Why are the women Shakespeare created so perplexing? Why do children fear witches in fairy tales? Throughout literature these and other powerful and compelling images of women occur frequently - the enigmatic temptress, the supernatural goddess and the earth mother. In this book, the author shows how recent insights from psychoanalysis can help interpret man's unconscious fear of women and how this fear is personified in these universal images. The author draws upon object relations and Jungian and existential psychology to show how the child comes to know itself through the mirroring of its mother, projecting onto her many frightening, anxious and frustrating feelings. In Shakespeare's work, Dr Holbrook finds fertile ground for exploring the applications of psychoanalytic insights, explaining King Lear's outburst against women as the "sulphurous pit", as well as Hamlet's cruelty towards his mother and Ophelia. The author also examines the strange and ghostly plays of Sir James Barrie which carry the association of women with death, nowhere more apparent than in "Peter Pan".
The book postulates some truths about the nature of women and what it terms the universal woman who lives in the unconscious.
- ISBN10 081473474X
- ISBN13 9780814734742
- Publish Date 1 June 1991
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 19 February 2003
- Publish Country US
- Imprint New York University Press
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 1
- Language English