Reviews for The Miser

The average rating for The Miser based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-05-04 00:00:00 Rhonda Norbury An excellent, though flowery, psychoanalytical study of Hamlet, which goes on for 70 pages trying to convince the reader of the legitimacy of psychoanalyzing a literary character before going about its business of providing the actual analysis. Beyond the academic fluff, the key insight is that Hamlet is Shakespeare's alter ego, who suffered from an unresolved Oedipus complex. Hamlet's famous vacillation and hesitation is due the seemingly opposite movements of repression and regression. Here Jones reads Hamlet as mythology. First, repression results in complications that are meant to obfuscate the "simple" triangular Oedipal formula of son-mother-father. As for the component that in the Oedipus complex manifests itself in the relationship between the son and the father, the role of the tyrannical father is instead assumed by the mother's father (who is caught in a father-daughter complex) and/or, as in Hamlet, by the father's brother (Claudius). The relationship between the son and the mother, on the other hand, disguises itself in what Jones calls brother-sister-complex. He calls these complexes secondary themes which mask the original underlying Oedipus complex. Second, those strategies are counteracted by Shakespeare's own regression, which prevented Hamlet (ergo, Shakespeare) from avenging the death of his father in a decisive manner, thus bringing to surface the psychological insights that Shakespeare was already coming up with. Interestingly, that fairly straightforward scheme is further complicated by two other forms of repression that may take place beside the subsidiary complexes, namely decomposition and doubling. Jones' analysis is neat. He combines Freudian insights with the Jungian way of seeing basic psychoanalytical mechanisms in the greater scheme of things in myths and, as in his analysis of Hamlet, in works of fiction. Jones is acutely aware of the radical nature of his undertaking. Bottomline: Jones convinced me. I recommend the book. Besides, it is a quick read.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-01-28 00:00:00 Jeremiah Johnson Ground-breaking and influential study of Hamlet in that it mainstreamed the Freudian reading of the play--Hamlet's problem is an Oedipus complex. Inventive, if dubious, attempts to rationalize the play in light of events in Shakespeare's life that brought his own father issues and sexual disgust to the fore (written shortly after Shakespeare's mistress betrayed him with the young man praised in the sonnet sequence), rather more convincing links to myth and attempts to explain changes from the source material in light of Sghakespeare's playing up of the Oedipal stuff (though Jones goes from acknowledging that we can't be sure which plot innovations were Shakespeare's and which carried over from the ur-Hamlet to assuming that said plot innovations reflect Shakespeare's own modifications and reflect his own concerns. Ultimately not in my opinion a convincing case, as with pretty much any reading that attempts to expain everything in light of one overarching concern.