Sexual Repression in Metamorphosis and The Turn of the Screw

Perhaps the most wonderful thing about literature is that an author has unlimited possibilities in the ways they express their ideas. From Romanticism through Modernism, Post Modernism, and Naturalism and beyond, they choose the way that most appropriately conveys the idea. The author as artist has boundless options. By using different techniques he can touch the soul of the reader as much or as little he chooses. Literature is an art form that is not diminished by the use of techniques that on the surface may seem light hearted, such as the use of the weird, the ghost story or the absurd. It enhances rather than detracts from the author's purpose. Consider the use of the uncanny to be the authors' equivalent of Modern Art.

Henry James in "The Turn of the Screw" and Kafka in " The Metamorphosis" both had ideas to express. Sexual repression as tied to social isolation; loneliness and desperation are resonant in both works. Sexual repression is not only the absence of actual intercourse, but also the absence of a sense of intimacy and human interaction tied in with the idea. The governess, for example, apparently does have a sexual encounter with the master, but this alone does not eliminate her desperation, her inner loneliness. It also addresses the issue of the lack of fulfillment in an inborn human desire, the sex drive. While their characters have their other needs met: food and shelter, the needs that make them human, sexuality and emotional connectivity are neglected.

While one is a ghost story and the other is an example of the weird, both choose to relate their characters' issues through the use of the uncanny. We can relate Freud's theoretical model of the id to explain the pleasure drives that are at the root of the characters' emotional difficulties. The story itself functions as the super-ego as it attempts to contain the characters' desires to keep them within acceptable social constraints, and would be successful if we read the stories only for plot. However, when the id can find no outlet, the failure to resolve this conflict results in defense mechanisms such as repression. The drive is not destroyed; it is merely pushed back into the subconscious. Reading the text for plot and character parallel the concept of id and super-ego

Clearly Freud's explanation of the use of the uncanny is the perfect literary solution to this problem. The suspension of disbelief allows the reader to be drawn into the story. As Freud explains, the reader must be convinced to believe and to leave behind questions at the outset of the story. Freud tells us that "We react to his inventions as we would have reacted to real experiences; by the time we have seen through the trick it is already too late and the author has achieved his object. Kafka tells us "This is not a dream," and James' narrator initially relates another ghost story; "…But it is not the first occurrence of its charming kind that I know to have involved a child. If the child gives the effect another turn of the screw, what do you say to children-?" as his promise of more to come. "I see. She was in love." Both give us reason to accept the premise as true, and move into the plot with confidence in what we are about to be told. The hook has been set. We do not ask about the veracity of the story. We accept the plot. We are now captives, allowed into the characters' worlds to make of them what we will: hopefully, to see beyond what we have blindly accepted.

The social context of James' time certainly did not allow the open discussion of topics such as sexual repression, which meant there would need to be a veiling of the topic, lest his writing be considered pornographic. His outstanding use of each word as a tool, as well as his superb crafting in the absence of words has allowed him to relate the unmentionable. Beyond the sexual repression itself, he also must find a way to take it the step further into the transference of the governess' affections to Miles. Even today, this would be considered a taboo subject to be discussed outright. James' mastery of the language, and his use of the uncanny, allows for an under-the -covers telling of a very taboo area of the human mind at the time.

On the other hand, Kafka's use of the uncanny more obviously utilized Freud's analysis of the subconscious to attack the subject of sexual repression and the associated personal isolation. Freud had opened the exploration of the human unconscious and personality as a legitimate idea. Freud had explored dream analysis, and despite Kafka's insistence in the opening of "The Metamorphosis" that "This is not a dream" it effectually is. We know that it is not possible (under current principles of scientific thought) to wake up as a dung beetle.

Both Kafka and James tackled taboo subjects in the issues of sexual repression and desperate loneliness. They were not merely searching for love, but rather had transferred their needs into the somewhat perverse- the desire for a young child by a woman, and the desire for the sister (or perhaps the mother, or both) by the brother (son.) In each case those that should have been protected became the objects of desire. Socially unacceptable in any era, these ideas needed the approach of the uncanny to allow the reader to relate, to not initially recognize their own darkness in relating to these characters- no one would want to share feelings with the child abuser or the incestuous brother.

