THE BLACK CAT
847
Mr. Lacko'breath, the Black Cat, and Jocasta, are all three
hanged. Mr. Lacko'breath's case is clear, for his hanging represents
Poe's own wish-phantasy, that of regaining the penis and, thus, the
sexual potency he lacked. But, as regards the Black Cat and Jocasta,
the case is far less simple for it is not, now, the author of the tale
or myth but the mother who is rephallized, by him, in this fashion.
Nor must we forget that the CEdipus myth, like the
Black Cat,
are
fictions created, visualized and conceived, entirely from a masculine
viewpoint.
7
But, it will be objected that it is no punishment to the woman to
be thus presented with a penis, to which, as psychoanalysis shows,
every woman, more or less, unconsciously aspires, nor even punish–
ment from the male standpoint, from which view this myth is con–
ceived. For men were once boys and, whatever they may later feel
in regard to the female organ, it was only with difficulty and under
the growing pressure of reality that they came to abandon belief in
the penis originally attributed to the mother.
Here lies the gist of the matter for when the creators of the
CEdipus myth, or the author of
The Black Cat,
hang the mother
and symbolically restore her penis, in some sort they satisfy a wish.
But also they fulminate an indictment and show, by her grim and
ironical fate- hanging- the crime she must expiate.
See, they seem to say, you are punished because you never had
what I believed you had. And so you must mimic it in the supreme
punishment of death!
Nor must we forget that this penis, represented by the hanged
body, is limp and, as it were, dead. Would not this limpness then,
of the hanged body, heap mockery on the mockery already implicit in
this rephallization of the woman? It
is
as though the son were saying
to the mother : "Yes, you have a penis, but it is dead!" In Poe's
case, given his impotence, this ultimate jibe might well be his talion
on the mother. s
Thus, the rephallization of the mother, the proof of whose cas–
tration broke down the last walls behind which the son could en–
trench himself against fears of his own castration, comes to ex–
press the worst conceivable punishment for her. So, too, though thou–
sands of years lie between them, the tale of
The Black Cat
may
serve as exegesis on the venerable myth of CEdipus, King of Thebes.
