852
PARTISAN REVIEW
Yes, my mother was barely able to breast-feed me, Poe announces
by this deceptive and mocking splotch on the breast of the second
one-eyed cat, and so I hate her for this also--even though the main
resentment comes from the fact that women have no penis.
All these grievances find expression
in
this tale but, as it were,
in
dream form. When he speaks of the dread and horror the animal
inspires, its owner confesses these feelings were heightened
"by one of the merest chima:ras it would be possible to conceive. My
wife had called my attention, more than once, to the character of the
mark of white hair, of which I have spoken ... this mark, although
large, had originally been very indefinite; but, by slow degrees ... it
had, at length, assumed a rigorous distinctness of outline. It was
now the representation of an object that I shudder to name--and
for this, above all, I loathed, and dreaded, and would have rid
myself of the monster
had I dared-it
was now, I say, the image
of a hideous-of a ghastly thing-of the
GALLOWS••.."
Thus, in the white patch that splotches the eat's breast, symbol of
the first sensuous pleasure bestowed by mother on child, there ap–
pears, as though drawn
in
milk, the symbol of the criminal's future
retribution: a punishment which, by the law of talion, is equal to
that to which the mother was earlier subjected: hanging. The ex–
piation will equal the crime-the criminal seems to swear-by the
milk of his mother! And just as the castrated mother was rephallized
in death-worst mockery of all-so, also, will be the impotent son
in
his turn, when he meets the same death. But,
in
neither case, will this
rephallizing be more real than the milk in the withered breasts of his
consumptive mother. All in all, in the hangman's noose, only death
remains for both. Here, we may again recall that this penis symbol
of the hanged body represents the pendulent, limp and, therefore,
dead penis.
The cat, however, which bears this fearful sign on its breast,
manifests increased attachment to its owner, who feels "wretched
beyond the wretchedness of mere Humanity...."
(fA brute beast,"
he cries, "to work out for
me-for
me a man, fashioned
in
the image
of the High
God"-i.e.,
the Father, the male of males-"so much
of insufferable woe! Alas! neither by day nor by night knew I the
blessing of Rest any more!" Thus the mother,
in
this most horrible
