The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (Popular Fictions Series) by Barbara Creed

Author:Barbara Creed [Creed, Barbara]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2012-12-05T16:00:00+00:00

THE MOTHER’S MUZZLE

There is another incident which also supports the above interpretation. One of the most puzzling pieces of information in the Hans jigsaw is his constant reference to the fact that he is most afraid of ‘horses with a thing on their mouths’. His father asked if he meant the bit. Hans replied, ‘No. They have something black on their mouths’ and covered his mouth with his hand (49). His father eventually concludes that the black thing covering their mouths must have been the harness worn by dray-horses. To support his argument that Hans’s fear of horses represents his fear of the castrating father, Freud interprets the black thing as representing the father’s moustache. Freud tells us how he explained this to Hans. ‘Finally I asked him whether by “the black round the mouth” he meant a moustache; and I then disclosed to him that he was afraid of his father, precisely because he was so fond of his mother’ (42). Hans does not agree or disagree. On another occasion, when his father also suggests (tries to convince him) that the black might remind him of a moustache, Hans replies that the only similarity is the colour. On another occasion Hans plays with the idea that his father’s moustache is a black ‘muzzle’ (53). Note that Hans does not suggest that the black thing on the horse is a moustache but a muzzle, an object which covers and encases the mouth and prevents it from opening, biting or feeding. Generally, attempts to link the black thing to Hans’s father are not convincing. The mysterious ‘black thing’ is more easily linked with the mother. His mother’s hair was black. The father at one point suggests to Hans that it was the ‘black hair near her widdler’ that frightened him. Hans does not deny this but says – not that she doesn’t have one (a fact of which his father had previously tried to convince him) but that he has not seen her widdler. Hans still refuses to accept that his mother does not have a widdler.

In my view, the black thing on the horse’s mouth which frightens Hans makes most sense if linked to the mother’s black underwear, which no doubt included garters/suspender belt. Hans himself associates his mother’s black underclothing with a feeling of revulsion. He says that his mother’s black drawers disgust him and make him want to spit (63). There is also a parallel we can draw between a woman’s garters and a horse’s muzzle. Hans knows that horses bite. Given his interest in horses and their biting, Hans would probably know that a horse’s harness/muzzle is designed to prevent it from biting. When he describes a muzzle to his father he covers his mouth with his hand. We know Hans associates his mother’s widdler with the size of a horse’s widdler. (T thought you were so big you’d have a widdler like a horse.’) It is not ridiculous to suggest that he might imagine the function

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