MALAYSIA LITERATURE IN ENGLISH ~ BY HELEN ONG M.K.

“Stuck to the Beyond”- A Psychoanalytic Criticism on “The Rape of Martha Teoh” by

Tunku Halim

Tunku Halim’s “The Rape of Martha Teoh” is a horror short story set in a postcolonial

era in either Malaysia or Singapore. The story revolved around a woman named Martha Teoh,

who is constantly haunted by a ghost of her past- her uncaring husband, to the point that it

transcends into her reality. In the story, Martha, was in a loveless marriage with her indifferent

husband and up until his death, she was still stuck to him mentally. Throughout the story was

told in Martha’s perspective, and readers are spectators to Martha’s train of thought, feelings that

was reflected from the beginning till the end of the story. Utilizing psychoanalytic criticism, this

study intends to examine and interpret the subject, Martha Teoh’s thoughts and behavior patterns

and gives further explanation and evidence on the dominance of the unconscious over the

conscious mind.

In this paper, I will be examining covering the topic of defense mechanisms, which could

be elaborated to three parts: denial, rationalization and projection to explain the character’s

behavior and motivations. Martha Teoh is a wife to a person one would consider to be an

uncaring and self-serving person. In the beginning of the story, it should be noted that while

Martha had mentioned few times of being rape by her husband, peculiarly emphasizing that the

rape had occurred just once and never again. Following two are excerpts from the text where

Martha had mentioned of her “rape”:

“HE RAPED HER BUT ONCE. In darkened chambers, watched by a dark wooden

clock…” (Tunku, 2000, p.97)

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 “Since that one singular rape she was trapped to him. What should have been a time to

despise and hate, anger and fear, only reaffirmed her undying, blighted love for him…” (Tunku,

2000, p.98)

“There was that one time when she could have left, after the singular rape…”(Tunku,

1997, p.99)

Through this fact, one could deduce that Martha was only married to him after being raped by

him however it does not add up to the fact that she had willingly stayed put as the role of his wife.

Based from my observation, deep down Martha was in love with her husband who does not

reciprocate the same feelings and actively hurts her throughout the relationship. Because of the

hurt and unreciprocated feeling, Martha was in denial by emphasizing in her mind that her

husband had raped her instead of admitting that she had one-time-only sex with her husband and

never more.

Defense mechanisms are unconscious processes that maintain self-esteem and inhibits

immoderate levels of negative affect. (Virgil & Drew, 2007) It was first introduced by Sigmund

Freud as unconscious processes which distorted reality, over suppress to protect individuals from

an awareness of their unacceptable thought, impulses, wishes or even memories. (Virgil & Drew,

2007) Denial is one of the type defense mechanism created in situations where it gets too much

for an individual and leads to a person blocking those unwanted awareness and refuse to

acknowledge and experience it. In this case, Martha is refusing that she is heartbroken that her

needing to be loved was unfulfilled and therefore concluded that she was forced to have sex

without consent. There was also the evidence that Martha was unconsciously jealous of her

husband one night stands relationship with other ladies but refuses to acknowledge or even be

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aware of those feelings. Unconsciously, she had somehow wished that his attention would be on

her. For example:

“…She closed her eyes and his face emerged. His wry smile, sitting awkward on his

hollow face, bright-lit eyes. The one the ladies found so attractive.

And there were plenty of those. It was not the calls, quickly put down, with the dialing

tine buzzing in the eardrum, that annoyed her. Of course it was maddening, with at least two or

three a day. It was the lift in his voice…” (Tunku, 2000, p.98)

While Martha had commented on the attractiveness of her husband, she failed to process

that she too, find her husband appealing. For almost a page, Martha’s tone seemed to grow in

dismay as she narrate on how her husband flocked around one woman another.

Secondly, when denials is not enough to block those ugly awareness of her feelings,

Martha evidently resorts to rationalization. Rationalization is also a type of defense mechanisms

that is defined as a cognitive distortion of “facts” to turn a situation or feeling less threatening, in

simple terms rationalization is simply, formulating an excuse. This term is first introduced by

Ernest Jones in 1908 and defined it as “the creation of reason for an attitude or action the motive

of which is not recognized” (as cited in Phillips, p. 109). I would like to emphasize that there are

differences between denial and rationalization, denial is the total blocking of an unpleasant

experience while rationalization is to see something in a different way in the face of a changing

reality, or simply make seemingly valid and reasonable excuses for something but is actually

unrelated to the actual fact.

