Godwin’s Caleb Williams: “A Half-Told and Mangled Tale”

Critics have traditionally approached the themes of power and powerlessness in Godwin’s Caleb Williams almost exclusively in socio-political terms. Such a perspective does not, however, finally account for what readers testify to as their feverishly intense reading experience of the novel. This essay contends that this “half-told and mangled tale,” as narrator Caleb terms it in the final line, is most fruitfully comprehended in the language of psychoanalytic theory. For this is a story of omnipotence and impotence whose fantastic accidents, abrupt plot turns, and horrifyingly obsessive mood is not traceable to Godwin’s political philosophy or oft-bemoaned stylistic faults. Rather, within the framework of libidinal development described by Sigmund Freud and Melanie Klein, Caleb’s narration of causally disconnected events and his deep-seated ambivalence toward his master-surrogate father Lord Falkland become understandable when conceived as a fundamentally narcissistic personality unconsciously engaged in a homosexual struggle with his domineering father. The world of Caleb Williams is the narrator’s search for the ideal family of romance, indeed a projection of Caleb’s self and a narcissistic dream world, with the various characters serving as different aspects of Caleb’s fragmented ego.