Charlotte Scott on Kristeva's “ick” & “abject,” Much Ado, Twelfth Night, and Hamlet implications

I am reposting some thoughts from Charlotte Scott, who extends some ideas of Julia Kristeva regarding the “ick” and the “abject”: [1] Charlotte writes,

“Whilst the abject may be those things, fluids, forms, faeces that we ‘thrust aside in order to live’, (Kristeva) the ick is what we reject in order not to become.”

Often we may fail to attend closely to the elements she identifies in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing and Twelfth Night: We feel a cathartic effect as we view or read the plays, but at times we may become too familiar with them, or with scholarly theories that address them. But when people like Charlotte Scott draw attention to them like this, following a kind of golden thread (Blake) [2], we become defamiliarized (Viktor Shklovsky) enough to give it fresh attention.

In Hamlet, Claudius, as murderer of his brother and usurper of the throne, would greatly prefer that Hamlet “thrust aside” his mourning “in order to live,” and Gertrude joins him in discouraging Hamlet’s mourning. This is related to the idea of the abject (used in self-interest on Claudius' part).

But given his mother’s hasty and "incestuous" remarriage, Hamlet doesn’t consider that his mother may have remarried mostly to project an image of unity and strength so as to avoid an attack from Young Fortinbras; Hamlet’s focus is on the “ick” of what he sees in his mother that he does not want to become.

After speaking with the ghost and learning of its claims to suffer in something like purgatory, Hamlet is even more committed not to become (“not to be”?) like his uncle and mother in what the ghost claims is an adulterous passion; he wishes proof of his uncle’s guilt, and to convince his mother to change her path.

Possessed by the “ick” of concupiscence (aversion to sex via fear of hell), he bids Ophelia get to a “nunnery,” probably literally a convent, although the slang meaning of nunnery as brothel is certainly the feared context of sin (and “ick”).

Jung’s idea of the fear of one’s shadow is related here: Sometimes, by acting out of fear of the shadow, we end up becoming more like it. In attempting to flee our fate, we only hasten the meeting (like Laius and Oedipus).

Hamlet does not want to become like his uncle, a killer of someone’s father; and he does not want to send Claudius to heaven by killing him at prayer. He wants to play God and send Claudius to hell for killing his father (ick?). He wants to catch Claudius doing something sinful, instead of praying.

He thinks Claudius is spying on him and his mother, and lashes out to stab the man behind the arras.But it’s not Claudius. It’s Polonius. Now Hamlet, who was fleeing what he found reprehensible (the “ick”), has become more like Claudius: A killer of someone’s father.

Thanks to Charlotte for her thought-provoking post, and to you for reading.

NOTES:
[1] You can find Charlotte’s LinkedIn post here:
http://tinyurl.com/3se8a5nu

[2] William Blake, 1808, from notebook:
I give you the end of a golden string;
   Only wind it into a ball,
It will lead you in at Heaven’s gate,
   Built in Jerusalem’s wall.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/I_give_you_the_end_of_a_golden_string

IMAGES:
Left: Julia Kristeva, fair use via Internet Open Library: https://covers.openlibrary.org/a/id/7260911-M.jpg
RIght: Charlotte Scott, fair use via LinkedIn:
https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/D4E03AQHRjYdbEcLYcw/profile-displayphoto-shrink_400_400/0/1699222009316?e=1709769600&v=beta&t=_ZBGWcWEMgCoHb2yKlksRlAiviV1Qw_qhi3bt266J6k

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