The plots that draw us in are fairly straightforward, although absurd. The narrator in "The Turn of the Screw" sets us up to hear a romantic ghost story. James cleverly has a narrator tell the tale of a woman who has been dead "for some twenty years" so that we are given no insights or opinion by the narrator once he reads us her story. We hear a story from the past, from one person's view (the governess) and unlike the introduction where the people hearing the story can question the narrator about what they will hear and what really happened, we are instead forced to sit back and listen. She is dead now, her voice silenced by time, and we must accept what she tells us and figure out what she infers. There will be no explanations.

So on we are taken into a tale of an English governess, the trope of the lonely, isolated, solitary woman. We have been told there are ghosts and that there it is a love story. The governess arrives at Bly still full of apprehension over her choice, which is quickly put aside. Beauty blinds her in the case of the children, as well as of Bly itself. She becomes fast friends with Mrs. Grose, who remains suspect throughout most of the story. By what is said and unsaid, we wonder as to Mrs. Grose's intentions. She often speaks through the words she does not use, the sentences that stop before an explanation is given. "He never told me! But please, Miss," said Mrs. Grose, "I must get to my work."

The governess sees the ghost on more than one occasion, and Mrs. Grose leads her on to believe that it is indeed a ghost, and that it is Quint, a former lower class caretaker at Bly, who has died under somewhat mysterious circumstances. Again, what Mrs. Grose does not say is what leaves room for conjecture.

The plot thickens, so to speak, as the governess suspects that the children see the ghosts but deny their knowledge of them Does she not ask them directly because she realizes that they are in her mind, or, as we led to believe, because she fears they will deny any knowledge of them, so deep is the hold of the evil on these unsuspecting children?

The governess' paranoia grows and our doubts increase. Is she insane or are there ghosts? Skillfully, James has assured, through the effective use of the uncanny, that we ask this, rather than question the plausibility of the entire tale of this dead woman.
This parallels the scene in "The Metamorphosis" when Grete and her parents turn on Gregor. In both cases the writer brings us to a new question because one of our questions has been answered. We now know that the governess is the only one that sees the ghost, just as we now realize that Gregor will remain a beetle.

At a climactic moment, the governess sees Miss Jessel at the lake, and then we discover that no one else sees her: not Mrs. Grose and not Flora. At first we wonder if Flora is lying, but then we realize that Mrs. Grose believes that it is all in the governess' head. "She isn't there, little lady, and nobody's there-you never see nothing, my sweet," Mrs. Grose tell Flora at this climactic point. Flora becomes afraid of the governess, and Mrs. Grose takes her away, but she cannot be comforted. She becomes ill, which gives the governess the chance to still pursue her theory with Miles. Mrs. Grose takes Flora to the city while the governess schemes to get to the bottom of it all with Miles alone.

This effort fails as she, perhaps in madness, seeks to protect Miles from the ghost of Quint, and in her madness, smothers him.

We believe in James and this ghostly tale of madness, unexplained, if we read merely for the content of the plot.

However, once we look into the character of the governess and the associated metaphors of her words, as well as her lack of explanations and her inability to extract explanations from those around her, we see something more. The technique of having her tale read by a narrator succeeds in letting us hear only what he wants us to. It allows enough of the uncanny to take us right where James wants us: to draw our own conclusions from both the said and the unsaid, particularly in a time when these delicate issues would have to have remained unsaid.

Clues to the governess' repressed sexual desires and her desperate isolation from others are pervasive. From the initial narration, we are told of her desire for the master. He is nameless, referred to as "the master" a person of dominance and the object of her desire. Before her own story is read, we are told that he has had her. "…on the second interview, she faced the music, she engaged." "The moral of which was of course the seduction exercised by the splendid young man. She succumbed to it," the narrator tells us. And that "She never saw him again." What a supreme source of frustration! The governess was seduced and discarded. Such a time-honored trope for the woman and her dreams of meeting the wealthy, handsome stranger who would fall madly in love with her.

