Freud And Ragtime

5 Pages 1154 Words

Throughout the novel Ragtime, Doctorow suggests that in Sigmund Freud’s visit to the United States he did not enjoy himself because of the differences between
the United States and Vienna. With references of feminist women such as Emma
Goldman in Ragtime, it can be determined that the real reason for Freud not
enjoying the United States, was his views on women as being less than human,
unable to think like men, born merely to breed and serve men(1933; New
Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, 1933). American women were living
different lives than the women of Vienna. Victorian culture, which was the
culture of Freud’s life back in Vienna, gave women many reasons to envy men: the
same conditions, in fact, that the American feminists in Ragtime, fought
against. If a woman who was denied the freedom, the status, and the pleasures
that men enjoyed wished that she could have these things, she might wish herself a man and see herself with that one thing which made men unequally different , the penis(1905;
Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory, 1910.)

Freudian psychology, had its emphasis on sexual freedom for a man who was
living in a repressive society, such as the Victorian culture in which he was
living. Women on the other hand, were seen as having penis envy to males and
would never amount to much, which was drastically different from the women like
Emma Goldman in Ragtime who were fighting for their freedom from the repressive
male dominated society in which they were living. To Freud the American image of
a woman was the lavish life of a women living in the twenties: wild and free
hair, knees exposed, flaunting her new freedom to live alone in an apartment in
the city, and drive a car. It was also acceptable for American women to drink,
smoke, and to freely talk about their sexual adventures. This was against what Freud saw as the proper way for a women to conduct herself, and suggests that he did n...