On Neil Gaiman’s Coraline: A Wise Child (2)
Jerome S Blackman, MD
101 North Lynnhaven Rd, Ste 204
Virginia Beach, Va 23452
757-463-3000
January 27,2010
On Neil Gaiman’s Coraline: a Wise Child
[slide 1] It was my wise child, Ted, now just turned 21, who told me (and not my wife) that I needed to read this book about a year ago. He was ahead of me, as usual in the past few years, and had recommended Gaiman novels before. With a particular type of pleasure, I took his recommendation regarding Coraline. Actually, he had playfully chided me for not being familiar with the book, since, in his estimation, it was particularly exemplary of something psychoanalysts should find interesting. He also wanted my take on the story; he gave me a chance to be wise for him – a sort of fun reprise of a reciprocal pattern with me from his childhood.
The first book I can recall that he wisely put me onto, when he was about 9, was Harry Potter I, [slide 2] which had just been published; they were reading it in his 4th grade class. Harry Potter, another wise child, although embroiled in a complex web of a story, is always outsmarting one bureaucracy or another – school faculty, the press, and the judiciary come immediately to mind. Ted thought it was a great story. But it was J.K. Rowling’s satire that caught and addicted me throughout the entire 7 novels. So, in a sense, I was wiser than Ted for a while, until he reached adolescence and could understand what I thought was funny.
When he was about 12, Ted had insisted I read Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game [slide 3] (another book assigned for school), which concerns a boy genius who attends a military school, inadvertently ends a war, and then becomes a pacifist. Ted had wanted me to read it for its descriptions of school and wise children (Ender and his older brother and sister). The book turned out to be not only about wise children, but perhaps the finest book ever written about the inner workings of boys’ minds regarding the management of aggression during development. It was like [slide 4] Greenspan’s Playground Politics on speed.
More lately, Ted has shamed me (and my wife) into finally reading [slide 5] Paul Graham’s Hackers and Painters, so that we would understand more about the real world – at least his world; and this time, he got to the deeper meanings and the humor before we did; interestingly, I enjoyed that, too.
Coraline is putatively a horror story [slide 6], except that it is not frightening, at least to me. Gaiman, who wrote it for his daughters, said it scared them. To me, it seemed more curious. Also polished, arty, and almost slick in its characterizations. But what it has to say is not amusing; rather, like other books Ted has recommended to me for their literary merit, this one also had a profound message of sorts – and a politically incorrect one, at that. The message, to borrow a word from Freud, is cleverly disguised in a rather obvious morality story, so that when you are done, you are faintly troubled, but the nature of the trouble is not immediately apparent.
A brief précis: Coraline is a school-age girl whose exact age is never given. Since she is clever and prepubertal, it’s a good guess that she’s about 8. In any case, she is most certainly bored. The obvious meaning of the story is that children need to be frustrated and bored, and that giving them everything they wish for is destructive to their identity (or as Gaiman prefers, their soul).
The plot, briefly, is that after wandering outside, and even examining a deep well she was supposed to avoid, Coraline has to pay attention, whether she likes it or not, to what is inside, most apparently because it is raining. She has tried the “crazy old man” who lives upstairs, who is dedicated to an impossibly dysfunctional mouse circus. She has visited the two old ladies who live next door; they are washed-up actresses, living on their imagined successes of the past, when men loved them. Both the crazy old man and the two old ladies warn Coraline about some danger of the “door” – we know it’s the one that her mother showed her, that’s been bricked in. The two old ladies give her a stone with a hole in the center, to keep as a good-luck charm. The bricked up wall and the holy stone are the first indications that there may be sexual symbolism involved in this story, as well as the identity issues.
Coraline’s mother and father are working in their separate home offices at their computers, and essentially ignore Coraline – though not as obviously as the parents in Hansel and Gretel. However, like Hansel and Gretel (and like Simba in The Lion King), Coraline decides to do something she has, at least implicitly, been advised not to do (a compromise formation involving adventure as a defense against depressive affect, counterphobic defense, and an assertive, rebellious stance designed no doubt to establish autonomy): She takes a key and opens the door to the space that has been bricked in. And lo and behold, the bricks are gone; instead, there is a hallway.
At this point, as I read this, I couldn’t help wondering if Coraline might be stereotypically putting herself in danger in order to be rescued, a sort of junior Lois Lane. Some chapters later, in fact, once Coraline has gotten herself into a pickle, she hopes her father will save her, and tenderly recalls how he had distracted a hive of ground-wasps they had stumbled over on a walk, at the same time he urged her to escape. He had dozens of serious stings after that, but she had none. In addition, I speculated to myself about whether her later finding that the door was not bricked in symbolized conflicts over her having discovered her entroitus; the flat stone with the hole in it, having magical properties, also suggested conflicts over genital discovery and masturbation.
