With those caveats firmly in mind, I hope you enjoy the paper!
ELB
In "Terrible Vengeance", the central character is Katherine, a beautiful young wife and mother. As the story unwinds, we discover that Katherine's father is a sorcerer who has incestuous feelings towards his daughter. After the deaths of her husband and son, for which her father is responsible, Katherine quickly becomes mentally unstable. She seeks out her father in order to bring vengeance for the destruction of her family: "She ran about with her knife far into the night, searching for her father" (Gogol 1957b, 52). The scenes depicting Katherine with the knife have been discussed as illustrations of that character as a "phallic girl". We may notice that Katherine is only compelled to take on this phallic identity after the death of her husband and son, and it may be that she was able to suppress this masculine aspect of herself while her husband was alive and able to provide an overtly masculine presence.
Katherine's father eventually returns to her in disguise,
yet she is not fooled and rushes towards him with her knife.
"For a long time he struggled to snatch the knife from her; at
last he did snatch it away, raised it - and a terrible deed was
done: the father killed his crazed daughter" (Gogol 1957b, 52).
Is death then the result of the loss of the phallic object by
the phallic girl? Or does this tragedy result from the fact that
a 'normal' young woman was compelled to take on masculine
attributes due to the loss of her husband - the original masculine
figure in the marriage relationship?
If Gogol in fact can be identified with Katherine throughout
the story, then the situation that forced Katherine to
take up her knife and become the "phallic woman" could illuminate
Gogol's feelings about the possession of an unwanted
phallic object, as discussed previously with regard to "The Nose".
The timing of Katherine's madness together with the first
appearance of Katherine as a phallic woman does not appear
coincidental. When Katherine first draws her knife, the
tragedies have already begun (Gogol 1957b, 50). Her husband and
son are dead, and the inception of the phallic woman is
accompanied by Katherine's final descent into insanity. All that
follows is then a direct result of Katherine's involuntary
transformation from a normal female to a penis-possessing woman.
This attitude towards the possession of a phallus relates to
a discussion by Stoller, in which he states that:
One cannot be a male transvestite without knowing, loving, and magnificently expanding the importance of one's own phallus. It is quite the reverse for the transsexual. The insignia of maleness is what causes his despair. He does not wish to be a phallic "woman"; he wishes to be a biologically normal woman. All of his actions are directed toward correcting what he feels to be a genetic mistake that has tragically trapped a female psyche in a male body. (1968, 188)The despair of the transsexual who possesses a penis parallels the despair of Katherine, as she becomes the phallic woman. Ultimately, death seems to be the only solution for the phallic woman.
The possession of the phallic object together with the
despair and insanity connected with that possession, signal
the approach of Katherine's death. Once she is forced into this
unnatural state by the untimely deaths of her family, her fate
is sealed. It is apparent that since she can no longer be a normal
woman, death is the only escape from this abnormal situation.
Nikolai Gogol - Introduction to Research Paper
Terms and Scientific Background
Biographical Information
Literary Analysis of "The Nose"
Literary Analysis of "Terrible Vengeance"
Psychoanalysis of Female Characters
Conclusion, Sources Cited, and Footnotes