Woolf and Equiano’s predicament differs from Malcolm X and Smith in that the qualities of their selves are restricted by the gendered or racialized social structure of their communities. Society is not pulling out and making them express a particular part of their selves, but rather preventing them from gaining the opportunity to express themselves freely. Woolf’s society’s moral framework supports a gendered hierarchy in which women are lower than men, in the sense of respect and therefore available opportunity. The slave system validated by the racist community surrounding Equiano chains him down and renders him as nothing but a piece of property belonging to the white man, which restricts his ability to grow as an autonomous self. Woolf says that “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction” (4). Writing fiction is one of the ways Woolf can express herself. But, in order to do so, she needs the resources—her self, in this sense, cannot be outwardly manifested without allowances being made by her society. However, her society still has the power to restrict her even if she manages to acquire those resources. When walking down a path made for “Fellows and Scholars,” she has to take to the gravel or else be confronted with a look of “horror and indignation” from a man walking along the turf (Woolf 6). Not only does she reside within a society that frowns upon women taking the same opportunity as a man, whether it be as small as the ability to walk the same turf, but she is also viewed as property by both the social structure as a whole and its male individuals. Because she is viewed as being owned by her husband and constructed by society, she has a much lesser chance to be something, someone, and her own person. She muses, “I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse perhaps to be locked in” (Woolf 24). There are parts of her self she wishes she has more opportunity to express through fiction, but those parts are locked in as a result of her position in poverty and being a woman. Equiano is also locked into his role, and it greatly limits his opportunity to make autonomous choices. As a slave, he has no choice but to do as his master commands and go where he is told to go. Both Woolf and Equiano’s array of choices and therefore their Kierkegaard’s autonomy of self through choice is restricted by their society’s gendered or racialized morality. 

            Just as Woolf and Equiano’s choice to express themselves is constrained by their social framework, society influences individuals to make non-autonomous choices based on its moral framework in the process of developing the self, according to Erik Erikson’s theory. Essentially, people are driven to construct themselves based upon what society requires of them to be adequately integrated into the framework, and this requires a person to give up some autonomy of the self. When Erikson details the underlying assumptions of his theory, one can see how the development of the self is heavily influenced by the social moral code. Erikson states that the components of his theory are, “(1) that the human personality . . . develops according to steps . . . to be driven toward, to be aware of, and to interact with, a widening social radius; and (2) that society . . . [invites] this succession of potentialities for interaction. . . . This is the ‘maintenance of the human world’” (270). Most ideas within Erikson’s theory, like generativity, have to do with the “psychosocial schedule” (267), which is essentially an agenda set forth by society that is imposed upon individuals. Furthermore, he claims that if people have fulfilled this purpose set before them based on the psychosocial schedule or social morality, then they will be content that they have made the most of their lives. He says, “The style of integrity developed by his culture or civilization thus becomes the ‘patrimony of his soul,’ the seal of his moral paternity of himself. In such a final consideration, death loses its sting” (Erikson 268). Musil seconds this idea of a person feeling content only when he has fulfilled society’s purpose. His character, Ulrich, realizes that a person is only counted as present in history when he makes his contribution to the “development of progress,” and until then is nothing more than a “mist” (139). According to Erikson and Musil, if people do not feel like they have completed their purpose set before them by societal moral standards, then they will despair for time and fear death, or simply be nothing substantial at all. Both people’s initial mindset and negative response stem from the social standards of what they feel obligated to be doing with their lives, not for their betterment, but for society’s. They do not appear to have the choice to make their own standards and go their own way, and therefore to autonomously develop their own selves. 

            The other external force of morality that influences the self in ways that are difficult to track, making the self difficult to define and reducing autonomy, is religion. In general, religion provides a moral code that individuals can feel obligated or desire to follow. They might feel pressured to act in accordance with those standards, which in a sense limits the self’s autonomy, because the singular choice is not only placed in front of them in religious texts, but it is also presented with great pressure to conform. Not only does this reference Emerson’s idea that a person is not a person if he conforms, but it also references Nietzsche’s metaphor since this moral framework from religion is illusory, according to Charles Taylor (9). It is illusory because its defining aspects are used for a purpose – not defined by Nietzsche’s true essence, but by a man-made definition based on the purpose the religion is to serve (Taylor 9). The religion can have purposes such as control, like in a government against lawlessness; or hope, in the sense of placing responsibility on a transcendent being. Both these purposes, in their own ways, lead to the consequential reduction of the self’s autonomy.             The Bible, Homer’s The Odyssey, James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Saint Augustine’s Confessions all provide evidence for how religious moralities cause a loss of the self’s autonomy due to how each framework restricts free will or pressures a person to conform. In Genesis, the first religious moral framework is constructed, by which the first humans are punished as a result of not conforming to the instructions of their creator. Homer’s characters have small-scale autonomy, but ultimately the gods control their fate, just as God is in control of Augustine’s life. Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus and Augustine’s emotional responses to their own behavior are governed by God, to the extent that when the guilt becomes too much to bear, they wish to relieve themselves by relinquishing their free will to avoid further inner turmoil. 