She was an innocent before this, we are told, but have no way of verifying. Later in the text we are told that she has revealed all about herself to the children, but we are never privy to that information. Exactly how James lets us know of her desperate loneliness is the absence of a life before Bly. She never speaks of the past- little is mentioned of family, lovers, any sort of human interaction. It is as if she came from nowhere, empty inside. The master is her hope.

James and Kafka apply a similar technique as part of their character development, or lack of development due to omission. By her omission of the details of her past, we can assume that the governess had no romances or intimate encounters. There is the possibility of some illicit feelings or encounters with her brothers, which could fuel repressed desires. Similarly, Gregor tells little of prior relationships or intimacies. The only glimpse he gives is a brief reference to 2 failed romances, which also give a hint as to his repressed desires.

Her fantasies about the master are illustrated right after her arrival at Bly. Before she first sees the ghost, she is fantasizing about making the master happy. She mentions his happiness if she does her job well, but explains it by saying "I was giving pleasure, if he ever thought of it-to the person whose pressure I responded." This is a metaphor for her desire for the master. In addition to the thoughts that she tells us, we see the phallic imagery of the man being seen up on the tower, and even says that she "admired them and had fancies about them." And she justifies her own " distinct gasps of emotion…An unknown man in a lonely place is a permitted object of fear to a young woman privately bred…" Her class-consciousness is also of importance, in that it is her class that will prohibit her fantasies about the master from ever becoming reality. A one-night stand with the lower class is acceptable- the respectability of marriage would not be.

Is it her youthful physical desires that drive her, or her desire for intimacy, for acceptance, for escape from the desperate loneliness she feels? There is also much to be said for the differences of class that bind her.

Her guilt is revealed in her obsessive concern with the children's beauty and purity. When she asks repeatedly about how could he be bad when he is so beautiful, she is perhaps referring to her own guilt, hidden under the respectable guise of the governess with the large responsibility for the sole care of these two children. So noble is her work that how could she contain these evil sexual desires?

Gregor seems to view a similar purity in his sister. She is thoughtful and kind and the only one he can place his faith in. He places in her no responsibility for his desires and holds to the thought of her pure heart.

She seeks a way to regain her own purity through the children. She seeks for explanations of the ghosts, but perhaps she is looking for a way to be cleansed. She needs to do a good job with her heavy burden in order to redeem herself. She will not break the trust the master has placed in her. Perhaps he will see her value and her purity, and her sins will be erased.

Since her own desire has overcome her own goodness, she seeks the same desperately in the children. If evil could overcome even these beautiful, innocent children, how could one blame her for falling prey to evil herself? Perhaps she can be redeemed through them: save the children from evil and save herself from shame.

Instead, her desires are transferred to Miles, taking her more shamefully into the realm of evil. Her sexual desires were taboo enough, and now she transfers the desire to Miles.

The governess is jealous of Quint's relationship with Miles, with the hours Mrs.Grose says they spent alone together. She imagines that Quint has had from the boy what she wanted. Perhaps this drives her rage toward the ghost. Instead of fighting for the masters affections- after all he has told her to never contact him for any reason- the ultimate effect of the one night stand that she cannot accept- she fights for those of Miles, perhaps also because he resembles the master, his uncle.

Gregor also expresses a jealousy over the object of his desire. He sees his father as the rival- his father can be with his mother and sister and he cannot. They even whisper in the living room together, so that he cannot hear. In both texts, the repression leads to an imagined relationship between the object of desire and a rival who we have little understanding of. This may be part of the technique, giving us a rival who is noted as evil. Quint is a low class "hound" and the father has been taking advantage and having his son support them beyond their need.

The children in "The Turn of the Screw" are also victims of isolation, and perhaps this makes Miles more vulnerable to her. Their parents are dead, their former governess, Miss Jessel is dead, and the caretaker who had ultimate control over them is dead. There is no one to share their affections with and no one to protect them now.

