Psychoanalytical Interpretations: Kate Atkinson's Behind the Scenes at the Museum

Abstract

The study investigates Kate Atkinson's Behind the Scenes at the Museum (1995), which uses the museum concept as a metaphor to examine how societies choose to remember and forget things across different time periods. It shows how Atkinson creates an existential basis through Ruby Lennox's birth moment, which shows how trauma affects the development of human identity across time.

The paper demonstrates how Atkinson uses the Freudian "“Family Romance complex” to create the central figure’s, Ruby, psychological defense mechanism for handling her mother’s absence. The novel’s non-linear footnotes reveal a genealogy of domestic entrapment that unfolds throughout the narrative according to the character’s psychic defense mechanism. The psychic subconscious emerges through these footnotes, which uncover the Lacanian "Real" that exists in the drowning of Ruby's twin Pearl. It shows an event in the past, that causes trauma remains unspeakable until it becomes part of personal identity.

The paper uses Bakhtinian dialogism to show Ruby's character, who becomes an "illegitimate woman writer" who uses dialogic storytelling to fight against male-centric values and biological fundamentalism. The paper shows how Atkinson uses historiographic metafiction in her novel to create a new understanding of history, which transforms the past from a place of bondage into a “cupboard full of light.” Ruby’s curatorial work allows her to change from a broken artifact into a discursive subject who creates different methods of understanding history and culture.