But Gaiman has nothing so innocent or normative in mind. For when Coraline “explores” down the hall, she meets her “other mother.” This woman looks like her mother, but has button eyes, has long painted nails, and is mean. In particular, the “other mother” seduces Coraline with “interesting” toys, excellent meals (her mother had turned over cooking to her untalented father), and promises of fun. When the other mother indicates to Coraline that she can have all these benefits “forever and always,” however, Coraline becomes suspicious. She quickly realizes that the other mother wishes to take her over; if she allowed that, she would have experienced what Shengold has called “soul murder.” If Gaiman has not read Melanie Klein or Otto Kernberg, he should. Here is the split-off, aggressively tinged, destructive and dehumanized object, contaminated by the child’s projections of her own, split-off, destructive wishes. Moreover, to be specific, when Coraline plots to escape – and this escape will involve destructive aggression (Coraline eventually must cut off her other mother’s hand) – her punishment is going to be death for separating and denying the other mother control over Coraline’s autonomy. Mahler, anyone?
Superimposed on this separation/fusion anxiety conundrum, for a bit I wondered if Coraline feared punishment by her mother for sexual curiosity, but this did not become an oedipal story like Jane Eyre – where the master, Rochester, goes blind and loses a hand after his insane wife kills herself in a fire meant to kill him, and Jane eventually returns to finally marry him and bear him a son whom he can see when sight returns in one of his eyes.
Coraline never makes it far enough in development for any such family romance fantasy to take precedence. There is another wisp of positive oedipal interest and family romance in an early scene when her father, very briefly, plays with Coraline and then suggests some activities. But his interest is at best evanescent, and her interest in him less so. Coraline is essentially a pre-oedipal thriller, a sort of latency-age equivalent of L’Engle’s adolescent story about identity theft, A Wrinkle in Time.
Gaiman gives us some foreshadowing of this dynamic early on, by describing the other adults whose self-image and self-esteem have been damaged. The two old ladies who live next door were once actresses, and are living in the past, frequently repeating how men had been attracted to them. Neither are happy and both seem to suffer from a type of the “if only fantasies” described by Akhtar. The hermitic old man living upstairs with his non-operational mouse-circus, has never found himself, either. The old ladies and the old man are rather pitiful and sad, their identities having never developed properly for reasons unknown. But we know the damage had been done, and the risk is ever present. None of the neighbors gets Coraline’s name correct. All three annoyingly call her Caroline, even after she corrects them. Danger to her identity is hinted at there, too.
To finish the story: As Coraline realizes she must escape from her other mother, she stumbles over three lost souls. These are in the shape of ghosts, and describe themselves as past suckers for the other mother’s seduction. Playing on the other mother’s narcissism, Coraline bets her that she can find the lost souls wherever the other mother hides them. The deal is if Coraline can find the 3 lost souls and those of her parents, the other mother should give her back the key to the bricked-in door (which the other mother had expropriated from Coraline upon finding her originally) – and let her escape. If Coraline loses – cannot find the lost souls or her parents, the other mother gets to keep Coraline “forever and always.” The other mother takes Coraline up on this wager, and hides the lost souls in three marbles, which Coraline will have to risk her life to retrieve. Much of the time, Coraline is aided by her black cat that has followed her through the looking-glass, so to speak, but has not lost its identity.
After a number of life-threatening misadventures, Coraline outsmarts her other mother, but the other mother has lied about giving her the key back. Shades of a female Hitler after Munich; but Coraline is no Chamberlain. Coraline understands that the other mother means to keep her forever; so Coraline sets the cat on her, grabs the snow-globe she realizes contains her real parents, and escapes back to her real house.
Sometime after Coraline has arrived safely home, however, her other mother’s amputated hand follows her. Coraline again must outsmart the other mother. This time, she sets out a doll picnic, with the tablecloth cleverly placed over the opened entrance to the well. The hand pounces, and goes with the doll-tablecloth to its death in the well. The 3 prior victims of the other mother return in a dream to thank Coraline for returning their souls. Coraline’s parents are none the wiser, but she is more appreciative of them with their limitations.
