’s personality or consciousness. But even though he repressed and resisted his urges to destroy that which he once loved dearly, he ended up destroying everything because he knew it was wrong and immoral, and this fits almost perfectly with Freud’s definitions.
While the story itself focuses more on the events and the symbolism surrounding the cat, looking at it from a slightly different perspective allows for a connection between Freud and the narrator to be made. His passion for his pets became meaningless and obsolete when he was unable to resist the frustrations he kept away, and his alcoholism pushed him to act on it impulsively. Though a dismal story, it fits well as an example of Freud’s ideas.
For my Summary and Response paper, I chose to write about Freud’s first lecture and his observations about the general attitude of doctors towards patients with hysteria or hysterical symptoms. My response will be built off of the argument that such patients were not taken seriously and how it relates to the series of events in “The Yellow Wallpaper”. One of the points that Freud brings up is the effectiveness as well as the under use of talking cure or “chimney sweeping” as treatment for patients with hysteria and how it seemed to have completely different outcomes to more commonly used methods like medication or bed rest. The treatment of the main character in TYW is similar to that of the doctors criticized by Freud, and this seems to be a determining factor in the events of the text, as well as why the text was written in the first place. I personally feel that this is an important point to emphasize in my response since the narrator’s wellbeing was in the hands of those who were not giving her proper care, and because no other options (other than medications and bed rest) were given, her mental health deteriorated. This would have been entirely preventable given the right steps, and Freud’s examples of talk therapy in lecture one are a clear example of that. One of the first cases that Freud introduces is that of a woman who suffers from hydrophobia but does not understand why. Given any other doctor, she would have likely been labeled as hysterical and been given medications or rest orders. However, as Freud mentions, Dr. Breuer attempts talking cure with her and manages to bring her to a hypnotic state where she is able to recall where her aversion to water originated. Through a number of such sessions the woman’s hydrophobia was then understood and managed, and her understanding of her own feeling guided by Breuer allowed her to make a recovery that easily beats whatever “most doctors” would have prescribed for her. This example comes to mind when I think about TYW, because it is likely that the narrator’s “nervous depression” had an origin that could have been tackled using talking cure. Once again, this is never even considered, though it would have likely changed the way the story ended.
The story of “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a narrative about a woman who slowly loses her mind as she is being treated for her illness. Her illness, which is described in the text as a “nervous depression”, is not taken or treated with serious care, and the neglect of her needs as a patient with hysterical symptoms is ultimately what brings her to the point of insanity. In Sigmund Freud’s first lecture on Psycho-Analysis, he brings up a point that relates to the series of events in Gilman’s story, the point being that most doctors tend to have a flippant attitude towards patients with hysterical symptoms. The main character in the story is treated as such, and her state is worsened by this lack of care, and is arguably preventable.
In Freud’s lecture, one of the first things he discusses is the difference in the attitudes of doctors who are treating patients with organic illnesses and with those treating patients presenting symptoms of hysteria. In regards to such doctors he states, “ It is noticeable that [a doctor’s] attitude towards hysterical patients is quite other than towards sufferers from organic diseases. He does not have the same sympathy for the former as for the latter”. His observation of this disparity illustrates Freud’s main criticism that most doctors treating a patient with hysteria are less inclined to take the case seriously. This lack of legitimate care for a patient suffering from hysteria or its symptoms plays a huge role in “The Yellow Wallpaper”. John, the narrator’s husband who is a physician, fails to successfully treat his wife because he is unwilling to work with her to find a solution for her illness, and doesn’t even take the fact that she is ill seriously. She is said to have nervous depression, which is considered to be a hysterical tendency. On the second page the narrator states, “John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him.” The attitude he takes on that there is no physical ailment for her to suffer from is in fact neglect that ultimately causes her state to worsen, and by the end of the text it is obvious that she has lost all sensibility.
This could have been avoided if John were to take similar steps that Dr. Breuer did with his patient, as mentioned in Freud’s lecture. Breuer was a doctor who had more compassion for such patients and was a pioneer in using talk therapy or “chimney sweeping” as a method of resolving internal conflict in patients that other doctors would instead treat otherwise. Freud points out that many symptoms were reduced or eradicated by using this method, and that this is where other doctors have failed when using only bed rest or medications instead. This is again reflected in “The Yellow Wallpaper” since bed rest and medication were the only things used to treat the narrator, given that her mental state deteriorated regardless. That said, the story of “The Yellow Wallpaper” could have had a very different ending given different treatment for the narrator’s illness, such as the methods introduced by Breuer. While little context is given for how and when the main character began having her symptoms, it is likely that there is a root cause or trigger for her “nervousness”. It is plausible to infer that such a cause or trigger could have been revealed and even resolved with methods like talking cure and hypnosis instead. This idea is backed heavily by Freud’s first lecture, where he explains the long term effects that support the claim that talking cure had more benefits for patients than the more common practices. Furthermore, in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper”, she explains that the story was inspired by her own experience, where she “came so near the borderline of utter mental ruin that [she] could see over”, and that she only made a recovery when she acted contrary to her doctor’s orders, much like Breuer’s approach.
Ultimately, a reader reflecting on the nameless woman in “The Yellow Wallpaper” may never know how exactly she suffered, but an inference can be made that her mental health was not unsalvageable from the start. Given Freud’s lecture, Gilman’s own account, and the cries for help from the nameless woman herself, the story could and should have ended differently. Instead, it effectively illustrates a problem that Freud brings up, that patients with a mentally rooted illness were not treated with the same care as those with physical emergencies, and that for many such patients under such care, a descent into preventable madness would be inevitable.
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