Claustrophobic Anxiety in Emma Donoghue’s Room

Abstract

The thesis, at hand, analyzes Emma Donoghue’s novel Room from the perspectives of claustrophobic anxiety. Claustrophobic anxiety is a kind of phobic anxiety which is related to the fear of an enclosed place. The claustrophobic anxiety is caused due to the protagonist’s oedipal desire to have his genital well into the uterus of mother so that it will have its right space inside her. But as he desires this, he suffers anxiety that he might get locked up inside and harm him when the father will exercise his legitimate power over his mother’s body. In the novel, Old Nick, the father, is having a forced relationship with his mother since her 19th years, keeping her under secluded place, and Jack is born under such a claustrophobic condition. This is where he develops unconscious love for mother and fears attack or invasion by his father. This thesis is divided into four different chapters each of which highlights the claustrophobic condition experienced by the protagonists and their efforts to relieve from it. The thesis concludes that the actual cause of claustrophobic anxiety on part of Jack is nothing but his own oedipal drive for his mother. And the very claustrophobic anxiety guides and controls their fate throughout the novel.