Biblical and psychoanalytic allegory in Jane White’s 'Quarry'

Abstract

This article attempts to prove that Jane White’s novel Quarry is centred around two interrelated allegories: biblical and psychoanalytic. The characters lend themselves to allegorical interpretation either as equivalents of biblical figures or as representations of psychoanalytic concepts. It is argued that the overlapping of the biblical and psychoanalytic allegories produces a radical revision of Freud’s view on religion. Freud believed that all religious behaviour stems from the Oedipus complex; Quarry, this article claims, relates the Oedipus complex not to the origin of faith but to its loss. The article also discusses Quarry’s ideological ambiguity in its attitude towards religion and suggests what this ambiguity derives from.