SOURCE: "Pushkin's 'Queen of Spades': A Displaced Mother Figure," in American Imago, Vol. 41, No. 2, Summer, 1984, pp. 201-09.

Alexander Pushkin's story The Queen of Spades, written in 1833, deals with a young officer named Hermann, who is obsessed with obtaining the secret of three cards which will bring him fabulous wealth. Hermann's single-mindedness in extracting the secret from a rich old countess leads him to court her ward, Lizaveta Ivanovna. As the young officer stands in the countess' boudoir one night demanding the secret of the three cards from the 87-year-old woman, she suddenly dies of fright. Several days later, the ghost of the countess appears to Hermann in a dream and discloses the secret on condition that he play not more than one card in twenty-four hours and that he never play again after three successive nights. Before departing, the ghost of the old countess tells Hermann that she will forgive him her death on condition that he marry her ward, Lizaveta Ivanovna. Hermann then attempts to win his fortune at the house of the famed Moscow punter Chekalinsky. On the first night, Hermann plays a three and on the second, a seven. On the third night, however, instead of drawing an ace, Hermann draws the queen of spades.

"Ace wins!" cried Hermann, showing his card.

"Your queen has lost," said Chekalinsky, sweetly.

Hermann stared; instead of an ace, there lay before him the queen of spades! He could not believe his eyes nor could he understand how he had made such a mistake.

Pushkin remarks laconically at the end of the story that Hermann went insane and is now confined to the psychiatric ward of the Obukhov Hospital.

Interpretations of Pushkin's story have tried to explain why Hermann made his fatal mistake with the cards and drew a queen instead of an ace. If we choose to interpret the account as a ghost story, then we can assume that the countess, out of a desire to revenge her own death, appeared to Hermann and gave him the wrong information. If, however, we examine the story as a psychological tale, then the issues become more complex. If the appearance of the deceased countess to Hermann is a product of his distorted imagination, why does he fantasize precisely this sequence of cards. Critics have shown that the numbers three and seven have been running through Hermann's mind throughout the story. Prior to his dream in which he is told the secret, Hermann had earlier thought to himself that prudence and moderation would increase his capital three-fold, sevenfold. This could therefore lead Hermann to concoct a combination of cards made up of three numbers. As for the ace, the word tuz in Russian meaning 'ace' also means 'big shot' and has been taken to mean Hermann's desire to become a tuz in real life.

I propose to indicate that Hermann's actions are the result of an unresolved oedipal fixation in which the old countess serves as a displaced mother figure to whom Hermann is bound by erotic ties which prevent him from attaching himself to her young ward, Lizaveta Ivanovna. The oedipal fixation brings guilt feelings over his attachment which in turn leads him to commit his fatal mistake with the cards.

Who is this strange man Hermann whose name alludes to his non-Russian origins? The officers in his regiment can only speculate on his character since he has chosen not to reveal anything of himself to them. The countess' grandson Tomsky comments that he has "the profile of a Napoleon, and the soul of a Mephistopheles." Rumour in the regiment also has it that Hermann has three crimes on his conscience. Coldly, he says of himself that he is unwilling to "risk the necessary in hopes of winning the superfluous." He is a shadowy figure, aloof from society, capable of cruelty and of intense obsession.

Hermann is in his mid-twenties with no clear social ties. Yet, he is not as callous or cold as he is initially presented. On some level of which he himself is not aware, Hermann seeks the very bonds that he has denied for himself. He hears Tomsky's story of his grandmother, the aged countess, and his imagination becomes fired. On a conscious level, he becomes obsessed with procuring the secret of the three cards while unconsciously, he develops an interest in the countess herself. Through Tomsky's unwitting remarks, Hermann learns that an erotic relationship with the countess may be possible:

My grandmother who was always very hard on extravagant young men, took pity, however, upon Chaplitsky. She mentioned to him three cards, telling him to play them one after the other, at the same time exacting from him a solemn promise that he would never play cards again as long as he lived.

Through the remarks made by Tomsky, Pushkin suggests that the countess might have taken the young Chaplitsky as her lover. The idea was certainly not beyond the realm of possibility, particularly in light of the countess' former reputation in Paris as la Vénus moscovite where Richelieu courted her and almost shot himself in despair over her cruel rejection. The possibility of an erotic relation between Chaplitsky and the countess is not lost on Hermann. Immediately on hearing the story, Hermann ponders how he can best procure the secret, and says to himself:

"Why should I not try my fortune? I must get introduced to her and win her favor—perhaps become her lover . . . "

Hermann's bond with the countess is established before he ever meets her. As in the classical oedipal situation, his ties to her are filial as well as erotic. The filial bonds are alluded to throughout the story. To begin with, the countess at 87 (Hermann is in his twenties) is old enough to be his mother, even his grandmother or great-grandmother. The technique of displacement at work here is the same as in fairy tales in which the negative mother or father is metamorphosed to a degree that he/she is not recognized. Through displacement, Hermann is spared the realization that he is dealing with a mother figure.

