By Vincent M. Gaine
This essay discusses the Gothic themes of The Awakening,
and the therapy undertaken in the film by balancing emotion and intellect.
[SPOILERS]
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| The Awakening, dir. Nick Murphy (2011) |
The Awakening (Nick Murphy, 2011) is a Gothic ghost story
that presents a therapeutic union of emotion and intellect. The heroine, Florence Cathcart (Rebecca Hall) represents both scientific rationality and the dangers of emotional repression, and an initial assumption that rationality and intellect are preferable to emotion and unsubstantiated belief. Across the narrative of the film and through the development of Florence’s character, an emergence, the titular ‘Awakening’, of emotion takes place, the film presenting Florence’s encounter with the paranormal as therapeutic and challenging the initial presumption. However, the film does not offer a valorisation of emotional indulgence and a simple leap of faith, but rather a balance between the intellectual and the emotional. The film therefore presents the attentive viewer with a warning against excessive rationality but also against emotional indulgence.
Florence’s
therapy is, in part, a generic resolution for the Gothic narrative, which often
displays ‘the discovery and release of new patterns of feeling’ (Ellis,
458), a release that is often tied to the Gothic heroine: ‘the release of
feelings as the preeminent domain of the Gothic explains the persistence of
women as vehicles for delivering its effects’ (Ellis,
458). This emotional release is the resolution of a central gendered
tension within the Gothic tradition between intellect (male) and emotion
(female): ‘From a feminist point of view, the coherence of gender conventions
keeps women oppressed’ (Ellis,
458). Whether this is the first Mrs Rochester in Jane Eyre or
the governess in The Turn of the Screw,
female emotion is contained (or at least should
be contained according to the societal institutions of the Gothic world) by
male intellect. Within the conventions of the horror film genre, the woman is
often presented as both victim and monstrous, a representation of castration
anxiety and the dangerous Other to masculinity. This dangerous Other needs to
be contained, repressed and denied expression, especially in terms of her
sexuality. The Awakening demonstrates
an understanding of these conventions and plays with them to create its therapy
for Florence.
The film quickly
establishes Florence as a sceptic reliant upon scientific method and equipment,
reminiscent of Dana
Scully (Gillian
Anderson) in The X-Files
(1993-2002). After the first scene shows Florence debunking a false séance, she
is hired by a boarding school that has recently suffered a death, which some
attribute to a ghost. At the school, Florence investigates and establishes that
the victim died of an asthma attack, but cannot explain the mysterious sights
and sounds she encounters. Aided by history master and WWI veteran Robert
Mallory (Dominic West),
school matron Maud Hill (Imelda Staunton)
and a pupil who remains during the school vacation, Tom (Isaac Hempstead Wright),
Florence investigates further. Along the way, she nearly drowns in a possible
suicide attempt, develops a romance with Robert and is almost raped by the
school groundskeeper, Edward Judd (Joseph Mawle).
Eventually, she discovers that the ghosts are part of her own history, as she
lived at the house as a child before it became a school, and experienced
terrible trauma that she has repressed. Confronting this trauma both lays the
ghosts to rest and reunites Florence with her full memory.
The incomplete
resolution provided by Florence’s explanation of the boy’s death demonstrates a
recurring disjunction throughout the horror genre, that between the normal and
the supernatural: ‘The narrative quest of the horror film, then, is to find
that discourse capable of solving this disjunction, explaining events’ (Gledhill,
353). This is the quest of the ghost investigator, and indeed many a
detective who attempts to explain the seemingly impossible. In the mould of Sherlock Holmes,
investigators endeavour to debunk supernatural explanations, such as the
existence of a monstrous hound or the presence of ghosts. In this investigative
narrative, resolution comes with the revelation that everything has been the
act of tricksters, as demonstrated in the opening sequence of The Awakening when Florence exposes a
group of con artists. Yet the explanation may be incomplete, the ghost story
rife with ‘ambivalence or tension [that] is between certainty and doubt,
between the familiar and the feared, between rational occurrence and the inexplicable’
(Briggs,
176).
Ambivalence may result in a lack of certainty, but that does not prevent a resolution for the characters/viewer. This resolution however, does not come from a single source – Florence’s scientific investigation may expose the séance as a scam, but there are clear gaps in her expertise and righteousness. The victim of these con artists slaps her in anger, because the séance gave her hope that her deceased child was in the afterlife, and Florence has destroyed that hope.