When referring to Miss Jessel and her possible intimacy with Quint, Mrs. Grose places the blame on Quint, calling him: "a hound." But from the governess' perspective, she views it differently. "It must have also been what she wanted," the governess explains. The governess did not want to be alone in her sexual desires, wanted to believe that others, like Miss Jessel, shared those desires, explaining them away as human desire, not as merely her own shameful desires. When Mrs. Grose mentions Miss Jessel's reason for leaving she implies that she was pregnant. Could the governess have thought that she might also be pregnant, illustrated by her painful commiseration with Miss Jessel, which led her to tears? According to the governess "Not so dreadful as what I do," she replied.

From the beginning, the governess feels a fast friendship with Mrs. Grose, amazed that they agree on everything. They confide - to the extent that either of them ever confides - in each other. The governess seeks an intimacy with Mrs. Grose, which does not, in reality, exist. Their bond is merely that they both treasure the children in their own way. The governess fails in the role of mother/protector, preferring her own interests and desires to the needs of the children. Over time, she goes so far as to project that they are evil, plotting against her, despite her desire for both intimacy and acceptance.

Her physical contact with the children becomes more perverse over time, even to her own admission. She tells us "…by irresistible impulse, I found myself catching them up and pressing them to my heart. As soon as I had done so I used to say to myself: "What will they think of that? Doesn't it betray too much?" She continues "…I might occasionally excite suspicion by the little outbreaks of my sharper passion for them, so too I remember wondering if I mightn't see a queerness in the traceable increase of their own demonstrations." She thinks that they are reacting to and even mirroring her own desires and is she seeing herself in them

The governess tells of their fondness for their games of pretending to be in other roles: as lions, as characters from Shakespeareans, as Astronomers. She gives us a small hint into perhaps her past feelings by telling us that " I had brothers myself, and it was no revelation to me that little girls could be slavish idolaters of boys." This may be a reference to the theory of penis envy that did not emerge as a psychological theory until many years later, or a reference to her pleasing of her brothers when she was young.

When the governess slips out of the room with her candle and meets Quint on the stairs, they have the encounter of the long gaze and tell us "Something would have passed in life between us." When she returns to her room, Flora chides her with "You naughty: where have you been?" as though she had been off to meet a lover- as if she knew her secret desires. Comments of this type lead her to question Flora's honesty and consider that she is in some sort of relationship with the ghosts.

Then, as the conversation proceeds, the governess tells us "I absolutely believed she lied…" and why did she not confess? Or was the governess herself so fraught with her own guilt that she wished she could just confess to someone and re-purify herself?

Now the governess finds her way to the tower: is it a phallic symbol, a metaphor for getting closer to her own satisfaction? Once there, she "felt sick as she made out- the poor little Miles himself." It may be that, at this point, she realizes her own desires for Miles and feels troubled by her own thoughts.

When she brings Miles inside, their exchange becomes even more intimate and more inappropriate-"…he bent forward and kissed me. It was practically the end of everything. I met his kiss…" Miles, we must remind ourselves, is 10 years old, and yet she "met his kiss."

Mrs. Grose perceives the changes in the governess. "Lord, you do change," she tells the governess. "I do not change, I merely make it out" the governess tells her. She sees more evil in her own behavior and raises concerns that others will also see it as time goes on.

The governess, in her desperation to free herself from guilt, sees fit to place the blame for her desires on the children. " For the love of all the evil that, in those dreadful days, the pair put into them. And to ply them with that evil still, to keep up the work of demons, is what brings the others back." Her fears are perhaps that, due to the inflicted evil of Quint, Miles is now the source of evil.

When Mrs. Grose implores the governess to turn to the master for help, she is perhaps playing into her hands. "Make him at any rate come to you." "To me?" the governess replies, " I had a sudden fear of what she might do." This would burst the bubble of fantasy- it would both confirm that he had rejected her and expose her relationship and her desire for Miles. It would all end if the master would come. She threatens Mrs. Grose that if the master would come, she would leave.

When she relates all the particulars of her life to the children it is in a search for intimacy with them. "…they were in possession of everything that had ever happened to me."