Pushkin further suggests a mother-son bond in a conversation which takes place between the countess and her grandson Tomsky. The countess dreads modern novels and implores Tomsky not to bring her any:

"What do you mean, g rand'maman?"

"That is, a novel, in which the hero strangles neither his father nor his mother, and in which there are no drowned bodies. I have a great horror of them."

Considering Pushkin's economy of style, such passages should not be passed off lightly. The countess is alluding to her own death which will be brought about, not by the protagonist of some modern novel, but by the "hero" of the very story in which she herself is a character, a hero who stands in a son-relationship to her.

A mother-son bond is also intimated by Pushkin at the countess' funeral where Hermann approaches the coffin to pay his last respects to the old woman. Suddenly, it seems to Hermann as if the deceased winked at him, and at that very moment Hermann, stepping away from the coffin, misses his footing and falls to the ground. At this point, a relative of the deceased countess whispers to his neighbor that the man who had just fallen was the countess' illegitimate son.

Hermann, alone in the world, finds someone whom he subliminally needs to fulfill both his filial and erotic longings at the same time. Thus, without ever having met her, he falls into an oedipal relationship with the countess from which not even Lizaveta Ivanovna can extract him.

Lizaveta serves as more than a pawn for Hermann to win his way into the good graces of the countess. Hermann, in fact, does fall in love with Liza. On the day when he finds himself in front of the countess' house as if drawn there by fate:

He stopped and began to stare at the windows. In one of these he saw the head of a black-haired woman, which was bent probably over some book or handwork. The head was raised. Hermann saw a fresh-cheeked face and a pair of black eyes. That moment decided his fate.

Liza is the proper character to deflect Hermann from his oedipal tie to the countess. She reaches out to him from her loneliness and abject denigration by the countess. And Hermann, it seems, in turn reaches back. His first letter to Liza is a translation copied word for word from a German novel. Following that, however:

They were no longer translated from the German. Hermann wrote them under the inspiration of passion, and spoke in his own language, and they bore full testimony to the inflexibility of his desire and the disordered condition of his uncontrollable imagination.

The romance between these two young people is broken off at the very moment when it might have begun. Had Pushkin composed his story more in line with the sentimental romances devoured by the Russian public in the early, mid-nineteenth century, Hermann would have freed Liza from her dependent position and married her. The choice between Liza and the old countess would not even have existed for the hero of such sentimental tales.

The erotic nature of the relations between Hermann and the countess continues to be underscored by Pushkin both to stress the oedipal bond linking the two and to point up the lost possibility of the relationship with Liza. At the very moment when Hermann should be in Liza's bedchamber observing the mysteries of her toilette, Pushkin places Hermann in the countess' chamber where he watches her undressing:

Her cap, decorated with roses, was unpinned, and then her powdered wig was removed from off her white and closely-cropped head. Hairpins fell in showers around her. Her yellow satin dress, embroidered with silver, fell down at her swollen feet.

Although Hermann sees only the withered flesh of the countess, his standing behind the screen, peering silently, as the unsuspecting woman undresses, is fraught with erotic implications.

Pushkin returns to the erotic theme at the funeral of the old countess. The bishop says of her:

The angel of death found her engaged in pious meditation and waiting for the midnight bridegroom.

The bishop takes his imagery from the New Testament in which Christ is referred to as 'the midnight bridegroom.' If Pushkin is employing another bit of irony here by contrasting the countess waiting for her 'midnight bridegroom' with Liza's anxious vigil for a meeting that was not to be, he also reaccents the erotic ties between the 87-year-old countess and the young upstart.

It has been noted that Hermann, in his seemingly callous treatment of Liza, reveals his psychological incapacity for love. Is he really the Mephistophelian demon that Tomsky suggests or is he, in more clinical terms, a man who is blocked from full relations with a woman his own age because of his inability to sever the ties with the mother figure? His initial and seemingly sincere outpourings of emotion towards Liza suggest that, at least on some level, he craves a normal heterosexual relationship for which he is psychologically not fully prepared.

We are still left with the problem of Hermann's fatal mistake at the card table, a mistake which is astounding for his methodical personality. The key to why Hermann makes the fatal slip lies again in his unresolved relationship to the countess and also to the man who functions as the father figure in this story.

