True Self vs. False Self in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure

When Isabella is called upon to intervene on behalf of her brother Claudio, she is fully entrenched in the convent and the sets of norms and values it represents. She finds its rules and regulations comforting, and even finds herself "wishing for a more strict restraint," rather than for additional freedom (Measure for Measure, Act I, scene iv, line 352). It is as if the Mothers in the convent are substitutes for Isabella's own mother, whose absence in the play signals the sort of distance that might prompt a daughter's transference of maternal power to a surrogate. The fact that Claudio is Isabella's brother is therefore meaningful on several levels.

First, Isabella perceives Claudio's transgression as both a sin and a legal offense. Her rigid moral beliefs constrain her view of her brother and end up mirroring both her True Self and False Self in the process. Second, Claudio's sexual transgression allows for the emergence of Isabella's Oedipal and Electral desires. As she stands poised to confirm herself to the nunnery, Isabella sublimates her sexual desires before those desires have even been fully awakened. She remains safely within the confines of the convent until she is called upon to act in the real world — with her True Self. Third, Isabella is challenged by her responsibility to her brother. The familial connection between the two becomes a salient tie between Isabella and the mother she lacks.

Isabella's maturation is the central focus of Measure for Measure, and represents the process of ego integration through a breakdown of the False Self and the emergence of the True Self.

Isabella's virginity is her most precious commodity until she can symbolically kill her False Self — doing away with the selfishness and self-centeredness that the False Self uses to perpetuate its own reality. Because Isabella is "yet unsworn" to the convent, however, the window remains open for her True Self to emerge (Act I, scene iv, line 358). Her initial refusal to help Claudio seems ironically appropriate given that losing her virginity would be a "death" every bit as real as Claudio's death by execution, and she sees no reason why Claudio's life should be spared while her own symbolic life is not.

As the play progresses, the situational variables increase in complexity and enable Isabella to make choices that either strengthen her True Self or her False Self, leading either to ego integration and psychological health or to dysfunction. Part of healthy development demands successful ego integration, especially at the stage during which id demands — in Isabella's case, the demand to remain pure at all costs — are integrated as "part of the self" and not viewed as something external (Winnicott, 1960, p. 141).

Isabella essentially needs to shift toward a self-concept in which virginity is voluntary and something she embraces as an extension of her True Self. Virginity cannot be meaningless; it cannot be a proscribed behavior or an artificial way of life if Isabella is to experience ego integration. Because she has only identified with her surrogate "mothers" in the convent, Isabella has never formulated a healthy sexual identity in relation to a maternal figure outside the convent who lives a healthy sexual life. The decision of whether or not to remain celibate is ultimately Isabella's own; whichever position her True Self ultimately takes remains ambiguous at the end of the play. The point is not whether Isabella leaves the convent, but whether she has achieved ego integration through mature emotional decisions and personal responsibility.

D.W. Winnicott's developmental theory proves especially illuminating here. In his framework, a person's False Self acts as a defensive shield for the True Self — allowing the individual to function socially while the True Self remains protected but dormant. Isabella is an example of what Winnicott (1960) calls the "less extreme" version of ego development, in which the False Self "defends the True Self," but the True Self is nevertheless allowed to live a "secret life" (p. 143). It is this secret life that allows for the eventual emergence of her True Self.