A Story and Psychoanalysis!

Here it is guys! Both the story and the psychoanalysis below. I think this will give you a far more well rounded idea of the purpose for everything in the story:


A Story
By: Melissa Darsey

The waves lick and kiss the large rocks, smoothing the rocks with their sensual touch, while whispering a melodious tune for the dead lovers the sea devoured with its veracious appetite. Sitting, snuggly embraced by the large rocks on top of the cliff is a house. The house is precariously built almost as if the rocks are giving birth to it. The façade of the old structure is streaked with rain and mold. It is almost if this tiny home has cried its tears for the jewels it holds within itself. The windows are small squares. Red currents fall behind these iridescent eyes emblazing them with the glow of amber. A weary traveler might look upon the house and feel it possessed. The dark black door with the heavy metal lock is not to keep people out, but to keep people in.

The inside air permeates with the smell of gingerbread baking in the small woodstove. A woman with dirty blonde hair wisped up in a somewhat precarious bun sits silently in a rocking chair aimlessly trying to knit while her thoughts reside elsewhere. Long strands of muddy locks string down her face, concealing the lines that have crept far too soon across the face of a woman of her age. The only sound you hear is the creak, creak, creak of the old rocking chair as the woman’s weight shifts from front to back and front to back again. A little girl with golden curl and emerald eyes sits beneath the woman’s feet holding a doll in one hand, while the other possesses a tiny bottle in which to feed the waxen lips. The doll wears the same handmade pattern as the little girl. They are both as pale as the driven snow, and the tiny doll shares the same emeralds and curls as the small child. They are perfect replicas of one another. Looking closely one might not be able to distinguish the living from the dead among this inseparable pair.

The emerald eyes of the small child penetrate the woman’s soul as she breathes out, “Mama is the gingerbread ready yet. I am terribly hungry, and Anna feels that a storm is soon to blow.” She holds her doll kissing its eyes, and stroking its face with her cheek. “Why you little sprite,” Mama peers over her spectacles looking at her beloved daughter, “you know gingerbread is no good until fully done, and as for the storm, you tell Anna not to worry your little head with such nonsense.” She removes the spectacles from her eyes, looking at the reflection of herself within them. “Who are you?” she whispers at the face staring back at her. She is snapped back to reality by a small tugging at the base of her skirt. Cool eyes peer up at her, as red rich lips reveal tiny white teeth. The glow of her small child’s smile is something the woman finds hard to resist. “All right little one lets go check on the gingerbread, and while we wait I’ll prepare a nice warm bottle for you.” Gleeful little hands come together in applause, as tiny feet follow the woman’s faded blue dress’s swish, swish, swish into the kitchen.

On the top shelf of the cupboard there were three bottles. Even though the woman asked, she knew which one her child would choose. The red one, it was always the red one. “The milk tastes the best in the red one,” the small child would always reply when her mother asked why it always was that one. They checked the gingerbread together, while the small child sucked the sustenance out of the blood red container. The woman set the gingerbread on the counter to cool. A flash of lightning streaked across the sky. The woman sighed, “Well, little one Anna might have been right after all.” The little one peered up at the window beneath the woman’s skirt. All the while sucking the bottle, and clinching the doll in the other hand. The light of the torches danced in her emerald pools.

The woman lifted the child up on the counter. “CRASH!” The gingerbread came crumbling to the floor. Both women, one large one small, looked into each other’s eyes. The small one gently laid her doll on the counter as if it were dead, and traced the embroidered letter on the large one’s chest. All the while she sucked the contents of her bloody bottle. When she was finished drinking she let out a big satisfied sigh and said, “Mama the storm is here.” Her hands still traced the intricate fabric of the letter. A crack of thunder was heard in the distance. Anna was forgotten, left on the counter, while Mama and daughter went to be let out of their cage.

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The Analysis
This particular story begins with waves. Water often represents the ability of sustaining life. However, we quickly discover that the water within the opening paragraph of “A Story” represents death. It is not fresh water, but salt water. Salt is a preserver, not so much of life. Salt in essence preserves that which is dead. The sea devours and preserves the dead lovers.

Sitting on top of the sea is this house. It in many ways is dying and being reborn, dying and being reborn again. The house almost seems to be breathing. According to Freud a house is always a representation of the Mother. The Mother within this story is in agony over something, but we are unsure of what that is. The hope within her has died. The only flicker of possibly regaining that hope is through her daughter. Through her daughter in many ways she is being reborn. The daughter and mother in essence reverse roles. The house that embodies these two souls is a clear representation of this dichotomy. The rocks appear to have given birth to it, but all the while the house looks as if it is dying.