Quint continues to appear to the governess, but this brings her no intimacy or satisfaction. "They remained unaccompanied and empty, and I continued unmolested; if unmolested one could call a young woman whose sensibility had, in the most extraordinary fashion, not declined but deepened."

Imagination had run away with the governess. Beyond the belief that the children had seen the specters of Quint and Miss Jessel, she thought they had indeed corrupted them, and perhaps physically. " Whatever I had seen, Flora and Miles saw more-things terrible, unguessable, and that sprang from dreadful passages of intercourse in the past."

Miles addresses her as an adult; "look here my dear," he often says as he speaks to the governess. We are led, by James' use of words, to subconsciously regard Miles as an adult. This adds believability in a work that has made use of the uncanny.

As in "The Metamorphosis," the words used by the character take on a special meaning, and offer insight into what their interactions really mean. Just as Miles' words take on the tone of the adult, Grete's words are often words of intimacy. She whispers and is thoughtful of Gregor's needs.

This point in time we find Miles' words filled with innuendo: "Well, I want to see more life." "Oh, you know what a boy wants." "I said things." "…No-only a few. Those I liked."

Her desire form Miles does indeed lean toward the physical as well as the psychological intimacy. Her physical intimacy with the children is unnatural, with distinct sexual overtones. " At this point, with a moan of joy, I enfolded, I drew him close and while I held him to my breast where I could feel the sudden fever of his little body the tremendous pulse of his little heart…" sounds explicitly like a sexual encounter in her mind.

In the end, the governess, filled with jealousy, tries to put herself between Quint and Miles. She is fiercely protective of Miles, and rages against Quint. Miles jerks straight around, and sees nothing. Miles cries out, but this comforts the governess, she has saved him for herself. "I caught him, yes, I held him- it may be imagined with what a passion…"

And then, Miles' heart stopped. In her attempt to have him for herself, she had smothered him, and Quint would no longer have him.

It is now recognized that the governess was driven to madness by the suppression of her own desires. The only way to justify her own behavior was to create the ghosts as the outward symbol of the evil that she was really fighting- her own desires and desperation. But we fight the external evil and the ghosts with her, all the way to the end when we realize that she has gone mad. This is where everything comes together and we realize at the conclusion that the evil was her own, and the ghosts were her own demons.

The scenario of being driven to madness by sexual repression and desperation is also revealed in "The Metamorphosis" through the use of the uncanny. This time we are not asked to believe in ghosts, or to question their existence. Instead we are asked to believe an outlandish tale. In order to follow the plot of the story, we must willingly accept that Gregor Samsa has woken up as a dung beetle. Kafka tells us from the outset that this is not a dream. We are told that this is really what happened to Gregor. Somehow we venture past the absurdity of the concept that it is possible to wake up as a bug. We believe, and are concerned with whether or not Gregor will turn back to a human.

Does Gregor become a beetle, and not a cat, or a dog, or another pleasant creature because of his shame and self-disgust at his own feelings? He chooses something that is repellant to most everyone, save the housekeeper. This is the person of low status who seems neither excited nor repulsed by the sight of the beetle. To everyone else, this is a low, repulsive form of existence, one for which we have little sympathy or compassion.

Similarly, the main character in "Turn of the Screw" is a governess, accepted as the lonely, isolated solitary woman. The authors choose the vehicle that clearly tells us who we are dealing with. She was not a cousin who came along to assist with the children. She was the hired help and the conquest of the uncle.

Gregor admits a small degree of surprise at his new circumstances. But then his thoughts wander back to his personal unhappiness and what his life is like. He blames the silly notion of waking up as a beetle as just a result of a lack of sleep, and further laments his unhappiness with life. He draws us into the story of his purpose in life as supporter of his family and debt-payer. We stop worrying about his beetle-ness and are more concerned for his other problems. After all, he has told us that this is not a dream, so we deal with his current problem. He has woken up as a beetle.

Gregor spends a great deal of time discussing the imminent arrival of a clerk from his office, his subsequent arrival and suggestions for Gregor's job problem. The clerk berates Gregor, not realizing that he has a much bigger problem than being late for work. Throughout this, Gregor's original concern is that he will be late. Over time, it changes to concern over how he will handle his new body and adapt to his new life.