Martha shows evidence of rationalization of her unconscious fear of the likelihood of

being abandoned by her husband by convincing herself that she was the perfect wife for him. In

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her narration, it occurred two time to three times that she was the perfect wife and he was never

going to leave her. It was these narrative that boosted the theory that Martha really does love her

husband, albeit in a twisted sense and clings on to the fact that yes, she is indeed the perfect wife;

because of the reasoning she had told herself it boost her sense of confidence that her husband

was never going to leave her. If she does not give rationality towards her action, Martha would

likely to have broken down. The following excerpts has proven as much:

“She had heard whispers, a mistress, a second wife, divorce. Martha knew better. Heng Wan

would never divorce her, She was after all the perfect wife who somehow loved him…” (Tunku,

2000, pg.99, 1st paragraph)

“…Martha stopped counting. He was not going to leave her. She was his anchor in his sea of

mistresses and on night stands.” (Tunku, 2000, pg.99 , 2nd paragraph)

When Martha thought to herself that she ‘knew better’, she was simply reassuring herself that

she is right, and her reasoning of that was never wrong, regardless had she realized of the proves

of rationalization. On the other hand, it is plausible that Martha was all along rationalizing with

herself into believing that her stance with her husband is all out love. Because on a certain level,

Martha knew that she was suffering because of her so called ‘love’, if Martha do not use her so

called feelings of ‘Love’ as a barrier that in actuality she was unable to escape her husband, then

the whole narrative could be seen that how Martha has been reduced to a very helpless person,

trapped within her feelings of helplessness towards the situation. Therefore, in other to block that

distressful feeling coming into mind, Martha most likely had deluded herself into believing that

it was all out of love.

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 Thirdly, Martha denials and rationalization seems to reach a breaking point where all her

repressed and denied thoughts manifested itself into a ghost of her husband. This phenomenon

could be classified as projection, which is due to the misattribution of a person’s unwanted

thoughts, feelings or impulses.

Due to the lack of outlet, as the only person that Martha wanted to blame was dead, since

her husband who died of cancer 35 years ago, her mind had projected a ghost of her husband

which terrorizes her day and night months after his following death. In my opinion this could be

regarded as Martha’s way of coping suppressed feelings towards her husband. During the earlier

manifestation of her husband, he would just simply be with Martha, in her mind, staring,

observing and terrifying her. After Audrey had become a lived in maid, that was when Martha’s

imaginary apparition of her husband morphed into doing something that could be regarded as her

deepest fear- her husband had still gone to hunt for a fresh target for his own pleasure- she

became hysterical because of it. She misattributed her feelings of fear for the maid when it truth,

she was unable to accept that even it was all in her head, her (imaginary) husband had still seek

to bed with another woman. It was ambiguous in what really happened in the story but it was

evident with how Martha was living with her own demons, she had gone hysterical in the end of

the story. Additionally, I would like to point out the peculiarities of the title of the story, while

“the rape of Martha Teoh” could be taken literally, as in being rape in the sense of sex, the rape

itself could have meant the freedom and happiness and Martha could have experience had been

robbed from her. Instead of living truth lies, pain and suffering.

In conclusion, this study attempts at a psychoanalytical criticism of Tunku Halim’s “The

Rape of Martha Teoh”, examining the defense mechanisms erected by an individual due to

traumatic or unwanted events, such as denial, rationalization and projection.

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References

Phillips A. (1994).On Flirtation. (p. 109) Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press

Tunku, H. (1997). The rape of Martha Teoh & other chilling stories. The rape of Martha teoh

(pg.97-103). Selangor:Pelanduk Publication.

Virgil Z. & Drew W.P. (2007). Defense Styles and the Interpersonal Circumplex: The

Interpersonal Nature of Psychological Defense. Journal of Psychiatry, Psychology and Mental

Health, 1(2). Retrieved from http://www.scientificjournals.org/journals2007/articles/1183.pdf

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