Seeking Meaning from the Outside: Hilda Doolittle’s Inferiority Complex in Tribute to Freud
Even though the title of the book is called Tribute to Freud, it may have been better if it was called ‘Tribute to H.D.’ The book, of course, describes Doolittle’s sessions she had with Freud, and the reader gets a fair insight into Freud’s character. But the person that is described from the inside out is Doolittle herself. The book provides a lot of information on Doolittle and the people closest to her. Furthermore, the dreams she has that inspired her visits to Freud in the first place are also shared in the book, which gives the reader a great insight into her mind. Additionally, Doolittle’s ideas are combined with her thought-process that is described using the stream-of-consciousness technique, literally providing a peek into Doolittle’s mind. Thus, the reader gets to know Hila Doolittle extremely well, and it is, therefore, reasonable to perform a close reading into Doolittle’s character. One of her character traits is looking to others to give meaning to her life. In Tribute to Freud, Doolittle sees a lot of the people around her as authoritative figures that she can seek comfort in, and she continually compares herself to family members and peers, therefore diminishing her own character.
So, one of Doolittle’s main character traits which is evident in the book is her tendency to look for patterns. With every aspect of her life, she looks for patterns or reasons behind why things are happening. As she says herself, she arranges everything in categories: ‘my own problems, my own intense, dynamic interest in the unfolding of the unconscious or the subconscious pattern’ (Doolittle 6). Doolittle wants everything in her life to serve a purpose, to belong to something, or to be considered part of something else. This not only applies to the events that happen in her life, the objects that she owns, or the people she spends time with, but also the thoughts she has: ‘thoughts were things, to be collected, collated, analyzed, shelved, or resolved’ (Doolittle 14). In other words, Doolittle categorizes every aspect of her life; that is how she feels at ease. In addition to categorizing the things in her life, she also categorizes the people she sees. An example of this behavior occurs when she meets Dr J.J. van der Leeuw, better known as the Flying Dutchman. Dr van der Leeuw is another patient of Freud’s, and he has his sessions right before Doolittle. Therefore, they have seen each other briefly on several occasions. Doolittle says the following when she describes him:
He was an intellectual type but externalized, the diplomatic or even business type; one did not think of him as tortured or troubled; there seemed nothing of Sturm und Drang about him. He appeared scholarly, yes, but not in a bookish introverted sense. You would have said that his body fitted him as perfectly and as suavely as the grey or blue cloth that covered it; his soul fitted his body, you would have said, and his mind fitted his brain or his head; the forehead was high, unfurrowed; his eyes looked perceptive with a mariner’s blue gaze, the eyes were a shade off or a shade above blue-gray yet with that grey North Sea in them. Yes—cool, cold, perceptive yet untroubled, you would have said (Doolittle 6-7).
Not only does she describe him, but she categorizes every little part about him. Not only is he intelligent, but his intellectuality is externalized, and to her, he falls in the ‘diplomatic or even business type’. He is scholarly, yes, but not introverted. His eyes looked perceptive, and more specifically, they had a mariner’s blue gaze. Needless to say, her brain is in a constant state of classifying everything.
In categorizing every aspect of her life, she also categorizes herself and makes herself part of other people. She defines her self-worth based on her relationship with others, and therefore, she continually diminishes herself. The first instance of this occurs with Doolittle’s father. Her father is the king of the household, to say the least. He has a great sense of authority, and Doolittle is very obedient towards him. His sense of authority is showcased through phrases such as the following: ‘It was understood, I thought, that you did not disturb anything on my table’ (Doolittle 27). Here, the father is annoyed at his children, because Doolittle’s brother took their father’s magnifying glass from his study. The response of their father, who says that it was understood that they are not allowed to take anything from their father’s study, shows their father’s authority because apparently, he does not need words to keep his children in control. The fact that he is the king of the household combined with his presumably authoritative body language must have been enough for the children to know not to use something that belongs to their father. In another quotation, Doolittle explains the atmosphere the father has created in the house and his study: ‘Provided you do not speak to him when he is sitting at his table, or disturb him when he is lying down, you are free to come and go. It is a quiet place. No one interferes or interrupts’ (Doolittle 34). Doolittle understands how important it is that her father can work undisturbed and in silence. Thus, Doolittle looks to her father as the person she should respect the most, therefore giving him a lot of power over her life. Now, in this instance, she does not discredit her value just yet, but growing up in such a strict household provided the basis for how Doolittle came to think of herself: by adhering to her strict father, she put his wishes first, and her own wishes second.