Throughout the story, Gregor's sister takes care of him. He is touched by her concern and feels the love she has for him, and he returns those warm feelings. (On the other hand, his mother says she loves him, but does not behave in a maternal way.) She cannot look at him - he does not look the way she wants her son to look. His sister takes care of his basic need for food and shelter. Again, as in "The Turn of the Screw" the main character is denied his natural desire for sex or intimacy.

After a while, he is more physically separated than ever. The sight of him repulses his family. Human things no longer interest him. He likes his food rotten and enjoys crawling around in his room. He who feared isolation most has now isolated himself by choice.

The family isolates themselves from him with physical separation: "For the first two weeks his parents could not bring themselves to enter his room."

Gregor begins to change by adapting to his new body. He gains control of his legs and is more mobile. He is more and more accepting of his change, to a point of being comfortable with it. He begins to enjoy his new body, "He especially enjoyed hanging suspended from the ceiling…"

Gregor finally passes away, resulting from injuries from the apple thrown at him by his own father. The family briefly turns to each other. Then they are ready to move on. The daughter is recognized as the new hope of the family, where history will probably just repeat itself. As in "The Turn of the Screw" death becomes the solution that ends the madness.

If we ask what was Kafka really talking about in the story, and think about when it was written, we can see that he has used the uncanny to broach an unspeakable subject: that of the sexual repression of Gregor, probably that of the desire for his mother, or the transference to his sister. Elements of Freud's theories of a son's desire to have the mother, as also represented by the sister, abound in "The Metamorphosis."

References to his sexual desires abound, beginning with his first awakening: immediately after hearing that he has awakened as a beetle, he tells us of the picture from a magazine that he has framed in his room "…It showed a lady…sitting upright, and holding out to the spectator a huge fur muff into which the whole forearm had vanished." This is the only reference to a photograph or actual décor in his room, and he tells us that he took the care to cut it out and put it into a "pretty gilt frame."

In turning into a beetle, Gregor is deprived of his basic human form, along with simple human behavior, such as the ability to stand up. (Does this free him from his other basic human needs, such as his sexual desires?) He is also plagued by loneliness and desperation. "Other salesmen live like harem women," but not Gregor. His life is entirely made up of work; he has no control over himself and no time for pleasure for himself.

We see hints of an intimate connection of some sort with his sister, Grete. His room is next to hers: she whispers to him through the door.

Similarly, we see signs of intimacy between the governess and Miles. There are the kisses, and the frequent drawing of him to her breast. Both allude to the characters' imagined intimacy with the objects of their desire.

Gregor also loses control of his body. He could not even control his legs. " … this lower part, which he had not yet seen and of which he could prove no clear picture…he gathered his forces together and thrust out recklessly…and the stinging pain he felt informed him that precisely this lower part of his body was at the moment the most sensitive."

His mother tells the clerk "The boy thinks of nothing but his work…he never goes out in the evening...the only amusement he gets is working with his jigsaw. For instance he spent two or three evenings cutting out a little picture frame…you would be surprised to see how pretty it is…" We again are reminded of the picture, in the midst of Gregor trying to fix this serious problem of getting out of bed and answering the clerk, yet his mother tells of the beauty of the picture, recognizing no significance in it, just as she does not recognize Gregor's desire for her or his sister.

Just as he has lost his masculinity, we see Gregor's attempt at using a key. He cannot figure out how to "manipulate it" with his new body. "A brown fluid dripped issued from his mouth, flowed over the key, and dripped onto the floor" He struggles and strains with all his body to find a way to adapt, to use the key.

As his mother shows that she does not really love him, but only goes through the motions of her responsibility as a mother, this further frustrates his desire for her. She is so repulsed that she cannot look at him. Perhaps this is a metaphor for his own shame- his own mother cannot even "look" at him. Further, is both the mother and Grete's revulsion fueled by the repulsiveness of the thought of fulfilling his desire? He may be transferring his desires onto them.

