brand new person / same old mistakes

CARRD. written by rabbit.

i just think that if we're talking psychoanalytically, erik is arguably a castrated figure who seeks to gain the symbolic phallus via possession of the emotional and social token that is the love of a desirable woman. but that's me

i started reading a book to help with my gender in poto essay lol and i'm wondering, candidly, if i have something of an intellectual block around erik, such that i'm not understanding/agreeing with its contents. this book went psychoanalytic almost immediately which, sure, fine, but it seems to immediately assume that erik, by definition, is a phallic figure in the sense of embodying a male-coded power, authority, and position in the text; it doesn't even make an initial argument for the definition of him as phallic, just launches into talking about him As Such. while i do agree that, like other gothic figures in different works (i can talk about this whole schema at another time--i have diagrams lol), erik "punctures"/"penetrates" the upper world with his deathly presence, and is feared/hated by raoul as a sexual competitor/possible threat to christine, his actual movements in the text tend to be something a bit... less than what i'd call "typically masculine" in the sense of direct. he achieves almost everything by tricks, subterfuge, and game-playing. while at times he demonstrates the "typically masculine" traits of rage and violence, he subsides into a weeping emotionality that parallels him with the failed-male-hero figure of raoul. neither of them is truly "masculine" in the sense of strong, heroic, capable, clear-sighted, and morally true--that's christine. so thinking of him as phallic in the sense of male-aligned male-coded and masculine (the author argues that his home is full of penile and scrotal symbols, which he goads christine into interacting with as a part of his sexual game-playing with her) doesn't quite click for me.