Ambivalence may result in a lack of certainty, but that does not prevent a resolution for the characters/viewer. This resolution however, does not come from a single source – Florence’s scientific investigation may expose the séance as a scam, but there are clear gaps in her expertise and righteousness. The victim of these con artists slaps her in anger, because the séance gave her hope that her deceased child was in the afterlife, and Florence has destroyed that hope.
The bereaved
mother clings to an irrational, inexplicable hope, an emotional lifeline
severed by the (limited) conception of scientific rationality that Florence
operates with. The scientific explanation gives the mother no comfort, whereas
believing in the scam could have. Knowledge, it seems, is not enough.
Rationality and the intellect seek to contain, control and neutralise emotions,
especially fear. We fear the unknown so try to understand more, know more and
therefore neutralise our fear. This is what Florence does throughout the film,
emphatically stating at one point that she will not live with fear. This
approach towards emotion is similar to patriarchy’s attitude to women –
contain, control and neutralise. Florence is unwilling to be contained, and
does so through male-coded acts of professionalism, trouser wearing and
scientific method. But arguably this masculinises her, and what The Awakening demonstrates are the
dangers and ultimate futility in attempting to suppress and deny part of one’s
own identity. The film’s therapy, therefore, repudiates and debunks patriarchal/rational
containment of femininity/emotion.
The bereaved
mother equates Florence’s heartlessness with her childlessness, this lack
signified as aberrant and unnatural. This is perhaps ironic considering
Florence’s reliance upon scientific, i.e. natural
phenomena in her work and the apparatus that she uses to measure these.
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| Florence, The Awakening, dir. Nick Murphy (2001) |
Furthermore, it relates what she does
with the conceit of the Gothic genre, as ghost stories challenge the rational
order with ‘what is perceived as fearful, alien, excluded, or dangerously
marginal’ (Briggs, 176). These dangers may be the past, the dead, war, and
challenges to the social order of patriarchy. A further demonstration of
Florence’s ‘aberrance’ is the concern of Sergeant Evans (Steven Cree), who
fears suspicions of both personal and professional impropriety. To the first,
Florence attempts to assuage his concerns by reassuring him that his wife is
very lucky, but there remains a sense that her work is aberrant and unusual.
Professionally, Evans is concerned about taking instruction from a woman,
finding it a compromise of his masculinity. To this, Florence is largely
contemptuous, indicating her disregard for traditional gender roles.
By contrast, the more modern Robert Mallory
is comfortable with Florence’s professionalism. Robert is a casualty of war in
both body and mind and, like Florence, he lost people in the War, witnessing
these deaths first hand and suffering injuries himself. Furthermore, Robert
displays post-traumatic-stress-disorder and performs self-harm as a form of
penance. His reference to seeing ghosts himself could be literal or figurative,
but in contrast to Florence he is not dismissive. Within conventional terms, he
is more ‘feminine’ than she is, given to emotional indulgence through his
self-harming and uncontrollable panic attacks.
Florence’s lack of femininity is
characterised by her reliance on traditionally male concepts of rationality and
science, and a disbelief in concepts such as ghosts, Father Christmas, the
Tooth Fairy and, more controversially, God. Florence’s early description of
these concepts is derisive, suggesting a scornful attitude to beliefs in what
cannot be scientifically proven. To include God in this list emphasises
Florence’s reliance upon science, simplistically presented as the opposition to
faith and religion. Furthermore, Florence seems uninterested in significant
emotion as a whole, her general demeanour one of slight amusement. It would be
a mischaracterisation to describe her as cold, as she displays warmth and
compassion to the children of the boarding school and there is attraction
between her and Robert. Yet repression runs throughout the film, and has done
so in the protagonist’s history as well.
Repression, especially in relation to
women, is a Gothic trope: ‘The vast, imprisoning spaces that appear so
regularly in the Gothic as castles, monasteries, and actual prisons can be read
as metaphors for women’s lives under patriarchy’ (Ellis, 458). The school in The Awakening serves a similar purpose; Florence’s
return to her former family home perhaps a re-entry into the oppressed position
of women that her self-determined role repudiates. Being the site of her
original trauma and false memories codes the house as the manifestation of the
prison in her mind, which must be returned to, questioned and investigated in
order to be understood. Thus it is through her investigation into the
paranormal events at the school that Florence undergoes therapy as to who she
is and where she came from, acquiring a more complete understanding.