Gregor's hiding under the couch is a metaphor for the way he has hidden his feelings for his sister and mother all along. He hides his physical repulsiveness just as he has always hidden his emotionally repulsive feelings.

In an illustration of the strong Freudian influence in Kafka's writing, Gregor's father drives him back into the room with a giant walking stick, waving about the phallic symbol that has controlled Gregor for all of his life. In this symbolic castration, "Gregor thrust himself…his body rose up, he was tilted at an angle in the doorway, his flank was scraped raw; horrid blotches stained the white door…His father gave him a strong push which was literally a deliverance and he flew far into the room, bleeding violently."

Grete brings Gregor food. At first it is not what he desires, just as when he was a human, Grete did not give him what he desired as a man, she does not give him what he desires as a beetle. But then, she brings him the food that appeals to him. Perhaps she understands his needs now, now that it is too late for her to really meet them. How ironic for Gregor. Perhaps he has left his body behind in becoming a beetle out of frustration at not being able to have the intimacy he seeks. It is no longer his "fault" that he cannot fulfill his desires. He is now a beetle, so he is no longer responsible.

Adding insult to Gregor's suffering is the reference to his voyeurism. In the past, while he traveled, he often thought of his mother, father and sister spending time together in the living room. Now, he is excluded still from their gathering, in his room with only a crack in the door that he can watch through. Now there was a "silence all around" and he wondered as to their activities. He is denied his "peek " at their intercourse in the living room Whatever goes on there, he can not see or hear it. This intensifies his suffering. Perhaps Gregor listened at doors before, as a man, hoping to catch a glimpse of his parents together, or perhaps his sister in the neighboring room to his.

When Grete enters his room, he wants to "Throw himself at her feet and beg her for something to eat. …But if she did not do it of her own accord, he would rather starve than bring it to her attention." Perhaps he had waited all these years for her to come to him of her own accord for intimacy. When she did bring him more appropriate food, he was joyous that she had acted of her own accord to bring him happiness.

James applies a similar reference when the governess speaks of doing her job well and bringing pleasure to her master. Neither actually brings any sort of sexual satisfaction, nor is it normal that they would, but in the characters' minds, they somehow offer a sexual satisfaction. In this way, through very different use of the narrative, a similar concept is used to convey the absurdity of the thoughts of the characters.

Gregor had previously, as a man, taken over the role of providing for the family. He had rescued them from financial disaster, but was not recognized warmly for this. He did not enjoy any closeness with them, nor was he accepted in the role of patriarch. He just supplied them with money, and received no compensation for it, especially not the compensation that a husband would receive from a wife. His frustration continues to lead to further repression and madness.

His conversations of studying at the conservatory were mentioned, "always merely as a beautiful dream which could never come true, and his parents discouraged even these innocent references to it; yet Gregor had made up his mind firmly about it…" We never hear the conversations between Grete and Gregor before his change, so we do not know what intimacy or whisperings they may have shared before. Did Gregor want to be her "teacher" and was that perhaps also only a "beautiful dream" on his part?

When overhearing the father talk about money, Gregor was worried about his family and how they would get by without him in the provider role. He "…threw himself down on the leather sofa beside it, he felt so hot with shame and grief." His grief because, having been turned into a dung beetle, he could no longer earn money to provide for them. He is shamed that his desires so overtake him that they have done this to his family.

His shame was at having these desires at all, and allowing himself to turn into such a life form: as low a life form as these repressed desires had made him feel. Not even just a beetle, but yet a dung beetle. He transforms into the most repulsive creature to illustrate just how he repulsed even himself because of his misplaced sexuality and beyond that to his frustration. He realizes this when his sister comes into the room and he lets her see him. "…how repulsive the sight of him still was to her, that it was bound to go on being repulsive…" Perhaps just as, when he was a man, any advances or thoughts of such would have repulsed her.

His desperation and loneliness transcend the sexual repression and address his pathetic loneliness at not being able to form any intimate relationships. Perhaps this even led to the obsessive desires for his mother and sister.

