Double-Meanings: Allegory, Anger, and Absurdity in Dostoyevsky’s The Double
an old research paper written over winter break, will likely get back to writing original pieces sometime soon
With allegory and the literary device of the doppelganger, the German name for The Double as a literary motif, emerged in psychoanalytic literature as a global phenomenon to articulate conscious, contradictory, binary, and subconscious aspects of one’s psychological sphere. This literary motif starts out with introducing the life and view of a titular character in their environment (the common exposition, like in Frietag’s pyramid) then towards the rising action of the work, the so-called “Double” is introduced. There is usually dissonance and disbelief for the titular character, who must now be distinguished via an alternate term other than the name or an add-on because of this double, who worries they did not see their double clearly enough or must be seeing double due to stress. The titular character and their imposter often resemble each other initially from a purely physical perspective then later expand into more personal and physiological differences as the work’s plot progresses. When both the consciousness of the protagonist of their double and the awareness that the double is meant to be a replica of themselves and their psychological subconscious is selectively incorporated in various works.
In The Double, a novella released in 1846 by Russian existential novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky, there is immediate yet indirect consciousness of being shadowed by one’s double and the reader is given the acknowledgement that said double is meant to serve as something of a replica based on reactions from the protagonist in addition to simultaneous display of Dostoyevsky’s protagonist and his copy. From this, the reader is able to draw the conclusion that the protagonist and their double are not different people and will likely share analogous similarities that will be revealed at various points of the work as the story progresses. The novel, a product of Russia’s Natural School, follows Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin, a minor government clerk who has two central dilemmas of importance: his career mobility (his anxieties on career advancement manifest themselves later on in the novel when his “double” is introduced) and the more ambivalent matter being his inability to discover and articulate who he should be and contrasting that to who he truly is. His double, referred to in the novel as Golyadkin junior, possesses many characteristics different from his predecessor’s, embodying the traits and qualities Mr. Golyadkin, now referred to by the narrator ironically as “our hero” or Golyadkin senior, desires and considers in alignment with the life he feels he is destined to lead. Golyadkin junior is personable, charming, and much more sociable when it comes to interacting with his predecessors colleagues. Throughout the novel, Mr. Golyadkin moves in, out, and between the realization that his doppelganger threatens the existence of himself in relation to others.
The concept and literary tradition of the double is typically utilized in classic literature to be allegorical for the dualistic self. A subtopic within the plotlines of the double itself is psychoanalytic dualism within one individual character. Some interpretations of the The Double argue that a physical “double” was never present in the worldview of the novel but rather Mr. Golyadkin himself hallucinated his double. Revisiting the previously mentioned dilemmas of Mr. Golyadkin, his internal conflict becoming the inception of his imagined double. Dostoyevsky portrays Golyadkin junior as someone whose characteristics are so idealistic he cannot be real yet so contradictory he must be real, as to mimic Mr. Golyadkin’s thoughts. Using Fruedian theory and psychoanalytic frameworks, the two exacerbate the contradictory characteristics in one another so that the interactions between the two Yakov’s reveals complex contrasts and divisions that can manifest themselves in a singular personality creating an image of the “divided self”.
Further study in structural aspects of Freudian psychoanalytical applications bring us back to the same three parts of the psyche that has remained a pinnacle in various academic disciplines since its inception: the Id, the Ego, and the Superego. In the novel, Mr. Golyadkin and his double remain are presented as an antithesis to one another to highlight the Id and Superego specifically that occur somewhat separately within Mr. Golyadkin. Dostoyevsky introduced the concept of a “split self” within the two characters, utilizing a common literary device to turn the two Golyadkins into characters representing intentional and unconscious social responses within one’s psyche. How the concepts of the Id and Ego are applied in Dostoyevsky’s work are used allegorically, with Mr. Golyadkin, in his interactions with his double, are reduced and portrayed as something of a universal psyche whose interactions can be adapted to the experiences of the reader or any other character within the novel. The Ego, meant in Freudian psychoanalytical rhetoric to refer to the universal “human being”, is trying to adapt to a certain set of values dependent on a notion of what is “moral” or “right”. A primary dilemma that faces Mr. Golyadkin towards the exposition of the story is whether the man Mr. Golyadkin wishes to be will abide by what is right as opposed to what is beautiful or pleasurable. The internal code that lives in the human being, who in this case is still Mr. Golyadkin, is the Superego itself. Prior to the introduction of Golyadkin junior, we see that Golyadkin he abides by the principles of his Superego both selectively and wholeheartedly – often possessing precise and convicted statements and perspectives on certain aspects of human behaviour that he deems right or wrong based on the values that emerged from his own conscience. A scene in the novel depicting a disagreement with his former landlady is one of the pivotal moments of which the reader is introduced to Mr. Golyadkin’s commitment to morality, as he believed his own would lead him both towards advancement and sanity “So there! In our industrial age, lady mine, you can't get anywhere without good behavior, of which you yourself serve as a pernicious example” are the anti-hero’s exact words but his haste to draw a conclusion on the inner workings of a world he considers foundational within society, despite never really working in that “real world” himself, indicates how much Mr. Golyadkin desires to have the “right” version of himself be black-and-white in perception and character, with a destructive commitment to being “good” as well as marketable to a newly industrialized Russia. However, once Golyadkin junior is encountered, Mr. Golyadkin’s commitment to his Ego becomes shadowed after witnessing the interactions that his double has with his peers and colleagues. Golyadkin junior speaks with more conviction, charm, and threatens almost every aspect of the life and well-being of his predecessor to the point of Mr. Golyadkin’s existential and psychological destruction. His unconscious, the Id, referring to involuntary impulses, overtake Mr. Golyadkin, wanting to satisfy the impulses of witnessing the destruction of Golyadkin junior while simultaneously wanting to emulate his ability to evoke sympathy and amiability among others in a way Mr. Golyadkin could not.