Okay, the terror has ceased. And Coraline is both alive and less bored. The social message that children can be damaged by being spoiled (the other mother), or that they can be tempted to engage in dangerous behavior by being ignored, is clear. But the tale is disquieting. I mused about Arlow’s interesting point that an only child often experiences guilt over fantasies of having killed off any siblings. Does Coraline suffer from a guilt-based depression that is only relieved when she can at least help repair the purgatorial status of the lost souls?
Then I suspected something else was troubling about the story. Maybe it’s that the mother is blamed. The father, too, a bit, but it’s mostly about Coraline’s struggle vis-à-vis mothers. Interestingly, the movie that was later made of the story changes this political incorrectness, adds problems with the father and the “other father,” and introduces a latency-age boy to even the message.
The (later-made) movie, Coraline, causes less disturbance than the book, with its haunting depiction of mothers. We’d rather not go there. After all, Stern and Kliman point out that the child has a lot to do with inciting the parents’ behavior, and many children succeed in spite of disturbed parents.
Gaiman, I believe, did not intend to blame anyone. You could argue that his story is not much different from many “wicked stepparent” stories, and other fairy tales. As mentioned, Hansel and Gretel escape their parents’ neglect, and similarly are tempted by food, caged, and forced to escape by their superior wit (and violence). Likewise, Cinderella has to outdo her stepmother – although she gets some help from a different “other mother” – the fairy godmother, again suggesting the splitting mechanism. She is also inspired by the fairy godmother’s intervention, becomes assiduous in her sewing, and her labor is supported by local animals. Through her hard work and some luck, Cinderella winds up with the Prince, eventually separates from her stepmother, and becomes a real live oedipal (and post-oedipal) girl.
Snow White’s stepmother wants to kill her, and almost does – although there is a positive oedipal flavor to that, too, since it is about beauty and competition. There is also a Prince at the end, and a most influential father figure from whom to separate and displace love – though, as in dreams, his importance is represented by quantity (7) and reversal (dwarves).
Perhaps Gaiman manipulated me, but I wound up having little empathy for Coraline’s parents. Didn’t they realize that the child needed interaction and relationship? Why so desultory and dismissive toward such a potentially bright, curious, creative and adventurous child? The overt message is that children need to accept frustration. But the sub rosa, politically incorrect suggestion by Gaiman is that parents are too busy. Both of them. They are obsessed with their computers and their work. The “other mother” is the equivalent of the 19th century Nanny to the Wolfman, the daycare center to the 21st century child: overstimulating, materially gratifying, but short on empathic interactions required for stable object relations.
Gaiman has, purposely or unwittingly, touched on a sore subject: life balance for women vis-à-vis their children. One of his disguised, politically incorrect messages mirrors Spitz and Mahler: absent mothers who leave their little infants in daycare (without consistent attunement) set the stage for persistent splitting, fears of fusion and separation, and struggles for autonomy – perhaps resulting in the child becoming “low-keyed,” as bored little Coraline seems to be, at least at times, in the early pages of the book.
Another camouflaged, politically incorrect message concerns the girl’s need for a father’s love and attention. His love and interaction are needed to prevent regression into fusion dynamics with the mother. He is also needed to make life interesting. Reference Mama Mia, where the daughter invites all her possible fathers to her wedding. Her mother is horrified when it becomes clear that all of them have arrived, but life is certainly more interesting. Coraline’s father suggests she visit the old ladies whose identities are fragile. They are also perseverative and boring; men used to be in their lives, or almost so. Like Coraline, they have yearned for the special features of love from a man, but are disappointed and demoralized. Interestingly, the father is feminized by his wife, and the “other father” is even more blatantly castrated and “punished” by the other mother. The other father manages to warn Coraline when she is searching for the soul-marbles, but then he dedifferentiates to carry out his wife’s bidding to kill Coraline if she attempts to succeed (in separating from the other mother). Coraline cannot rely on either father to save her from the throes of the engulfing other mother or from the neglect of the real mother.
Not many children are of the “immunized” type described by Kliman – i.e., a “wise child” like Coraline – who can succeed in development in spite of their parents. Gaiman suggests that even inadvertently disinterested parents are dangerous to a child’s mental health. When those children grow up, they may not escape as Coraline did. They may be low-keyed, or get stuck in symbiotic or joyless relationships.
A final curiosity is the book’s potential plea for any child to be understanding of the opposing internal feelings of parents. On the one hand, like the real parents, we wish to encourage a child’s curiosity and independence. On the other, it’s difficult, even for the most caring parents, to grieve over the closeness of early childhood (like the other mother could not), to accede to the child’s aggression in the service of the child’s need for autonomy, and to allow separation.