            In The Bible and The Odyssey, God and Homer’s characters and the storyline are controlled by deities rather than humans, who are the providers of humans’ moral system. The humans in these stories are mere pawns who believe for a time that they are in control, but who ultimately realize that the gods control the end result that is based on what the gods see as good and right, thereby thwarting whatever delusion of Kierkegaard’s “individual choice” humans may have. While Adam and Eve may have the free will to choose to eat the forbidden fruit, their subsequent reactions and feelings reflect the fact that all of a sudden they acquire God’s view of right and wrong. They become ashamed by their nakedness (Genesis 3:7), and are confronted with God’s punishment for their disobedience. Since they do not conform to the laws of God’s moral system, God restricts their autonomy by putting them in another place, adding difficulty to birth and the ability to grow food, and making Adam the master of Eve (Genesis 3:16-17). When Ulysses strays from the path the gods want him to follow, they must prod him in another direction to fix what they see as a problem, causing the winds of fate to change. At the end of a battle, the god Minerva orders, “‘Men of Ithaca . . . cease this dreadful war, and settle the matter at once without further bloodshed’” (Homer 520), to which the humans respond by dropping their arms and fleeing in fear. Ulysses, however, tries to maintain his autonomy by choosing to push forward. But Minerva does not allow it. She throws a thunderbolt of fire down and says, “‘Ulysses, noble son of Lærtes, stop this warful strife, or Jove will be angry with you’” (Homer 533), to which Ulysses “gladly” obeys (Homer 545). He recognizes that attempting to go against the will of the gods is futile, and thus surrenders his own free will by obeying the orders of the one of the religious sources of his moral code. Augustine is similar to Homer’s characters in that he believes he is making his own, independent choices along the way, but he then realizes that God ultimately controls his fate. “Thus I erred through a swelling pride and was carried about with every wind, but through it all I was being piloted by you, though most secretly” (Augustine 52). God is prodding Augustine’s life in a direction he sees fit, because he is the authority on what is good and right. Thus, Adam and Eve, Augustine, and Homer’s characters have this false sense of autonomy of choice throughout their stories – but in the end, their gods’ wills be done, not theirs. Their gods push them in one direction or another based on deistic, not humanistic, goals, which causes a loss of selfhood through the restriction of autonomy and choice. 

            Similarly to Ulysses and the rest of Homer’s mythological clan, Dedalus and Augustine’s selves are limited by their religious morality because of the way it pressures and guilts them to eventually give up their autonomy of the self, which in this case is free will. Both of their consciences, or souls, as they sometimes refer them to, are highly sensitive to the demands of the religion of which they are members. Both men have, in some way, sinned against God by going against his commands, and are in inner turmoil as a result. Joyce describes the conflict going on within Dedalus, “He had sinned so deeply against heaven and before God that he was not worthy to be called God’s child. Could it be that he, Stephen Dedalus, had done those things? His conscious signed in answer. Yes, he had done them, secretly, filthily” (137). The guilt Dedalus experiences is a result of following his own desires, not God’s. Augustine feels this as well. This guilt imposed upon them by their religious moralities is restrictive in the sense that it first causes them to regret their autonomous choices and second makes them want to give up their selfhood. Augustine asks to God to take control of him by the plea, “let it [my soul] be converted so as to follow you” (49). Dedalus begs for forgiveness and “realizes” that to be guided by the will of God is the only way for his soul to be “holy and happy” (Joyce 145) and for life to be “beautiful and peaceful” (Joyce 146). That is, within this moral framework life can only be peaceful if he follows its decrees, because otherwise he is ridden with guilt and is at war with himself. 

Furthermore, because of this religious moral framework, Dedalus and Augustine perceive that they are not in control of themselves when they are not abiding by the rules of their religion, even if their choice is actually controlled by the morality. When their souls are not following the decrees of God, Dedalus refers to it as “stifling and helpless” (Joyce 142), and Augustine laments about the fact that his soul is “perverse” (49) and “helpless” (52). What if, however, their “sins” against God are actually not helpless decisions, but rather autonomous ones that are based upon what they want, independent of their creator? If Dedalus and Augustine do not view their actions through the lens of their religion, then the guilt may not actually exist, and they may have more perceived freedom to act independently of their moral framework’s restrictions. 

