Madeline Beudet’s chair serves as a vessel for one’s imagination to distract from the truth. The reality of her life is contorted by a husband who represses her conscious mind so much so that she resorts to daydreams in order to escape him. Madeline’s daydreams are the only things that make her smile; there is a reason for this. It is a way for her to explore the unexplored, to see the unseen, and to free herself from the confines of her home, which remind her of her husband (1).
By doing something r
adical, like daydreaming, Madeline leaves her reality and escapes into a place where she is more vulnerable, less confined, and things seem less dull. When she sits in her chair reading her magazine, you can tell she is about to start daydreaming because the world around her seems to go away. It turns black, into a void. It puts her into a place that separates her from the things she does not want to see, or been seen by. The gaze of her husband being on of those things. Like dreams,
daydreams are the fulfillment of wishes (2),
achieved in Madeline’s case through hallucination. She sees a man stealing away her husband because this is what she desires. She dreams of a fast car driving through the clouds, because she wants to be free.
Monsieur Beudet never seems to let Madeline out of his sight. Even when he isn’t there, she still feels his presence. For Madeline, daydreams are her only way to make him go away. The tennis player who scoops up her husband is an example of the satisfaction her dreams bring him. The psychological repression of any self-expression when she isn’t dreaming is what causes the satisfaction from her daydreams (3). When Monsieur Beudet see’s Madeline laughing hysterically at the thought of him being carried away by the tennis player, he mocks her laugh from his desk, which guards the window, facing into the room glaring at Madeline whenever she sits in her reading chair, or while she’s at the piano.
Joe Pecoraro
Sources:
(1) Molly Jordan (2015) Active Imagination: A Passport to the Soul, Psychological Perspectives, 58:2, 210-230
(2) Varendonck, J. (1921). The psychology of day-dreams. London: G. Allen & Unwin, ltd..
(3) Leader, C. (2015), Evil, Imagination and the Unrepressed Unconscious: The Value of William Blake’s Satanic ‘Error’ for Clinical Practice. British Journal of Psychotherapy, 31: 311–332.