The Mother consistently instills the narcissistic thoughts into and transplants her value system to her daughter. In “On Narcissism: An Introduction, Freud states that the parents tend to believe that “the laws of nature and of society shall be abrogated in his favour” (91). The laws of nature and the rule of society will be subject to their children’s favor instead because
their children will be the center of the world. Erika’s mother often inculcates her narcissistic belief of self-centeredness, self-importance, and self-righteous exception to Erika. As Jelinek portrays, Erika’s mother always teaches her like this: “SHE [Erika] is the exception to the norm that surrounds her so repulsively. And her mother likes explaining to her very
meticulously that she is an exception, for she is Mother’s only child, and has to stick to the straight and narrow” (15). Erika’s mother keeps telling Erika that she is not an ordinary person but a genius, the unique one, and the exception that will transcends all the norms and laws in the world. Erika should be the center of the music stage because Erika is her only child.
Erika consciously and unconsciously identifies with her mother’s value system. Due to her mother’s influence, Erika also forms the narcissistic belief and thoughts about herself.
Erika believes that she is the exception and unique among the mediocre crowd. Jelinek portrays how Erika thinks about herself:
Erika says that she, Erika, is an individualist. She claims she cannot submit to anyone or anything. She has a hard time just fitting in. Someone like Erika comes along only once, and then never again. If something is especially irreplaceable, it is called Erika. . . . Erika will not be lumped with other people, no matter how
congenial they may be. She would instantly stick out. . . . She stands alone against the broad mass of her students, one against all, and she turns the wheel of the ship of art. No thumbnail sketch could do her justice. (12-13)
The Mother does not only dominate Erika’s behaviors but also her thoughts. Her mother keeps imbuing Erika with self-important and self-centered values. The Mother does not allow Erika
“to associate with ordinary people, but she is permitted to listen to their praises” (26). The Mother keeps telling Erika that she is the special genius who should not mingle with the ordinary people but deserve to be praised by them. Erika’s display of many narcissistic characteristics proves the “successful” consequence of her mother’s education. Erika
considers that she is the special individual who is unable to submit to any standardization and to endure the ordinary people. She feels that she is the irreplaceable “personality” who cannot fit in the ordinary world. And there will be no genius like Erika in the world because the gifted genius like her only comes to the world once. She despises the so-called ordinary and mediocre multitude. If she mixes with the mediocre people, Erika will immediately stand out in the crowd. She is the only one who has the ability and talent to steer the wheel of music art.
However, the ideal of music genius has been clashing with the reality. In reality, Erika’s talents are not praised or even recognized by the music experts. Jelinek ironically states that even Fate does not appreciate Erika’s music:
Unfortunately, the experts do not praise Erika. A dilettantish, unmusical fate has exalted other people. But it has passed Erika by, averting its face. . . . Erika stretches her arms out to Fate. But it’s no use; Fate will not turn her into a pianist.
Erika is hurled to the ground as sawdust. Erika does not understand what is
happening to her, for she has been as good as the masters for a long time now. (26) Not only their neighbors but also the music experts do not appreciate and recognize Erika’s music talent. Even Fate does not care about Erika and throws her into the ground like sawdust. Fate cannot help Erika become a brilliant pianist but renders her a piano teacher.
Owing to her mother’s long year’s “false” instruction, Erika also falsely understands herself as good as the music masters. Erika does not fully and correctly recognize her true ability and her true self. Through the usage of the terms, “dilettantish and unmusical,” Jelinek
sarcastically reveals the mindset of a narcissist: Erika considers that she is as good as the music masters but because Fate who is dilettantish and unmusical does not have the ability to appreciate her talent. Erika still deeply believes that she would achieve the ideal of world famous pianist someday. Just stretching her arms out to welcome success, Erika has been
waiting for the mostglorious moment of her career to happen since the genius like her only comes to the world once.
However, Erika’s ideal of world virtuoso turns out to be the disillusionment after Erika fails in an important concert. The aspiration to be the international famous pianist on the top of the world is completely smashed and shattered after this incident. Jelinek again depicts with satirical tone:
Then, one day, at an important concert at the Academy of Music, Erika fails totally. She fails in front of the friends and relatives of her competitors and in front of her mother, who sits there alone. Mother spent her last penny on the dress Erika wears for this recital. Afterward, Mother slaps Erika’s face, for even musical laymen could read Erika’s failure in her face if not her hands. Furthermore, Erika did not choose a piece for the broadly rolling masses. She decided on a Messiaen4, against her mother’s urgent warning.
Erika reels from the podium, shamefaced. She is received shamefully by her sole audience: Mother. Erika’s teacher, who used to be a famous pianist,
vehemently scolds her for her lack of concentration. A wonderful opportunity has been wasted, and it knocks but once. Someday soon, Erika will be envied by no one, idolized by no one. (26-27)
Erika fatally falls and fails in an important recital at the Academy of Music. Her mother slaps her daughter’s face after the failed performance because she invests everything she has in Erika. Her mother spends all the money buying the dress for Erika to wear in this concert.
Erika does not seize this critical opportunity but makes a spectacle of herself in front of many people, especially her mother. The narrator does not give the complete information about why Erika fails. The narrator only informs the readers that Erika chooses to play a piece of
4 Olivier Messiaen is a French composer and one of the major musicians in the twentieth century. His works are characterized by complicated rhythm and system.