            As a result of the external force of religious morality, individuals tend to lose, or give up, their selves due to pressures within the moral framework as shown by the confessions of Augustine and Dedalus. Another way religious morality limits autonomy, and therefore the self, is by causing its followers to believe that the positive actions they may take are all thanks to God and not attributed to the development of their own selves. Thus, by perception, their selves are not being enhanced, but rather, are being reduced. Even if they have a choice in matters, they view it not as their own, which is evidenced by Malcolm X and Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe who attribute their successes to their deity and their failures to themselves. Islam provides Malcolm X with a moral code by which his convictions are driven (Haley 382). Interestingly, though Malcom X appears to be very independent and self-confident in his thoughts and ideas, which would imply that his self is strongly autonomous, he still attributes his personal successes to his religious figure, Allah. He says, “And if I can die having brought any light, having exposed any meaningful truth that will help to destroy the racist cancer that is malignant in the body of America—then, all of the credit is due to Allah. Only the mistakes have been mine” (Haley 389). None of his successes, therefore, are his own, and he has cast those characteristics out from himself and has placed them on a transcendent being. Instead of adding to his self, he is transferring, or perhaps discarding, his newfound qualities upon Allah. Crusoe finds a comparable sense of autonomy to Malcolm X after having escaped the imposed social moral framework of his parents and community, described as “the Will, nay the Commands of my Father, and against all the Entreaties and Perswasions of my Mother and other Friends” (Defoe 3). His change of environment allows him to transform his self, to grow in capability and to perfect the skills that allow him to survive on his own. Though his environment changes, however, his moralities, such as that of religion, from his past environment follow him, maintaining a great deal of influence on Crusoe’s view of himself. When Crusoe learns how to survive on his own on the island by honing skills of craftsmanship and cookery, he attributes these personal successes to God, not himself. Due to these ascriptions, he loses autonomy because he perceives himself to be dependent on God (even though he has proven to be capable by himself). He says following a description of all the skills he has attained, “Thus I liv’d mighty comfortably, my Mind being entirely composed by resigning to the Will of God, and throwing my self wholly upon the Disposal of his Providence” (Defoe 125). Through the lens of his religious morality, Crusoe envisions himself as dependent on God’s divine Providence which both rules him and takes credit for his personal success just as Malcolm X does with his god. This raises the question of, are Crusoe and Malcolm X operating with an autonomous self, or are they merely God’s puppets? Perhaps there really is no god in either case, but only a perception that there is one, which means that regardless of whether or not they are in reality being controlled, their perception that they are not the producers of their own successes is enough to make them reduce their autonomy of self. 

            Besides societal and religious moralities, there are other external forces such as the natural environment that can influence the self and reduce its autonomy, according to several theories by various scientific thinkers. Charles Darwin and John Watson view the self scientifically, and mechanize the reactions and changes observed in life as being the result of environmental pressures or stimuli. These pressures are essentially the driving force behind the morality of nature, which is the laws which define and control what goes on in the environment. Like in the case of societies and religion, the moral framework of nature is that which governs the overall structure of the environment and how each of its individual members relate to one another under the laws of nature, which also gives it similar power over the autonomy of the self. Neither Darwin nor Watson attribute any autonomy to the self, but rather, attribute all power to the environment, which seems to indicate that there really is no possibility for personal choice and therefore an autonomous self. Darwin’s theory of evolution and rests on the claim that everything is dictated by pressures from the environment, or natural selection. Though this seems like a simple explanation for the self, complications arise when putting into consideration the myriad stimuli affecting the self, which cannot always be qualified or quantified, making it difficult to understand. Furthermore, the simplicity of stimulus to reaction implies that there is no self because there is no personal choice—the choice, as is the case in Mauss’s tribal imposition of selves, comes from an external source, the environment. Darwin claims that most expressions of the self are, in fact, innate, and therefore choice is not a factor: “The far greater number of the movements of expression, and all the more important ones, are, as we have seen, innate or inherited; and such cannot be said to depend on the will of the individual” (349). The environment does the choosing of these innate or inherited traits based on which traits have allowed organisms to survive to pass them on. Darwin, however, does give some sort of agency to human conscious, but Watson denies it. Watson claims that any sort of psychological analysis of introspection is futile, because the only important thing to study in humans is their observable behavior. Watson says, forcefully, “The time seems to have come when psychology must discard all reference to consciousness; when it need no longer delude itself into thinking that it is making mental states the object of observation” (399). He claims that what is really going on is merely a stimulus to response reaction (Watson 400) that is observable and therefore what exists. That which is internal is not important to discuss, and perhaps not even there. He urges the psychology community to stop focusing on this abstract idea of consciousness, and instead focus on what is “real:” behavior. If, as Darwin and Watson claim, the environment is the driving force behind all the characteristics a person possesses, how much of humans’ thoughts are their own, how much of their reactions are produced by choice, and how autonomous are their selves, if a self can even exist in this sense? It is important to consider the fact that these scientific theories focus on what is external and observable and disregard the potential internal intricacies of human consciousness and choice of repression verses expression. 

