Psychoanalysis, “Gothic” Children’s Literature, and the Canonization of Coraline

Neil Gaiman’s novel Coraline (2002) has, for many critics, come to epitomize twenty-first-century gothic children’s fiction. Coraline borrows from Freud’s “The ‘Uncanny’” to create an animistic realm, populated by symbols readily interpreted as infantile cathexes and repressed material. Critical assessment of the novel likewise evaluates it in these terms. Indeed, it is something of a critical commonplace to declare that psychoanalysis, the gothic, and the uncanny are the most apt tools for understanding the “child.” This paper asks what is culturally invested in this psychoanalytic reading of childhood. Using the case of Coraline, and remaining neutral about the truth value of psychoanalysis, this paper reopens gothicized uncanny childhood space to alternative readings.