Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol structures his short stories “The Overcoat,” “Diary of a Madman,” and “The Nose,” to highlight that sexuality, individuality, and the soul interconnect. This approach mimics the writing of Michel Foucault, who posits that scientists attempt to understand sexuality to know their own souls.  Like Foucault, Yermakov asserts that Gogol’s writing about sexuality is a personal search for his own sexuality. Ivan Sergeyevich Yermakov also comments that Gogol’s characters suffer because of their repressed sexualities. Linking these three works together highlights how these tales present sexuality as closely attached to the psyche, critical for the development of the soul, and to a large degree, enshrouded in mystery. Gogol embarks on a literary quest to understand sexuality’s deeply penetrating, intrinsic attachment to the soul.

 

In “The Overcoat,” “Diary of a Madman,” and “The Nose,” Gogol structures his tales so that sexuality is the highest joy for the individual. The day that Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin receives his coat is “the most memorable and festive day in [his life]” (Gogol, “The Overcoat,” 128). Adorned with his new coat, he feels euphoric and mentally removed from his life as a neurotic civil servant. Gogol compares Akaky Akakievich’s coat to the warm body of a woman that this innocent man has never experienced and then “surrenders” to skilled security (Gogol, “The Overcoat,” 129). In a similar fashion, retrieving his nose gives Collegiate Assessor Kovalyov a lasting peace and the feeling that his identity returned to him. After all, “without a nose, a man is nothing” (Gogol, “The Nose,” 51). Finding his nose permits him to smile at ladies without feeling shame and meet with his important colleagues sans embarrassment. The nose is phallic, as evidenced by the sexually charged language that describes it “feel[ing] firm” at the very beginning, then “spring[ing] up” (Gogol, “The Nose,” 37, 40). In “Diary of a Madman,” the writer descends into madness largely because he has fallen in love with a woman that he stalks, but the pair fail to develop a relationship. The narrator convinces himself that the woman’s dog, Madgie, writes letters about his mistress, and even at one point, insults him. This is met with the narrator’s strife: “you’re lying, you horrible little dog” (Gogol, “Diary of a Madman,” 169). Each of these pursuits that come to define the individual’s wellbeing have sexual or romantic undertones. Gogol creates metaphors for sexuality, highlighting how it defines the individual human being. Yet, this employment of metaphor specifically signifies that sexuality and its precise relationship to the individual is difficult to grasp and mysterious.

 

In “The Nose” and “The Overcoat,” the fragile individual lacks part of his identity and later (re)gains that identity once he repossesses his sexuality. In “Diary of a Madman,” the writer’s inability to have a relationship with the woman he loves, or to exercise his sexuality, propels his descent into insanity as evidenced by the increasing nonsensical dates on his diary entries and his eventual identity as the king of Spain (Gogol, “Diary of a Madman,” 172-178). A hyper-focus on an individual and his sexual goal renders the men fragile in different ways–– death following the theft of his coat, an identity crisis after losing his nose, and going mad. Gogol creates comedy through poking fun at the men’s fragile identities, the very crux at which lies their ability to exert their sexuality. He even pushes this to the farthest extent, highlighting that once their sexuality does not exist, the individuals themselves too, cease to exist. For example, Akaky Akakievich dies once thieves steal his overcoat. An obsession with sexuality defines an individual's sexuality, and therefore, he has no identity with lack thereof. 

 

This theme of an essentializing sexuality in these stories resembles Foucault’s description of sexuality and its relationship to the individual, though his work has no direct influence on the tales since he lived roughly a century after Gogol’s death. Foucault describes the scientific pursuit of determining exactly how sexuality operates on the body through discipline (Foucault 53). Discipline subjects the body to power to promote structures like the family unit. By employing discipline, sexuality covertly creates and explains the individual psyche (Foucault 43). This scientific hypothesis presents individuals entirely one-dimensionally, as defined by their sexuality. Importantly, sexuality is still a mystery to scientists as they can not completely understand how it operates, or even fully comprehend their own sexualities. Thus, scientists hope that someday they will elicit “the sexual confession,” that is, unveil the mystery of the sexual mechanisms in the psyche (Foucault 60-63). For Foucault, sexuality is the defining trait, the mystery of the soul, reflecting a similar theme that Gogol seeks to capture of essentializing an individual’s sexuality.

 

Ivan Yermakov, too, notes Gogol is “preoccupied with self-analysis,” viewing Gogol's work as a commentary on Freud’s notion that sexuality connects to the soul (Yermakov 161). Yermakov highlights that eroticism in Gogol’s stories is “pregenital; and if it does not evolve and is not sublimated, it’s become a sort of surrogate for the mature sex drive” (Yermakov 169). Thus, the main characters in each story both cease to exist without their sexuality, as described by a Foucauldian analysis, and represent repressed sexuality, albeit unlike a Foucauldian analysis. Here, in Gogol’s tales a failure to develop sexually due to repression will result in an underdeveloped soul, for “in fear of the sexual is, as we know, nothing more than repressed sexual desire and punishment for this desire” (Yermakov 178). Gogol posits that any type of sexual repression is harmful. Yermakov explains that in “The Nose,” Kovalyov’ devotes his life to sex (Yermakov 178). Kovalyov’s soul is also “nasty, dirty, and stupid” (Yermakov 182) This is because his search for sex is unsuccessful and as a result, an underdeveloped form of sexuality becomes his defining feature. Major Kovalyov connects his loss of a nose with a loss of social status. His disembodied nose marches around convincing others he is a high-ranking state councilor. In contrast, Kovalyov thinks that he can no longer engage with high-ranking socialites, asking “Where can I show my face in such a preposterous state?” (Gogol, “The Nose,” 42, 55). In fact, he is not comfortable revealing his nose-less face to a mere cabbie. For Kovalyov, losing his nose means more than just losing his interactions with ladies, it means no longer existing as a proud and interactive member of society. His loss of a nose is his loss of rank, which is representative of his identity.

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According to Yermakov, Gogol’s desire to understand how repressed sexuality connects to a bad soul is inherently personal. Hence, “only after he has reached the ultimate, only after he has brought forth the essence of the basic self can a writer...touch and understand the innermost secrets of the soul” (Yermakov 192). Once Kovalyov, gets his nose back, “his soul returns to its usual state” (Gogol, “The Nose,” 54). In this way, Gogol’s stories reflect Gogol’s personal desire and the need inherent in human beings to understand the mystery of the soul. Gogol highlights the mystifying nature of sexuality and the soul, for parts of the story ends “enshrouded in a mist, and what ensues is totally unknown” (Gogol, “The Nose,” 58). This magical quality of the tales underscores the poorly understood link between sexuality and the soul, unknown to Gogol.

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“The Overcoat,” “Diary of a Madman,” and “The Nose,” create the notion of repressed sexuality in both their language and structure. The tales highlight sexuality’s impact on the soul, and the fundamental human desire to interpret sexuality. These stories themselves are part of Gogol’s search to discover how sexuality and the self relate is all too personal, for the tales reflect his desire to understand his own sexuality. Sexuality is still largely a mystery, but we do know, according to Foucault, that it fundamentally shapes the soul.