Once Upon A Time, Nadine Gordimer 5i731

CAMILLE MAY SAVILLO A Psychoanalytic Criticism of Nadine Gordimer’s “Once Upon A Time”

Psychoanalytic criticism argues that literary works express the secret unconscious desires and anxieties of the author, and that these works manifest the author’s own neuroses. It adopts the methods of “reading” employed by Sigmund Freud. This criticism seeks evidence of unresolved emotions, psychological conflicts, and so forth. According to this type of criticism, the author’s own childhood traumas, family life, fixations, and such will be traceable to the behavior of the characters in their literary work. The short story “Once Upon A Time” centers on the imagination and handed-down beliefs which make people prisoners of fear. The author, Nadine Gordimer, lived during the time of apartheid in South Africa. The apartheid was a period of intense racial segregation. This policy separated the people of South Africa into smaller racial groups, with the whites being supreme. This short story seems to reflect not only how apartheid affected the lives of people in South Africa at that time, but it is also a manifestation of the author’s personal struggles while growing up under the possessive and controlling watch of a mother trapped in an unhappy marriage. In the story, the fear of the family is misplaced. The husband’s mother, who was called the wise old witch, warned the residents of the suburb about hiring people off the street unless they are reliable and trustworthy. They believe that the black people are all thieves and troublemakers. So instead of living happily, the family lives in fear. All the families in the suburb are afraid and start building security barriers all around their properties. All of this was spurred because of the residents’ preconceived beliefs about racial tension. The author ridicules the fear by showing that none of the imagined fears result in any actual harm, but that the real harm came from the security measures themselves. In the end of the story, the young son of the family, while acting out as a prince in a fairy tale, harms himself when he climbs the security coils. It shows that the system, with its built-in distrust, was a greater threat than any individual. The harm that came to the child shows that no good came from the apartheid. It was ironic because the devices which were supposed to protect the family were the ones which in the end hurt them. The theme of the story is not only influenced by the apartheid but can also be attributed to the author’s childhood experiences. As a child, Gordimer loved to dance but her mother insisted she stop dancing because she had a rapid heartbeat. She was told that participating in other physical activities such as running and swimming could harm her. Years later, Nadine found out that her rapid heartbeat was a result of an enlarged thyroid. When Gordimer’s mother learned that her daughter had an enlarged thyroid, she was barred from all outdoor activities and, at an early age, was withdrawn permanently from school. After that, Nadine suffered an education of erratic tutoring.

CAMILLE MAY SAVILLO As the years ed, Gordimer realized that this “illness” did not really pose the danger her mother implied. Her mother’s overreaction was because she was miserably married, and used her daughter’s “illness” to maximize with their family doctor, whom she had been in love with. This selfishness led Nadine to instead turn to the company of books as an alternative to the company of other people. The attitude of her mother in trying to keep her safe by prohibiting her to do the things she want is similar to the family’s attitude of putting up all the security barriers. All those precautions were not really necessary to protect the life of Gordimer. Her mother only made up the belief that Gordimer had a serious illness because of her own selfish reasons to be closer to the family doctor. The illness was not real, and the precautions only made Gordimer’s childhood less enjoyable. In the story, Gordimer also points out the hazards of children’s stories. In the start, she was asked to write a children’s story but she refused. And in the ending of this story, the child died because of a children’s story. Gordimer is probably implying that children’s stories may not be at all that good. As a child, all she probably had were these stories to keep her company and it might have made her feel lonely at times. As a child, she had learned to relate children’s stories to a feeling of loneliness. Thus it can explain her negative connotations towards children’s stories in general.

Sources: Nixon,

R. (1992). Nadine Gordimer. Retrieved http://www.english.wisc.edu/rdnixon/files/Gordimer.pdf

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“Once Upon a Time: Living Caged Lives”. Retrieved on April 28, 2015 from http://www.billstifler.org/en111/onceupon.html Verongos, H. (2014). Nadine Gordimer, Novelist Who Took on Apartheid, Is Dead at 90. Retrieved on April 28, 2015 from http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/15/books/nadine-gordimer-novelist-and-apartheid-foe-dies-at90.html?_r=0