Nor is repression confined to women, as
the boarding school represses its students, through its stone walls, stern
lines of the mise-en-scéne and its own institutionalised rules.
Such a trope appears in much horror cinema, including an early adaptation of
Robert Louis Stephenson’s Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, directed by Rouben Mamoulian (1932). In this film, the
‘dark, foggy, labyrinthine streets of London give an expressionist sense of the
confinement and hypocrisy of this society, with its outdated Victorian mores …
[and] the character of the young man hemmed in by conventionalities’ (Kaye,
244). The students and staff of the school are also trapped by particular,
outmoded versions of masculinity. One of the teachers, Malcolm McNair (Shaun
Dooley), keeps his students in a state of constant fear and canes them for the
slightest misdemeanour. Robert tells Florence that the boys are ‘scared to
death’, and this could be attributed to the school itself rather than any
supernatural occurrence.
Violence and suffering are intrinsic to the
school, most obviously in the figure of Judd but also in the violent history
that Florence has repressed. It is significant that Judd avoided military
service but is himself violent and, interestingly, killed by a gun that
Florence strikes him with to escape his rape attempt. Violent death is, it
seems, not confined to the battlefield. This proves to be the case as
Florence’s memories return – her father murdered her mother with a shotgun
(much like Judd’s), then attempted to kill Florence herself but, accidentally,
shot her half-brother Tom and then himself. Florence’s ‘awakening’ is expressed
through discontinuous editing and unstable cinematography, the past and present
merging as the viewer sees both the adult (Hall) and child Florence (Molly
Lewis).
This trauma is the monstrous element of The
Awakening. Within Gothic horror, the monstrous ‘can be seen as embodying
modern fears such as alienation, the horrors of war, and sexually transmitted
disease’ (Kaye, 240). World War I casts a long shadow over the events of The
Awakening’s narrative, but its 2011 release and the presence of a character
suffering from war-inflicted PTSD makes it very much a post-9/11, post-Iraq War
film. This is the modern fear that the film taps into, its confrontation with
fears that are both overt (Robert) and suppressed (Florence), offering the
therapy of balancing emotional release with rational understanding. In some
adaptations of Jekyll and Hyde, ‘the story of a man’s – and by way
of audience identification, a country’s – descent into bestial violence had a
clear metaphorical link to the conflagration just past’ (Skal, 140, cit.Kaye,
241). Similar descents appear in The Awakening – Judd is
bestially violent towards Florence while Robert is towards himself. The
violence of Florence’s father is linked to animality, through the portrait of a
lion attacking a horse visible behind him as he kills Tom and then himself.
From this image, Florence constructed a belief that an actual lion killed her
parents and scarred her, whereas she was actually scarred by the same shot that
killed Tom. Man collapses into animal as part of the repression of trauma. As
Florence’s memories awaken, she sees her father shooting himself, the painting
of the lion merely the background.
The therapy of this revelation is that
Florence need not be terrified little girl nor (masculinised) overly rational
adult – she balances the emotional with the intellectual. Her experience at the
school reawakens her emotional responses, as she weeps unashamedly into Maud’s
arms. It could be argued that the awakening of her buried memories restores her
to proper, feminine emotionality, but this is not the film’s therapy. As well
as being able to cry, Florence has also achieved her goal of overcoming her fear
– now that she knows what happened to her, she no longer fears it. And there is
a danger of emotional over-indulgence still to come.
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| Maud, The Awakening, dir. Nick Murphy,(2011) |
Another part of
the revelation is that Tom’s mother is Maud, who can see the ghost of her son
and stayed with the house when it became a school. She tries to create company
for Tom by poisoning herself and Florence. But while Maud dies, Florence urges
Robert to get her something that will make her sick, purging the poison from
her system, using her scientific knowledge to save her life. Robert is unable
to find anything, but Florence’s emotional plea spurs Tom to provide her with a
suitable agent. Scientific knowledge combined with a plea to a loved one
ultimately save Florence’s life, as her psychological life has also been saved
through an overcoming of fear through recognition and embrace of emotional
trauma.