When his family decides to remove everything from Gregor's room, they are showing the ultimate rejection. They are removing all traces of him, denying his existence. Gregor's sister has by this time, also castrated him. She now "considers herself an expert in Gregor's affairs against her parents…and of self-confidence that she has recently developed so unexpectedly and at such cost (his manhood)…"

So they proceed with removing all evidence of Gregor's life. Gregor could not bear all the loss, and crawled to the picture of the woman and the muff and pressed himself to the glass, perhaps his last expression of manhood. When his mother saw this, she screamed out loud. "…Tormented by self reproach and worry he began to crawl to and fro…"Perhaps the metaphor for his manhood had indeed led to his demise, just as his repressed desires had led to this metamorphosis and demise in the figurative sense.

"It was clear to Gregor that his father had taken the worst interpretation of Grete's all too brief statement and was assuming that Gregor had been guilty of some violent act." The guilt would have been in Gregor's mind, over his secret thoughts - those that drove him to transform into a beetle, to escape his own dark thoughts.

His father regained his role as provider and even his mother and sister found jobs, demasculating whatever ideals were left within Gregor.

The mother and sister became more intimate with the father, who had now regained a certain starch and stiffness, from his collar to his posture. They whispered to him, and his mother "…whispering endearments in his ear…" They would help him up and bring him to bed. When Gregor had supported them, he was left along to sleep in hotel rooms or play with his jigsaw.

Symbolic of the mother and father's intimacy, Gregor's mother and father "sat cheek by cheek- when his mother, pointing toward his room, said "Shut that door now, Grete…"and he was again the lonely voyeur, with only his imagination as his companion.

Gregor had grown tired of his escape, and longed to be a man again. He was willing to put aside his failures, his lonely desperation. Yes, he remembered "… a chambermaid in one of the rural hotels, a sweet fleeting memory, a cashier in a milliner's shop, who he had courted earnestly but too slowly…" His sister no longer cared to please him.

He had not merely escaped his demons, but he had now lost all communications with the world. Now he was, truly and entirely desperate.

The only acceptance Gregor had was the cleaning woman. She did not know what he had once been and accepted him as what he now was- a dung beetle, plain and simple.

Gregor began to give in to his despair. His desires had ruined his life. He"…being sad and weary to death… would lie motionless for hours."

When Gregor's one remaining pleasure, listening to his sister play the violin, is taken from him and the boarders ejected from the house, everything falls apart for him. His own family decides that they must eliminate him.

They perform the final insult, saying that this cannot even be Gregor, that Gregor would not have behaved this way. Perhaps Gregor's fate is that his fear comes to pass anyway, despite his metamorphosis, his design to escape the repressed feelings that tormented him. While he thought this would provide his escape, it has come full circle for him: "Human beings can't live with such a creature, and he'd have gone away of his own accord." How ironic that, in a way, he did go away, transformed into a dung beetle to escape this fate of being a family outcast because of whom he had become, well before becoming a beetle. He had lost his family, if he ever really had their love, long before.

Kafka is happy to shock us. We put faith in the story to the extent that we accept that a man has woken up as a dung beetle. He need not be so reserved as James in his telling of the story and yet he chooses to do so. It is left for us, as the story proceeds, to understand the character and determine what the cause of the metamorphosis is. And, indeed, he leaves us dissatisfied, in a manner, with the outcome. He did not answer the question that we thought he was asking. Instead, he asked us to find our own question, and each of us our own, personal answer. Or perhaps, no answer at all.

So we can see that the uncanny is used as the ideal vehicle to take these characters on the journey into madness that is initiated by their repressed desires: the feelings that they cannot face, the natural urges that they cannot satisfy. By utilizing the uncanny, we are allowed to follow and believe these tales without shame ourselves. We are not, after all, relating to the pathetic, sexually repressed woman or man, or to the despicable man who wants intimacy with his mother and sister, or the dreadful woman who is supposed to be a mother figure and instead lusts after the young child. Instead, we are observers of a plot that is unbelievable and put our thoughts and efforts there. Freud would probably tell us that we have all repressed these primal urges. If he is correct, then the authors have succeeded in taking us into the dark parts of our mind. Is not the purpose of literature to give the reader something they can relate to in order to feel?