Messiaen which is so “esoteric” and profound to the mass audience. Regardless of Mother’s warning, Erika does not choose a piece to meet the taste of the ordinary masses. Erika retreats from the stage with embarrassment and shame in front of the mediocre multitude which she despises. Through this passage, the author reveals that the Kohut ladies have no
acquaintances but the friends and relatives are her competitors’ and nobody sits in the concert to listen to and appreciate Erika’s playing. Erika’s only audience is her mother who “knows nothing about music, but she forces her child into its yoke” (26). Erika does have the talent for music but there is still a gap between her talent and the quality of a master. The author may imply that Erika’s pride leads her to choose a piece too professional and abstruse to touch and move the mass audience. Due to her detaching herself from the masses, Erika renders her music merely full of professional skills and techniques but fails in emotionally resonating with the judge and audience. Finally, this sense of superiority leads to her
downfall in her career. After this decisive failure in her debut, Erika’s ever promising musical career is totally broken and smashed. Erika can never be the world famous pianist anymore and she will be soon no longer the focus envied and idolized by anyone.
This key incident is a severe blow to Erika’s career and her original sense of the self.
This failed recital renders the ideal of being on the top of the world totally impossible.
Erika’s performance contradicts all her mother’s wishes and expectations. Erika does not become a world-famous virtuoso. Instead, Erika only climbs on the “position of piano teacher at the Vienna Conservatory.” Most importantly, this incident strongly shakes Erika’s
narcissistic belief in herself and it is almost a humiliation to her narcissistic sense of perfect self. The Mother’s ideal of the world famous pianist is completely transplanted to her daughter. In “The Dissection of the Psychical Personality,” Freud notes that “a child’s superego is in fact constructed on the model not of its parents but of its parents’ superego”
(67). In other words, a child will identify with not its parents but the superego of its parents.
Ego ideal which is one part of superego refers to one’s highest aspirations, goals, and ideals.
The narrator says, “A world-famous pianist—that is Mother’s ideal” (24). The mother’s value system has being influenced and shaped her daughter’s superego. Erika’s mother also
personally and forcibly transplants her value system and instruction to her daughter with the concrete actions. Consciously and unconsciously, Erika identifies with her mother ideal and she has being haunted by the ideal of being on the top of the world and the compulsion to achieve the artistic perfection.
Freud contends in “New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis,” that the superego is
“the vehicle of the ego ideal by which the ego measures itself, towards which it strives, and whose demands for ever-increasing perfection it is always striving to fulfill” (65). The ego ideal is the standard that an individual measures himself and strives to fulfill. The ego ideal represents one’s aspiration, ideals, values, and goals which one would like to be. According to Freud, if one fails to live up to the ego ideal, this will produce the feelings of guilt and shame in an individual. The frustration of satisfaction at the ego ideal will impair one’s sense of self-esteem. In “Narcissism in the Novels of Herman Melville,” Susan K. Dyer argues, “A person’s sense of self-esteem is determined by the distance between his actual self and his ego ideal” (19). The fulfillment of the ego ideal will enhance one’s sense of self-esteem but the frustration of the ego ideal will produce the sense of shame. In Kohut’s Freudian Vision5, Heinz Kohut remarks that “if the person does not live up to his superego standards (ego ideal), he experiences some degree of narcissistic injury (a feeling of inferiority), because the ego ideal derives from the original narcissism” (90). Kohut interprets Freud’s ideas that if an individual fails to fulfill the demands or the aspirations set forth by the ego ideal, he will undergo some degree of narcissistic injury or the feeling of inferiority, for the ego ideal derives from the primary narcissism. The ego ideal is the remnants of one’s primary narcissism, the most primary perfect sense of the self.
5 Kohut’s Freudian Vision is Philip F. D. Rubovits‐Seitz’s collection of Heinz Kohut’s previous lectures on Freud’s theories and ideas. Heinz Kohut was a lecturer who taught Freud’s theories in the Chicago Institute for
Psychoanalysis.
Before this incident, Erika firmly believes that she must step on the top of the world to be a world famous pianist someday. As the narrator says, “Erika, an adolescent, licks at one of the blocks and believes that a recital she gives is already the Chopin Competition. She believes that the peak is only a few inches away!” (25). During her adolescence, Erika sacrifices all her youth to piano playing and strives to become the world famous pianist. She believes without doubt that she is climbing on the ladder of success after swallowing all the tears and painstaking efforts to piano playing. After practicing one difficult level after another, she thinks that she can reach the highest peak only within few inches. However, Erika fails to fulfill the ideal of being on the top of the world. This failure leaves Erika the severe narcissistic injury to her sense of the perfect self but simultaneously leads Erika to gradually awake from the illusion of music genius. The cruel reality betrays the Mother’s expectations on Erika. Most importantly, this failure turns a promising music talent into a frustrated and shame-prone piano teacher.
However, Erika’s mother still deliberately forgets the reality and defect that Erika fails in the recital and this puts an end to her music career. Her mother still keeps forcing Erika to climb on the ladder of music career and reproaching that she is too passive and lack of ambition. As the narrator indicates, “Mother complains about Erika’s lack of ambition. The child has been hearing these wrong notes for more than thirty years now. Feigning hope, the daughter realizes that the only thing she can look forward to is tenure: the title of professor”
(32). In order to pacify and comfort her mother, Erika has to feign that she still has the hope and chance to achieve the dream of a world famous pianist. Nevertheless, Erika clearly realizes that her music career already ends in that shameful recital. Yet the Mother’s
complaints which keep reminding Erika of her failure can be viewed as the second injury to Erika. “Whenever they fight, Mother reproaches the child for having once stumbled
artistically” (197). As long as she has a quarrel with her mother, the Mother would mention and reproach Erika’s failure in her recital.