As a British
horror film, The Awakening inevitably
echoes Hammer Films, which often ‘allow some release of tensions, [but]
ultimately they deny excesses of sensuality by punishing transgressors’ (Kaye,
246). Maud is punished for her excessive connection to her dead son, being
allowed to die while Florence lives, but rather than a return to repression,
Florence’s salvation is also the reason for the attempt on her life – Tom saves
her because Florence tells him: ‘If I go with you now my soul will never be
happy’. Rather than a return to the status quo of repression (of one form or
another), The Awakening depicts
therapy, the balance of emotion and
intellect rather than one overcoming the other. This balance helps to
neutralise ‘woman as threat’ and more as an equal partner, as demonstrated in
the final scene between Florence and Robert. Robert is not a paragon of
machismo, being troubled by both physical and psychic injuries, but as such, he
is the ideal partner for Florence, and the film ends with a clear sense of
equality and mutual recognition between them.
It could be
interpreted that Florence does
actually die from the poisoning, as the final scene only features her speaking
to Robert and apparently not seen by the school’s headmaster, Reverend Hugh
Purslow (John
Shrapnel). The film’s evidence is more supportive of her having survived,
however, because she leaves when Maud wanted to keep her there, and the ghost
of Tom is not seen again. What is striking in the final scene is that Florence
seems much warmer and less haughty than her earlier scenes. From her original
position of rational superiority, she has confronted her own ghosts, literal
and figurative, in a terrifying experience that leaves her deeply shaken. Yet
she is able to balance this trauma with an understanding that is rational and emotional, demonstrated by her final
line that closes the film ‘Not seeing them, it's not the same as forgetting, is
it?’ This line expresses the therapeutic philosophy of The Awakening: the importance of remembering and maintaining a
sense of the past and your experiences. Florence forgot, and then re-encountered
what she had forgotten. Now she need not see, but she does remember, embracing
her past and keeping it as part of her future.
As a genre, ‘the Gothic itself is locked “in the encapsulating social systems that engender repeated trauma’” (Massé, 19, quoted by Ellis, 459), but The Awakening unlocks these systems by allowing therapy for its protagonist, confronting her trauma and integrating it into her consciousness. She does not remain in the prison, the film denying an either/or opposition, and allows her to leave, with the suggestion of a continuing romance with Robert. Although Florence and Robert make plans to meet again, the film’s emphasis is not upon this union – love is not Florence’s defining feature. Good mental health (shockingly!) may be enough for this Gothic heroine.
As a genre, ‘the Gothic itself is locked “in the encapsulating social systems that engender repeated trauma’” (Massé, 19, quoted by Ellis, 459), but The Awakening unlocks these systems by allowing therapy for its protagonist, confronting her trauma and integrating it into her consciousness. She does not remain in the prison, the film denying an either/or opposition, and allows her to leave, with the suggestion of a continuing romance with Robert. Although Florence and Robert make plans to meet again, the film’s emphasis is not upon this union – love is not Florence’s defining feature. Good mental health (shockingly!) may be enough for this Gothic heroine.
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| Florence and Robert, The Awakening, dir. Nick Murphy (2011) |
The Awakening uses the tropes of the horror and Gothic traditions,
such as the opposition between emotion and intellect and between masculine and
feminine, to show the fallacy of these oppositions, promoting instead the
philosophy of integration and balance. This is the film’s therapy, a reworking
of Gothic and horror tropes through an engagement with PTSD, tied both to
family trauma and the horrors of war, to provide a useful therapeutic lesson.
Works cited:
Briggs, Julia, ‘The Ghost Story’, in A New Companion to the Gothic,
edited by David Punter (Chichester: Blackwell, 2012), pp. 176-187.
Ellis, Kate Ferguson, ‘Can You Forgive Her? The Gothic Heroine and
Her Critics’, in A New
Companion to the Gothic, edited by David Punter (Chichester: Blackwell,
2012), pp. 457-468.
Gledhill, Christine, ‘The horror film’, in The Cinema Book, edited by Pam
Cook (London: BFI, 2007), pp. 347-366
Kaye, Heidi, ‘Gothic Film’ in A
New Companion to the Gothic, edited by David Punter (Chichester: Blackwell,
2012), pp. 239-251.
Skal, David, ed., The
Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror (London: Plexus, 1993).
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