A character with whom Doolittle does compare herself and, subsequently, makes her diminish her character, is her brother. When they were children, Doolittle’s brother was much more mischievous than she was. He was the one who stole the magnifying glass from their father’s study which elicited their father’s response that I quoted above. So, Doolittle’s brother behaved differently from Doolittle; whereas she listened to her father and abided by his rules, he did not. This caused Doolittle to perceive her brother in a way that made him more powerful. Throughout the book, Doolittle talks very highly of her brother and places him above her when it comes to authority, respect, and general abilities. She says, for example: ‘My brother is very tall. My head scarcely reaches his shoulder’ (Doolittle 24). This passage suggests that on a literal note, Doolittle’s brother is taller, and therefore is more powerful. At other moments in the book, Doolittle indicates that her brother not only has authority over her literally because he is taller, but also metaphorically because he treats her like a subordinate. The following quotations illustrate that: ‘he told me to look’; ‘he summoned me’ (Doolittle 21). In these instances, it is clear that Doolittle looks to her brother as a powerful person. He then, in return, gets to treat her as such. As a result, she begins to diminish herself and compares herself to her brother. On one occasion, she says: ‘I do not always even understand the words my brother uses. He is a big boy and known to be quaint and clever for his age’ (Doolittle 26). Doolittle claims that her brother is smarter than her. On another occasion, she argues that her mother likes her brother better, and therefore, she should act more like her brother: ‘[my mother] likes my brother better. If I stay with my brother, become part almost of my brother, perhaps I can get nearer to her’ (Doolittle 33). Again, she diminishes her character by comparing herself to her brother, and she even goes as far as to say that she should become ‘part of her brother’ as a way of being liked by her mother. Thus, Doolittle is another person who she looks up to and aspires to be like.
Surprisingly, D.H. Lawrence is also mentioned in this text, in the ‘Advent’ section of the book. At first, Doolittle did not want to be associated with him: ‘I should talk to the Professor about Lawrence, but I was particularly annoyed by his supercilious references to psychoanalysis and, by implication or inference, to the Professor himself’ (Doolittle 134). The passage clearly shows that Doolittle was not very fond of D.H. Lawrence. In fact, shortly after the above quote, she states: ‘I have carefully avoided coming to terms with Lawrence, the Lawrence of Women in Love and Lady Chatterley’ (Doolittle 134). Here, Doolittle claims that she does not even want to try to accept him as an author. However, she later admits that when she lies awake at night, that she can’t help but think about him, and that the story of him and the letter he wrote to her before he died keeps running through her head. Then one night, she has a dream about young D.H. Lawrence, and she starts to talk about the first time she met him. She says that when she met him, ‘he looked taller in an evening dress’ (Doolittle 140). It is interesting that she uses the word ‘taller’, just like she did when she described her brother. This might be a direct reference to the fact that D.H. Lawrence felt like a powerful person to her at the time. As with her brother, height represents authority. Then, Doolittle admits, ‘Lawrence at one time was a school-master and I always had a longing to teach’ (140). Even though she completely rejected his existence at first, Doolittle suddenly confesses that D.H. Lawrence had been living the life she had always wanted to live. Then, she even exclaims that she is envious of women who have found a master or guide in Lawrence: ‘I envied these women who have written memoirs of D.H. Lawrence, feeling that they had found him some sort of guide or master’ (Doolittle 141). All of a sudden, her attitude towards D.H. Lawrence has changed entirely. Whereas she did not feel comfortable with him at first, she is now jealous of women who have found him a master. In other words, she wishes that he was also a master to her. This envy is demonstrated when, a couple of paragraphs later, she says ‘for one day in the year, H.D. and D.H. Lawrence were twins’ (Doolittle 141). This is a climactic sentence, in which Doolittle has almost taken on D.H. Lawrence’s identity, as she states they are twins and thus, inseparable. So, again, Doolittle looks for someone else to act as a master for her and compares them to her in such a way that she takes away her merit.
The final person who Doolittle compares herself with and looks up to is, of course, Sigmund Freud. The fact that she looks up to him is already clear from the fact that she dedicated an entire book to her time with him, of course, but she also expresses her gratitude for him on numerous occasions throughout the book, and the gratitude shifts slowly from admiration to obsession. The gratitude starts with the fact that she went to him with her struggles in the first place. She trusts him with her entire life and thinks he is the smartest person in the world, especially when it comes to psychoanalysis. She says: ‘If the Professor could not do this, I thought, nobody could’ (Doolittle 39). To Doolittle, he is the epitome of a knowledgeable person. Later, she also expresses that ‘he was more than the world thought him—that I well knew’ (Doolittle 40). Through her time with him, Doolittle has gotten to know him like no other, or at least that is what she claims herself, and she thinks exceptionally highly of him. This admiration slowly turns into obsession, though, and eventually, Doolittle is so infatuated with him that she would give him the rest of her life just so he could live longer on this planet (Freud was thirty years older than her). Doolittle says the following:
I would change my years for his; it would not be as generous a number as I could have wished for him, yet it would make a difference (…) put H.D. in the place of Sigmund Freud (I will still have a few years left in which to tidy up my not very important affairs (Doolittle 74, my italics).
This passage describes an immensely extreme view and highlights exactly my point: Doolittle thinks so little of herself and is in such a need to become part of something, that she would give up thirty years of her life for it. In addition, she mentions that the few affairs she has going on in her life are ‘not very important.’ Doolittle thinks she has got nothing left to live for, and her entire purpose in life is to fit into a pattern that she has created in her head.
In conclusion, throughout Tribute to Freud, Doolittle clings on to other people to find meaning in her life, and at the same time, she takes away the value that she brings to life. Looking for patterns and categorizing everything in her life has caused her to also want to fit in somewhere, and she uses the people around her to do so. She compares herself to the people around her and therefore, she loses track of who she is as a person. It even goes so far that with her brother, D.H. Lawrence, and Freud, she wants to become them or replace her life with theirs. By doing this, she completely diminishes her character and her value to this world.
Works Cited
H.D. Tribute to Freud. New Directions Publishing Corporation, 2012.
Iris Elske 