Naturalism, Criticism, and Madness in The Double
Upon the initial release of The Double, Dostoyevsky faced criticism for this 1846 work citing concerns of redundancy and confusion. A review by Russian literary critic Vissarion Belinsky made for Notes of the Fatherland in February of that year expressed admiration for the same existential yet whimsical nature seen in similar Russian novels, Belinsky argues that there were “far too many such wonderful places in The Double, and the same thing over and over again, and however wonderful it may be, wearies and bores”. Although Belinsky was also a member of the Russian Natural School, at the time of The Double’s release, the artistic school of Romanticism was a relatively dominant lens of which to perceive literary works coming from Europe at the time, a movement that emphasized the irregular, emphasis on one’s subjective experience and explicit portrayal of emotional response, in other words a lack of subjective/emotional restraint characterized Romanticism and general European literature for a period. Romanticism, a movement emphasizing the subjective, Dostoyevsky’s decision to employ a narrator who often affirms his own limits as a narrator of someone else’s experience while continuing to portray and describe Mr. Golyadkin’s experiences in the novel (i.e “but with every step he took, with every thud of his foot on the granite of the pavement, there leapt up as though out of the earth a Mr. Golyadkin precisely the same, perfectly alike, and of a revolting depravity of heart.”) reveals a narratological technique contradictory to the preceding foundations established by Romanticism: a narrator using objective terminology to refer to a hyper-subjective encounter. In fact, it could be argued that The Double’s narrator’s moments of which he chooses to portray both the naturalistic and fantastical events Mr. Golyadkin endures objectively, indicating adaptation of a framework that emphasizes a more logical or rational framework that coincides with literary realism or the Natural School, that Dostoyesvky intends to suggest that the narrator is being psychologically eroded as a result of the destruction of Mr. Golyadkin, the psychological destruction of both almost occurring simultaneously as the novel meets its end. Criticism of The Double cites dreams, psychological horror, and imposters/imposter syndrome throughout the novel and the constant redundancy in the novel to some degree is meant to mimic madness, which in turn, becomes reality in Russia’s literary universe. The form of the novel, although not explicitly centered on neither redundancy or madness, is intended to use mundane and analogous instances to portray Golyadkin’s gradual transition to complete Egotistical destruction on the protagonists part, which poses a tremendously interesting yet weighty question on how madness is portrayed in the Natural School, a European literary movement that desired to shift the Western literary climate from Romanticism to Naturalism. The conceptual framework of the Natural school as we know it is dictated by the notion that literature must imitate and replicate life as well as aid in supporting socio economic reforms in Imperial Russia, Belinsky identified as something of a father for both the theoretical basis of the Natural school, and the development of the writers and works of the movement itself. During the genesis of Dostoyevksy’s literary career, Belinsky was a supporter of the authenticity and hyper-realistic nature of his early works, praising his authentic and truthful depictions of tragedy and unfortunate social conditions such as poverty, mental illness, and class inequities in 19th century Russia. Dostoyevsky’s first novel, Poor Folk (published the same year as The Double), was made as a social awareness piece dictated by the principles of objectivity and reality, praised again by Belinksy for his realistic portrayal of the poor living conditions of the two main characters, second cousins Vavara Dobro and Makar Devushkin Towards the latter half of Dostoyevsky’s career as a writer, Belinsky condemned his then recent writings citing that the characterization in The Double had been overly derivative, disapproving of the fact that he considered the work to be “incomprehensible” “bizarre” and mostly a “mighty strange thing”. Dostoyevsky's work appearing to transition from hyper-realistic to much more fantastical beginning with the release of The Double in such a relatively short time indicates an intentional deviation from the natural school or an established literary community. Dostoyevsky’s writing from its inception intended to display both philosophical and psychological insight from the perspective of a religious existentialist due to a traumatic and faith-bending childhood. Historically speaking, it’s