Melanie Klein states in “The Psycho-Analytic Play Technique: Its History and Significance” that, “the brick, the little figure, the car, not only represent things which interest the child in themselves, but in his play with them they always have a variety of symbolical meanings as well which are bound up with his phantasies, wishes, and experiences” (Mitchell, 1986). She further states that looking at these forms of play in the same way that Freud interpreted dreams that she could access the child’s unconscious. The doll, Anna, that the little girl in “A Story” plays with looks very much like the little girl, even down to the clothes that she wears. It is easy to transfer the assumption that this is a representation of herself. The only name you ever get within the lines of this story is that of the dolls, Anna. This possibly could be a reflection of who the child wants to be; the doll’s name being a representation of something that is complete or whole.

The doll also speaks to the little girl. We come to find out that Anna not only speaks to the little girl, but speaks the truth. The ability of the doll to have a mind of its own makes me believe that it represents something other than the little girl herself. It is important to explore the possibility that it could be a sibling that died when she was young. The fact that the doll is discarded at the end of the story could easily be a representation of that sibling being laid to rest. Through the play the child has found peace solace and reconciliation of what has happened and what will happen. There is no more need for the doll, or what the doll represents in the end.

The woman looks at herself in the glasses and does not recognize who it is starring back at her. However, when she looks at her child starring up at her she can see what she preserves as herself once again. She sees not only what she is, but what she hopes to be through those little eyes.

Melanie Klein states in “A Contribution to the Psychogenesis of Manic-Depressive States” that:
“The ego comes to a realization of its love for a good object, a whole object and in addition a real object, together with an overwhelming feeling of guilt towards it. Full identification with the object based on the libidinal attachment, first to the breast, then to the whole person, goes hand in hand with anxiety for it (of its disintegration), with guilt and remorse, with a sense of responsibility for preserving it intact against persecutors and the id, and with sadness relating to expectation of the impending loss of it. These emotions, whether conscious or unconscious, are in my view among the essential and fundamental elements of the feelings we call love (Mitchell, 1986).

This relationship is found between both mother and daughter. The Mother is genuinely loving and affectionate of her little girl, but behind all that care and comfort you can see the fear and guilt bubble up. At the beginning of the story her thoughts are not with her knitting, but somewhere else. She knows what is coming. The realization of that is brought full circle with her daughter expresses what Anna had told her about a storm brewing. The Mother looks fondly on her child, and calls her a little sprite, an unreal thing, a fantasy. She projects this idea of her child being unearthly in a way to protect herself from the possible loss that will occur. The little girl has already been referenced to being like the doll, not alive. Now, she is being compared to something that is not real. The child herself is trying to figure out who she is. This constant projection of who she is by others onto herself interjects the ideas that she has about herself. The doll being laid down at the end of the story could also represent a lying down of the imaginary. The little girl lays down the thought of her being unreal, and picks up her identity as her mother and her go to face the torches outside.

The child is, in many ways, like a mother to the woman. She warns her about the impending danger that is headed there way. She is genuinely concerned for her Mother’s well being just as much as that of her own. The end of the story is one of the most poignant representations of that love between mother and daughter. “Both women, one large one small, looked into each other’s eyes. The small one gently laid her doll on the counter as if it were dead, and traced the embroidered letter on the large one’s chest. All the while she sucked the contents of her bloody bottle. When she was finished drinking she let out a big satisfied sigh and said, “Mama the storm is here.” Her hands still traced the intricate fabric of the letter” (Darsey, 2004). They both look into each others eyes, and in that moment become duplicates of one another. They become mirrors in which the other can see them fully in. They see each other as whole complete objects, and feel great guilt for the other’s circumstances. The little girl comforts her mother, while at the same time explores her mother, by tracing the letter with her fingers. They seek preservation of one another, and fear the demise that is coming. They face their fears together.

I recognized also that the oral-sadistic relation to the mother and the internalization of a devoured, and therefore devouring, breast create the prototype of all internal persecutors; and furthermore that the internalization of an injured and therefore dreaded breast on the one hand, and of a satisfying and helpful breast on the other, is the core of the superego. Another conclusion was that, although oral anxieties come first, sadistic phantasies and desires from all sources are operative at a very early stage of development and overlap the oral anxieties (Mitchell, 1986).


