The Surrealist Erotic: Mutilation and Intimacy in Unica Zuern's "Dark Spring"

In reading Dark Spring one feels the nameless young girl acting as the main character is much more psychologically complex than what is originally presented in the text. For one example of how her character acts contrary to someone her age, one only has to go as far as the incident wherein, after learning of her parents' failing relationship and their polyamorous ways, one of her father's "friends" presents the girl with a "big, expensive" doll (40). The young girl's reaction to this doll says a substantial amount about the idea of eroticism within a violent action; in its entirety, the novella says this about the fate of the doll:

Angry and desperate about the unhappy conditions inside her home, she takes a knife and cuts out the doll's eyes. She slices open the belly of the doll and tears her expensive clothes to shreds. None of the adults utter a single word about this destruction. (40)

This passage is dripping with Freudian imagery and archetypal symbolism, both of which played arguably large roles in the development of the Surrealist oeuvre. The simple act of destruction clearly communicates a desire to dramatically alter the living conditions the young girl is in; one can interpret the gouging out of the doll's eyes in one of two ways: either she is jealous of the doll's ability to gaze upon the home life of the girl as an impassive observer and wants to rob her of that ability, or she is gouging out the eyes because she is ashamed and wants to hide the quickly-dissolving home she thought she was in from this doll and blinds it out of mercy. The slicing of the belly hearkens to the idea of the womb, and of either Cesarean delivery of a child (birth) or demolition of the womb/abortion (death). The ripping of the doll's clothes is a way of demoting the doll's status from that of an elegant creature from an elegant woman (her father's cohort) to that of a pile of rags and mutilated plastic.

A Surrealist would be quick to point out, however, that this destruction is also very intimate. It is, in fact, one of the more intimate passages in the book, though "intimacy" may be the wrong word. The young girl essentially rapes the doll, which provides another interpretation of ripping the clothing (as an act of power over a weaker individual), the gouging of the eyes (so that the victim cannot identify the attacker) and the slicing of the stomach (to negate any chance of propagation of evidence in the form of a child).

This event takes place shortly after the girl experiences her "sexual awakening" in that she becomes aware of sexual organs and begins to understand that sexuality plays a very large but almost unmentioned role in her family. The rape of her doll is her first sexual act, and while it is repulsive in its rapaciousness, it is also disarming in its eroticism and intimacy. Instead of being acted upon, as is the case when the girl is raped by her brother or when she goes to the basement to be with the dog, the girl is taking the active role here, controlling her own sexual explorations and empowering herself as she is unable to do in the rest of the novella.

A very brief, but very powerful scene.