The countess continues to be the object of Hermann's fixation after her death. Her image rests heavily on his mind as he contributed to her death by stepping suddenly out from behind the screen in her bedroom, and thereby unwittingly frightening her to death. Hermann is understandably weighed down by guilt over the countess, but this guilt over her death is intertwined with his attachment to her which he cannot shake even after her death. Pushkin had told us earlier that Hermann has at least three crimes upon his conscience. Why then is he so disturbed by this one, a crime for which he was only indirectly responsible?

The night after the funeral, an apparition of the countess tells him that she will grant him forgiveness for her death on condition that he marry Lizaveta Ivanovna. This scene is critical. That the countess appears to him indicates that his oedipal attachment to her is still strong, but the quality of the advice she gives him ("marry my ward, Lizaveta Ivanovna") suggests that part of him knows that psychological liberation can only come through marriage to a woman his own age.

As suggested, Hermann's fatal error at Chekalinsky's card table is connected with his guilt over being unable to free himself from his fixation on the mother figure. Instead of choosing the three, seven, ace from the deck, as the ghost of the dead countess had instructed him, Hermann chooses a three, seven, queen. The double entendre of the word dama in Russian indicates that it was the queen-countess who had occupied Hermann's thoughts. The word dama refers to the 'queen' in the deck of cards, but it also means 'lady' as well as 'wife.' Hermann, who has dwelled on the three cards since the night the secret was revealed to him, replaces the last card, the ace (tuz) with the queen (dama). Moreover, the word dama as 'wife' further points up Hermann's erotic involvement with the old woman.

That Hermann is unable to shake the image of this woman from his mind is also connected with the presence of Chekalinsky, the Moscow punter, who functions as the older male authority figure in the story. Hermann's oedipal ties to the old countess become even stronger as the image of the father figure in the person of Chekalinsky is introduced. Chekalinsky has earned the reputation as the most skillful punter in Moscow, and it is against him that Hermann will stake a fortune at cards, believing himself to be in possession of the countess' famous secret. The image of the countess becomes more firmly implanted in Hermann's mind through the intrusion of the older male authority figure whose presence quickens the young male's interest in the mother figure. Freud felt that the oedipal ties between son and mother were strengthened by the father as rival.

Chekalinsky, a man of about sixty, is old enough to be Hermann's father, even his grandfather. Again, Pushkin employs the same device of displacement he had used in pointing to the age difference between Hermann and the countess. In a more subtle way, it masks the parallel between Chekalinsky and a father figure. Since Hermann's sole intent is to beat him at cards with the use of the secret, Chekalinsky becomes Hermann's arch rival in Moscow. The moment that he enters Chekalinsky's house with the intent of outpunting him, his obsession with the old woman intensifies accordingly and leads to his fatal blunder at cards.

To liberate himself from his oedipal fixation, Hermann needs to resolve his relationship with the father figure as well. Now, Hermann's ego is such that a comparison is made between him and Napoleon by the countess' grandson Tomsky. Hermann is a man who wants to make his way in the world by himself. Pushkin makes a veiled reference to this aspect of Hermann's character in the epigraph to Chapter VI of the story:

"Attendez!"

"How dare you say attendez to me?"

"Your Excellency, I said: 'Attendez, sir.'"

The man who is referred to as 'Your Excellency' in this epigraph will not accept conditions or restraints imposed on him from without, be it from a lackey or a peer. The epigraph is appropriately placed in exactly the chapter where Hermann goes down in defeat to Chekalinsky who enjoys greater authority and commands greater respect than he does.

While alive, the countess denied Hermann the secret of the three winning cards. As mentioned, the countess' apparition which appears to Hermann is her attempt to wean him by her urging him to marry Lizaveta Ivanovna. But, his more firmly implanted oedipal ties win out, and his guilt over those ties leads to his error at cards and finally to the loss of his hold on reality altogether. At the conclusion to The Queen of Spades, Pushkin laconically remarks that Hermann is now institutionalized at the Obukhov Hospital where he spends his days muttering, "Three, seven, ace! Three, seven, queen." His obsession with the old woman still haunts him.

A word about the fate of Lizaveta Ivanovna and Tomsky, about whom Pushkin comments briefly at the end of his story: We are told that Tomsky is engaged to marry the Princess Polina, the superficial society belle with whom he has flirted throughout the story. Lizaveta Ivanovna is said to have married a pleasant young man, the son of the countess' former steward. If we view Lizaveta and Tomsky with the oedipal theme in mind, these two characters can have the kind of "normal" relationship with a mate that eludes Hermann as long as he remains tied to the mother figure.