This scenario that Melanie Klein presents is the first stage of a young child’s development, the Paranoid Schizoid. The child recognizes that there is a good breast and a bad breast. That breast that the child feels delivers the most satisfying milk, and that which does not. In the beginning a child simply looks at the good, that which brings him pleasure, and doesn’t even associate with the bad. Klein goes onto say in “The Psychological Principals of Infant Analysis” that:
Children form relations with the outside world by directing to objects from which pleasure is obtained the libido that was originally attached exclusively to the child’s own ego. A child’s relation to these objects, whether they be living or inanimate, is in the first instance purely narcissistic. It is in this way, however, that children arrive at their relations with reality (Mitchell, 1986).


The little girl has this relationship with her doll, and more prevalently with the red bottle. It is prevalent to point out that this child is clearly far too old to still be suckling from a bottle. However, there is still some sort of need for that type of nourishment. It almost preserves her in the confines of the story as a baby. Is it that her Mother does not wish her to grow up to face the harsh realities of this life? Is there something within the little girl that desires to stay small, little, and protected?

She chooses the red bottle because she feels that it produces the most satisfying milk. All she desires is to gain pleasure for her. It represents the good breast. It is also important to note that the Mother cannot give her child her breast to satisfy her. Instead, she must satisfy her by supplementing her breast with a substitute. This leads to another possible reason why the child still drinks milk from a bottle. She has never gotten the taste of the real thing. Her hunger grows and grows and grows, but can never be fully satisfied. Therefore, she takes what little pleasure she can with the next best thing. She sucks the bottle veraciously, like a wild animal, trying to get satisfied. The milk within the bottle is not only sustaining life, but it is life being devoured, consumed, and destroyed. It is a representation of both re-building and destruction. The bottle is often referred to as being bloody. The act of blood flowing, whether that is within the body or flowing out of the body can be a representation of life and death. At the end of the story the little girl “finished drinking she let out a big satisfied sigh and said, “Mama the storm is here” (Darsey, 2004). In the time frame of her drinking the milk from the bottle a lot has happened. They have gotten the gingerbread out of the oven to cool. A thunderstorm begins to brew outside. The little girl and mother realize that there are torches coming for them. The gingerbread, food, sustenance is knocked on the floor crumbling into a million pieces. Change is occurring all around them. It is also taking place within the little girl. The whole strain of events taking place while the child drinks her milk from the red bottle could be a representation of growth. In that short period of time this child has grown from a baby to a young adult. She is finally satisfied by the milk, and will no longer need to pick up the bottle again. She lays her own self down with the laying down of Anna, her doll, and is ready for the next chapter in her life to begin.

Klein says that, “At a very early age children become acquainted with reality through the deprivations which it imposes on them. They try to defend themselves against it by repudiating it” (Mitchell, 1986). Eventually, Klein makes the statement that the fundamental thing that needs to and will occur within the child is the accepting of the reality of life and deprivation. The little girl accepts that things are changing. She accepts that life is hard. She accepts the truth of what is to come no matter what that might be.

The last sentence of the story says, “Anna was forgotten, left on the counter, while Mama and daughter went to be let out of their cage” (Darsey, 2004). If the house is a representation of the mother, then what Klein says about claustrophobia is easily relatable to this scenario. “The anxieties derived from phantasied attacks on the mother’s body and on the father she is supposed to contain, proved in both sexes to underlie claustrophobia (which includes the fear of being imprisoned or entombed in the mother’s body)” (Mitchell, 1986). Both the mother and the daughter have been imprisoned and entombed in this house. They have been trapped by its weeping walls and rod iron jaws. Now, like a caged bird, they are going to be set free to spread their wings, and to feel the cool air rise up underneath them. We end with the idea that mother and daughter will probably meet there demise; the death of there old selves and the re-birth of the new. They will finally be free.

NOTE: This paper was one of the most challenging and difficult things that I have ever attempted to write in my life. I was so completely inspired by the short stories of Angela Carter that I thought I would attempt to create one myself. I had not exactly intended to use the remainder of my paper to psychoanalyze the story. It simply turned out that way. I am basically laying myself out there for the world to see. This work is mostly me, and what I learned in the class. I hope that you will find it a joyful and insightful read. I know that I was challenged in writing it. Thank you!