Oedipal and Electra Complexes Essay example -- Sexuality Heroine Freud

Oedipal and Electra ComplexesIn Rebecca female sexuality is explored through the heroines emblematical ontogeny of a interdict Oedipal complex followed by an Electra complex. Although avoidance of incest was believed by Freud to be the impetus for normal sexual cultivation, the film explores the abnormal issue of a negative Oedipal/Electra complex, i.e. replacement of the go by the daughter as the fetchs heterosexual love interest. The heroine is torn between her lust to merge with Rebecca and to separate from her due to this combination of negative Oedipal and Electra complexes. The key remainder between these two complexes underlies the heroines development.The difference between a negative Oedipal and Electra complex is not subtle. A negative Oedipal complex involves love for the mother in the form of Freuds bisexual attraction. The girl allow for desire and identify with her, wishing to emulate her. An Electra complex is defined by the girls imagined rivalry between mother and daughter for the fathers love. For Freud the heterosexual development of comminuted girls is more difficult to let off compared to that of little boys because the girl must change the object of her love from muliebrity to man. Initially the girl has a negative Oedipal complex until some catalytic occurrence shifts her into an Electra complex marked by dislike of the mother and rivalry. In a normal Freudian non-incestuous relationship the girl impart send love of the father to other men and will not close up loving the mother entirely. In an incestuous relationship the girl will eliminate the threat of the mother, take her place, and eng shape up in a sexual relationship with the father. Avoiding this, Freud believes, drives the female sexual development. Embracing this, Hitchcock displays, drives the unheimlich development of Rebecca.Symbolically in the film, the main characters take on the roles of key players in Freuds development strategies. The lo vely heroine is clearly the girl, very young relative to Maxim and for the prototypical half of the film innocent, weak, and small. She is made smaller by the overpowering bearing of Rebecca, who for her typifies the perfect female. Maxim is clearly the father figure due to his age relative to the heroine and his relationship with her. His comments about her being a child, his desire for her neer to grow up or wear ... ...e destruction of Mandalay and the death of Danvers, her sound true worshiper. The last scene shows Maxim and the heroine embracing, insinuating that they go on to a heterosexual, emblematically incestuous relationship that is not overshadowed by Rebecca.In piddling the heroines development in the film from a naive, weak little girl into a powerful, knowledgeable wife is mirrored by this symbolic transition from a negative Oedipal stage to an Electra stage to a father-daughter incestuous relationship. The heroines actions are not given explicit justificati on in the film, but the typical mien of Freuds proverbial girl matches her behavior perfectly. The heroine tries to become like the woman who she believes Maxim loves, fails, and tries then to compete with her. The thingamabob on the Oedipal/Electra complex comes about when the girls feminine rivalry turns to aligned opposition with the father against the mother leading to an incestuous relationship, incisively the outcome Freuds theory sought to avoid. Because the films development of the heroine diverges from normal sexual development in this way, Rebeccas development attains Hitchcocks sought after unheimlich effect.