We know how strained Stevenson's relations with his father were. The elder Stevenson was not sympathetic to his son's liberal ideas and later he opposed him in his lovemaking. Two more serious oppositions to a young man, one to the inclinations of his intellect and the other to his love, can not be imagined. The novelist never realised what the feature of the murder of his father in his dream meant, and how it arose. If in his dream his father appeared as rich and wicked with a damnable temper, that is what Stevenson really thought his father was. In the dream the son lived abroad to avoid the father, and this Stevenson also actually did in life, and as a result, by the way, we have some of his early books of travel, and I dare say if these were closely examined evidence of his strained relations with his father would appear.
As we know, in dreams there is considerable distortion, and the person of our dream in an instant becomes another individual. This occurs in Stevenson's dream. No doubt the dreamer's father was actually made up of a combination of the elder Stevenson and Mr. Osbourne, both of whom Stevenson wished were out of the way. But a more important distortion takes place, the merging of the second wife of the dreamer's murdered father with the married woman in real life whom Stevenson loved. We recall that in the dream the dreamer lives with his father's second wife in the house after the murder, but there is a barrier between them, for the dreamer is haunted by the woman's possible knowledge of his guilt. He loves her really and they return arm in arm from the scene of the murder. He did not want her to know that he had committed the murder because he wanted to marry her. He searched her possessions for the evidence of the guilt she found and then bursts out asking why she tortures him, he is not an enemy of hers; that he really loves her, is implied. She also, it appears, had loved him and makes confession of the fact. No doubt this scene must be largely a picture of the proposal of Stevenson to his future wife. The situation depicted showing the feeling of guilt the dreamer has for his murder may be traced to his own guilty thoughts in actual life on account of his unconscious wishes for both husband and father to be out of the way. These feelings appear in the remorse of the murderer and in his suspicion of discovery by the woman he loves. We might trace the dream to much earlier material in Stevenson's life if we knew all the facts. We do know that he had an earlier love affair in youth in which he was disappointed and that he has left us poems celebrating that episode.
The dream concludes with the implication that the dreamer and the step-mother marry as they had confessed their love to one another; there are no longer any remorses or fears on one side or suspicions on the other, and the obstacles to the marriage, the objections of the dreamer's father, the legal ties of the husband to the beloved woman, have been removed. Stevenson wanted all this to happen in real life and later it incidentally did turn out that way. Both his father and the husband of Mrs. Osbourne were removed as barriers, the former by acquiescence and forgiving, the latter by divorce. The dreamer represents as fulfilled his wish to marry Mrs. Osbourne, with all opposition removed. The dreamer's father is both the elder Stevenson and Mr. Osbourne, the father and the husband respectively, made one in the dream; the second wife of the father, step-mother of the dreamer, becomes Mrs. Osbourne, Stevenson's love who became a wife a second time. Thus we have had what Freud calls condensation and displacement in the dream.
The dream sheds much light on the most important period of his life; it fits in with the facts left us by the biographer. We see what his repressed wishes were in those days and how they appeared realised in his dream.
II
Freud first applied his theory of dream interpretation to fiction in 1907 in his study of Jensen's Gradiva (1903).
Freud might have analysed Gautier's story Arria Marcella instead of Jensen's Gradiva, which was obviously suggested by the plot of Gautier's tale. Arria Marcella appeared in 1852, over fifty years before Jensen's story. It gives one a good opportunity for studying Gautier himself and is an effective corroboration of Freud's theories on dreams.
Octavius sees in a museum a piece of lava that had cooled over a woman's breast and preserved its form. He falls in love with the original woman, though he knows she is dead. He is a fetich worshipper and is enamoured of ancient types of women preserved in art; he has even been cast into ecstasy by the sight of hair from a Roman woman's tomb. He dreams of the "glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome." He is a pagan and loves form and beauty. In his dream that night he is transported to the year of the eruption of Vesuvius and witnesses a performance of a play by Plautus in a Roman theatre. Here he sees the real woman whose shapely breast had preserved its form in the lava that killed her. She also sees him and loves him. Her slave leads him to her home. She is a Roman courtesan and her name is Arria Marcella. She tells him that she has come to life because of his desire at the museum to meet her in life. His wish in waking life is fulfilled in his dream. As a matter of fact, as the poet comments, art preserves as alive all the beauty of antiquity.
Octavius realises his wish and, soon, kisses and sighs are heard. But the charm is soon dispelled, for a Christian man comes in who reproaches her, even though she did not belong to his religion. She refuses to abandon Octavius, but the Christian, by an exorcism, makes Arria release Octavius, who awakens and swoons. He loved her for the rest of his life and when he married later, in memory he was unfaithful to his wife, for he always thought of Arria.
The meaning of all this is obvious. It is an expression of Gautier's favourite theory that Christianity is hostile to love and beauty, and has deprived the world of much of the greatness of paganism. But there is more here than Gautier himself imagined. First, the story like all dreams is a wish-fulfilment of the unconscious. Not only the girl but the world of her time becomes a reality and Octavius lives in his dream in the pagan world. There are the moments of anxiety where the Christian interferes and hinders the satisfaction of Octavius's love. Freud's theory is that an anxiety dream is formed when a repressed emotion encounters a strong resistance.