unclear whether the creation of the novel was a result of cultural change in Russia or a reflection of traumatic aspects of Dostoyevsky’s personal life, with both inquiries incorporating the sociopolitical climate of 19th century Imperial Russia to some degree. The sociopolitical as well as personal motives for the creation of The Double provide integral clarity and context as to why the novel’s dedication and connection to portraying and depicting madness was of such importance to Dostoyevsky. As previously mentioned, the interactions and discussions that both Mr. Golyadkin and his double have with minor characters and each other is definitively allegorical for the “universal” elements of the human psyche (the Id, the Ego, and the Superego), and to show how they interact, by characterizing the elements themselves in a way that mirrors experiences in Dostoyevsky’s own life. Dostoyevsky’s mother, Maria Fyodorovna Dostoevskay, passed away at some point in his formative life, and he was raised predominantly by his father, Mikhail Andreyevich Dostoevsky, in Moscow. His father was said to be a strict and domineering man, his controlling behaviors inspired his love of reading and his desire to incorporate philosophical and psychoanalytic thought into his work. At some point, likely in his pre-teen years, Dostoyevsky’s father was killed by one of his own serfs in their family home, a circumstance that was rarely documented by Dostoyevsky himself, the author suffering from epilepsy as a result. When the novel had been released, Imperial Russia was experienced something of an artistic “drought” due to mass industrialization and the rise of liberalism in Russia – resulting in more rigid social norms and cultural patterns such as refined social skills and incredible personableness – patterns and changes that many of Dostoyevsky’s later protagonists tend to neglect (Rashnikov, the underground man, etc.). After his death in 1881, Freud actually theorized that his longtime epilepsy was a physical manifestation of Dostoyevsky’s secret relief over his fathers death, a wish he often repressed due to religious and moral piety, directly paralleling the dilemmas of Mr. Golyadkin. Freud argues that Dostoyevsky’s epilepsy being a result of his fathers death is a dualist representation of both the Id and the Superego in the psyche. Dostoyevsky rarely commented on his fathers murder publicly, suggesting internal repression and refusal to frequently discuss his fathers murder representing his strong desire to uphold the frameworks and codes that correspond with the Ego, with the Superego being his religious and conservative values, and his epilepsy combined with his decision to create and objectively portray a character who is explicitly unstable to the point where one questions if Mr. Golyadkin himself is as aware of his own madness, the way Dostoyevsky was (and we all are) was meant to symbolize Dostoyevsky’s awareness of his own unconscious motives and impulses as a way to both acknowledge and restrain the Id.
The end note of which I conclude this statement, establishment and determinant consciousness within Dostoyevsky’s The Double, the interactions between the protagonist and his double presenting the disintegration and reimagination of consciousness by utilizing naturalistic narrative description to create an ambiguous and unclear resolution: whether Mr. Golyadkin’s experiences in the novel were real, hallucinated, or a mix or both. The Double serves as an allegory for the mind itself with its two main characters of Mr. Golyadkin and his copy are intended to be anthropomorphic manifestations of the Id and Ego parts of the psyche, as the interactions between the two intend to reference the universal circumstance of two voices from a single source competing for something of a psychoanalytic victory within one’s mind. The political and personal climate of Russia and Dostoyevsky himself meant that deviation from existing movements and customs within Russian literature at that time, seen in the novel’s deviation from the Natural school as well as its heavy incorporation of Freudian psychoanalytic thought, with Mr. Golyadkin himself allegorical for the Ego and Superego, the part of the psyche that wishes to prioritize morality and his double allegorical for the Id, the impulsiveness and perceived “madness” Mr. Golyadkin desires to act on when watching his double replace him in every way possible.
References
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Johnson, Roy. “The Double - a Tutorial and Study Guide.” Mantex, February 24, 2018. https://mantex.co.uk/the-double/.
Kohlberg, Lawrence. “Psychological Analysis and Literary Form: A Study of the Doubles in Dostoevsky.” Daedalus 92, no. 2 (1963): 345–62. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20026782.