M. A. Newton Sexual Trauma, Psychosis, and Betrayal in Antonia White’s
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In ‘Speaking of the Everyday: Psychosis and Writing’ (2005), Brendan Stone observes how everyday writing between psychotic episodes enables people suffering from madness71 an opportunity to ‘actively’ recast ‘their fragile senses of selfhood’ (170). These writings for the two women writers Stone writes about actually aid in their recovery. Linda Hart writes, for example, ‘Writing this journal has kept me on the edge of sanity. Without it, I believe I would have tipped over into the chasm of madness from where I could not be reached’ (qtd. in Stone 170). This remarkable instance of these writers who ‘counter voicelessness’ as a form of ‘soliloquising’ (170-171) is the very presence of a voice that is equally applicable to the nature of autobiographical fiction, which straddles the border of fiction and autobiography. What is key to point out is that, whilst White’s life and relations with others were difficult, it is the very act of writing about the self, even when fractured, to be granted an outlet for self-expression. White was an enormously complicated woman. It is not uncommon in autobiographical fiction and memoirs to be the place where feelings of betrayal come to the fore and are worked out. Writing can be revenge and, for some, offer a place of healing, too. In the postscript to My Father’s House, Sylvia Fraser writes, ‘In retrospect, I feel about my life the way some people feel about war. If you survive, then it becomes a good war…. Contact with inner pain has immunised me against most petty hurts’ (253). At the end of Beyond the Glass, Clara writes, ‘Richard … I’ll hold on … go in peace’ (285). For her, it was about survival, mentally and physically. Readers learn that ‘It was not until her father was dead that she came to appreciate Christine’s absolute loyalty and non-judgemental acceptance of her daughter’s character and life’ (Dunn 87). The fact that White’s daughters felt the need to write their memoirs to try and come to terms with maternal neglect in their own lives is testimony to White’s inability to develop a true love for herself or others. Instead, she spent her life battling deep ambivalent feelings for her parents, so much so that she also felt the need to revisit her troubled relationships with her parents repeatedly in her autobiographical fiction. It is unclear if White ever truly forgave her parents, but if Lyndall’s memoir title, Nothing to Forgive, is anything to go by, she at least did find a way to do that in relation to White. As shown in this chapter, trends in contemporary thinking about sexual trauma have deviated quite markedly from Freud’s psychoanalytic theories. While many of Freud’s ideas have been discredited, and the damage to the mental health of victims of childhood sexual abuse has been established, there is still a reluctance to address the taboo of father-daughter incest. This is particularly evident in the recovered memory debate. That being said, accurately recovering any traumatic memory is challenging in itself due to an inability to remember the event, either partially or completely, and the need of persons who have experienced trauma to distance themselves from it by way of self-preservation. But there is a deeper issue to be considered in connecting memory to experience and that is with regard to betrayal, and White’s autobiographical fiction, as it has for other writers, serves as a voice that also makes her feel real. Given the emotional conflicts White experienced in what were extremely damaging relationships with both parents, writing for White was, on the one hand, simply a means of self-preservation and, on the other hand, an act of revenge against her mother in an epic Oedipal narrative that screened deeply-rooted feelings of betrayal. For White, moreover, writing was a coping mechanism against maternal betrayal as psychosis was a defence mechanism against paternal betrayal. Conclusion Antonia White’s sequence of autobiographical novels depict a problematic Oedipal relationship between White’s protagonist and her father that speaks to White’s sexual obsession with her father, as described in her diaries. Some of White’s critics suggest that she was probably a victim of father-daughter incest. However, the closest statement White makes that may support this claim is ambiguous: in a diary entry dated 28 June, 1938, Write writes, ‘I couldn’t have had intercourse with [my father] … because presumably apart from morals … he didn’t want it’ (140). On the one hand, readers could interpret this statement to mean that White wanted to engage in sexual relations with her father, but that her father was not interested and proceeded to enforce the incest barrier. On the other hand, this statement also suggests, particularly in the phrase, ‘I couldn’t have had,’ that perhaps White was in denial about a sexual experience she thought may have happened but had not been consciously able to process. It is precisely the ambiguous nature of this statement that opened the floodgates of my examination into the complexities associated with validating sexual abuse in a woman’s history. When I embarked on this thesis, it was driven by the following question that became the foundation upon which my thesis is built: is White’s autobiographical fiction a viable avenue for the unconscious documentation of sexual trauma? My answer to this question is yes. Does this answer, then, support the conclusion that Antonia White was a victim of father-daughter incest? No, it does not. Through a psychoanalytic lens, my examination of a non-resolved Oedipal trajectory in White’s autobiographical fiction only led to a larger question being raised: what does sexual trauma mean and to whom? My answer exposes a major theoretical conundrum in psychoanalytical concepts of sexual trauma itself, particularly in relation to unconscious sexual wishes and psychosis. Freud has three general explanations for his interpretation of sexual trauma: 1) it is caused by a female caregiver’s cleansing private areas and breastfeeding; 2) it is caused by a child witnessing or believing to have witnessed the primal scene; and 3) it is caused by the child’s desire to subject itself to sexual trauma by his or her engagement in incestuous Oedipal fantasies. The anxiety that can ensue from the latter explanation can lead to psychosis. Within the context of Freud’s Oedipus complex theory specifically, sexual trauma has a singular meaning: it is a necessary part of a child’s psycho-sexual development. Through a series of psycho-sexual stages, the child’s personality transforms from being driven by the pleasure principle, which is unconsciously aroused by the female caregiver, typically the mother, to the introjection of society’s successful construction of the incest barrier through the father. In White’s protagonist’s case, however, the ideal social outcome is not achieved due to scenes of paternal seduction, which are either directly stated in dialogue or implied in dreams. Whilst this information alone is not grounds to speculate upon the possibility that White was sexually abused by her father, what also emerges from my analysis of how White represents her relationship with him in her autobiographical fiction is an aporia in Freud’s Oedipus complex theory. He suggests that a little girl’s unconscious incestuous desires are unconsciously initiated by her father, but curbed by his super-ego; it is an idea in contrast to the father’s role as enforcer of the incest barrier. With the presentation of these contradictory ideas, the premise that the Oedipus complex as society’s defence against the child’s primitive sexual instincts becomes unstable. Nonetheless, this did not stop Freud’s theory from taking hold in psychoanalytic circles and the development of new psychoanalytic theories in relation to girls acting out their Oedipal desires on defenceless fathers. What came out of my initial investigation into sexual trauma was how differently sexual trauma is interpreted in psychoanalytic theory. For instance, in contrast to Freud’s position on a woman’s psychosis being the result of failure to navigate the Oedipus complex due to unfulfilled sexual wishes, Sándor Ferenczi’s interpretation of sexual trauma is based on real incidences of deliberate sexual abuse in which a descent into psychosis acts as a defence mechanism against acknowledgement of that abuse. This split in viewpoint reflects how Freud and Ferenczi differed in their views of women that ultimately informed a divide in how they interpret sexual trauma. Freud perpetuated a derogatory view on women’s sexuality that closely aligned itself with larger religio-cultural views of women; this is evidenced by the lower value he placed on women compared to their male counterparts, not just biologically and socially, but also morally. In contrast, Ferenczi believed his patients’ claims of sexual abuse, which suggests he placed greater value on a woman’s sense of integrity. These differences of interpretation lay a foundation upon which many theories on sexual trauma rest today, with empirical evidence being provided that speaks to either Freud’s or Ferenczi’s original claims. Whilst my focus in this thesis has been primarily on father-daughter incest, feminists’ studies on the debilitating impact of sexual abuse, in general, do not take into consideration the fact that boys are also victims. Given this knowledge, female sexual abuse within what many feminists perceive to be a despotic patriarchal framework suddenly becomes a lot more complex. Certainly, when White was writing, women did not have the societal privileges they have today (even though there is room for improvement), but how does male sexual abuse become a political statement about how boys and men become subservient to members of their own sex? Whilst outside of the scope of this thesis, this is a question that needs further investigation, and one that I am interested in pursuing in further studies on the topic of sexual trauma. Validating allegations of sexual abuse is not easy. Some allegations result in convictions, and some do not. Most victims do not report the sexual abuse until years, sometimes decades later, and many victims do not speak out at all due to the shame they feel or because the event was so traumatic, they repressed the memory. In most cases, sexual abuse has debilitating psychological effects, in which it is not uncommon for victims to descend into the depths of depression, dissociate from their experiences, partially or completely, with some seeing suicide as their only way out. Although White’s descent into psychosis against a backdrop of a complicated and highly charged sexual relationship with her father may actually serve to evidence father-daughter incest, it cannot be proven. This is not because I cannot corroborate her evidence as a result of recovered memories. She does not have any of which to speak. If she did, they were burned in her diaries written before 1926. It is simply due to the fact that White’s traumatic experiences were documented in a genre that itself blurs the lines between reality and fiction. To complicate the discussion further, White also documents her experience with psychosis, which comes with its own set of problems in relation to authenticity. To what extent can readers authenticate White’s traumatic experiences? On one level, in a discussion of author-protagonist relations, memory, and writing within the confines of a Freudian Oedipal drama, authenticity is problematic due to the ambiguous nature of autobiographical fiction. However, on a deeper level, I emphasise the need for White’s traumatic experiences of psychosis to be appreciated for the emotional impact they had on her, no matter how these experiences are conveyed in her autobiographical fiction and regardless of whether it can be proven that she engaged in father-daughter incestuous relations. I had already established the fact that I was restricted in being able to prove that White was a victim of sexual abuse. However, out of my examination of sexual trauma came a new consideration that exposed a major failing in a fundamental feature of Freudian theories on child-parent relations, and that was in the area of betrayal, which led me to propose a new way of reading autobiographical fiction that deals with traumatic subject matter. It was through an examination of Freud’s conclusion drawn from his fort-da game in light of Caruth’s interpretation of his theories on repetition-compulsion from combined epistemological and ontological angles that I discovered a narrative that was being written alongside an Oedipal trajectory. It was a pre-Oedipal narrative. In Freudian terms, the pre-Oedipal narrative leads to the child entering the Oedipus complex proper. Klein deviated from Freud’s view by suggesting that not only does the Oedipus complex start much earlier than he proposes, but the pre-Oedipal portion actually does not disappear at all; it continues during a person’s life. Nonetheless, I had to focus on father-daughter relations first in order to come to the realisation that what I was reading went much deeper than a problematic Oedipal drama. I was reading a series of autobiographical novels driven by deep-rooted feelings of maternal betrayal that White needed to work through by writing her autobiographical fiction. This is a common thread I found in other works by authors like Dorothy Allison, who ends her book with a reference to her mother, as does Sylvia Fraser, even though both writers, like White, seem to focus on father-daughter relations with a largely absent mother. For White, through her father’s religious conversion, her own mother became replaced by nuns, which further highlights the betrayal she felt by her mother for neglecting her at a time when she was navigating being accused of spiritual betrayal by her father and the Catholic Church. White’s attachment to her father was also an act of revenge against a mother by whom she felt abandoned. However, should the blame rest on the child for this, a position to which Freudian theory subscribes? No, the blame rests firmly on the shoulders of her parents. White’s struggle with writing was a manifestation of her relationships with her parents. When she wrote, she felt in control and yet the subject matter by which she was obsessed through her out of control. Writing was a way to work through trauma, a release from trauma, and yet took her into the belly of her trauma. It was exhilarating and yet painful, a place to sever relationships and yet a place to renew connections. And yet, White died a tormented woman, feeling abandoned and still wrapped up in her own needs and desires that had never truly been fulfilled at the crucial time that it mattered – in those early years of childhood with her mother. Since John Bowlby himself shifted emphasis from childhood betrayal to parental betrayal, literature has increasingly recognised the damaging impact of maternal neglect on a child’s future. In White’s case, she was, of course, betrayed by both parents, just in very different ways. White’s life was traumatic, and even though I cannot testify to her being the victim of sexual abuse, what needs to clear in literary and psychoanalytical / psychological circles today—and what I hoped to achieve in this thesis—is the fog of scepticism that pervades an analysis of women in crisis who have no other way to engage with their crises, whether consciously or unconsciously, than through a creative outlet in the form of autobiographical fiction, because this form symbolises the struggle White had writing about personal experiences but also needing to detach herself from them. Ultimately, White’s autobiographical fiction deserves to be read with respect, integrity, and a willingness to listen to a wounded voice.
Afterword My own relationship with White’s life and writings has been an interesting one. After reading her autobiographical fiction, I was impressed by her talent as an artist and her ability to write about personal experiences in a way that did not detract from aesthetic values. Beyond her work, White was a fascinating and complicated woman. In her youth, she hob-knobbed with the likes of T. S. Eliot, Bertrand Russell, and Djuna Barnes. She was an intelligent, witty, and charismatic woman who had a string of admirers. Besides being a writer, at different stages of her life, White was an actress, copywriter, journalist, editor, and translator. She was also a wife to several men, had a female lover, was a mother to two daughters, and dated men her age, much older, and some much younger, too, which included dating brothers. White was not a woman bothered by how others perceived her. White lived a life between extremes: she was, literally and metaphorically, either living life to its fullest or wallowing on the fringes of poverty. Whilst reading her writings, my feelings oscillated between admiration, disgust, empathy, and pity. White was self-absorbed, selfish, and vain. She was not backwards in writing about all aspects of the sordid side of her life from masturbatory habits and sexual obsessions to gossip, complaints, and dreams of stardom. But there was also a lot of introspection. Through my research into White, doors opened into much larger discoveries on the complexities of personality and relationships, mental illness, socio-cultural values, female sexuality, and trauma. 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