            While Darwin and Watson view the influence of nature on the self through a scientific lens and show how the environment denies autonomy of self by controlling traits and reactions, Albert Camus and Whitman view nature’s influence through an abstract lens and show how it can cause confusion in trying to understand the self. They claim that the self is both revealed and clouded by external factors is through nature. Both Camus and Whitman describe how they see their selves reflected in nature, but also how nature makes it difficult to understand who they are. Camus says that nature both brings him closer to himself and pushes him farther away. He says about a ray of sunlight, “If I try to reach myself, it is at the heart of this light that I am to be found” (Camus 9), and claims he is most transparent and true when he is the world (Camus 10). Yet, Camus also says that the world “takes me out of myself . . . denies me a personality . . . reduces me to nothing” (56). Furthering the paradoxical nature of the self reflected by the world, Camus makes the point that the world both makes him “move toward a wisdom” and at the same time makes him “forget the truth of the world” (56). These notions, when put together, construct another conflicting nature of the self: that in order to find the self in nature, the self must be lost. Whitman mirrors this concept in his writing. In the midst of nature, Whitman finds and loses himself over and over again, yet seems quite content with it. He is also content with, and even celebrates, the fact that he recognizes that he will not be able to answer his own questions about who he is. In Song of Myself, Whitman shows that when one is a part of everything in nature, one is both lost and found at the same time.

            The moralities of society, religion, and the environment may seemingly provide a way to define the self, even if that is in terms of the external factor influencing it rather than the concept itself. However, as Taylor points out, these moralities are unreliable to an extreme level, which he dubs as the “modern predicament” (9-11). That is, morals are often untraceable to their roots and undefinable in their present existence, and it is unknown as to whether or not these moralities are purely external or also internal. Taylor stresses that there exists an inability to capture both the essence of morality and its base influences. Therefore, a disconnect lies within a gap in understanding what our selves are if they are based upon morals, due to an inability to define, describe, and understand the morals and their roots. Furthermore, one side of moral ontology states that morals are human constructs (going back to Nietzsche’s metaphor), not something found by humans. This further complicates the issue of defining the self, because it is not known whether it is a real entity or a human idea, constructed to meet society’s goals and individual purposes. In Nietzsche’s view, scholars may just be studying the reflection of the self rather than the real thing (and that both exist but the latter is impossible to capture). Taylor also presents the idea of morality being both external and internal, which raises the question of, is there a morality of the self, a sort of self-governed morality that acts either in conjunction with or in opposition to the external morality? 

            The result of external factors influencing the autonomous self is the creation of a new, social or dependent self that is inauthentic due to the fact that it is guided by something other than itself. The fact that external factors exert great influence upon the self also creates further complication in the comprehensibility of the self, and adds to the loss of self on a different level. These external factors create conflict within the self because they essentially create another self on top of the original—the dependent self, which is in constant conflict with the autonomous self. Erikson argues that, as soon as a child gains autonomy, his environment immediately imposes its influence upon the self. Thus, it is not long that a person is only an autonomous self, but rather a social, dependent self is developed quickly and tends to win out over the autonomous self. Erikson says that this external force “feels called upon to convey to him its particular ideas and concepts of autonomy and coercion in way decisively contributing to the character and the health of his personality in his culture” (271). 

            The creation of a dependent self does not necessarily divide the original self, but adds and inorganic self to war with the authentic self. As a result, the self is dualistic in nature, in that it is comprised of at two parts, which are unfortunately continuously battling with one another until one wins and the other is repressed. Augustine, Joyce, Musil, psychologists Erikson and Donald Winnicott, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Don Clark all provide evidence for the argument that there is not just one self, but two. These can be broken down into two categories: the autonomous self and the dependent (on external factors like moralities) self, which has been created as a result of these external factors. This dependent self reacts to the pressures of its main influential moral system in order to retain its position as part of the ingroup by either fulfilling its duty (or purpose, as explained previously) or by conforming. The existent of this second self highlights the issue that the self is inherently paradoxical – it is in nearly constant conflict with itself, and best reveals itself through the resulting contradictions. The above authors have shown how the self presents itself most clearly in the midst of conflict and contradiction, which is precisely how it disguises itself. Aristotle conceptualizes this idea simplistically in saying that the soul is both “‘a this’” and not “‘a this’” at the same time (412). The struggle between these two selves provides endless confusion for the person within whom the struggle is occurring, to the extent that some, like Augustine, give up in the end and surrender to the dependent self, allowing it to flood over the part of him that is autonomous. 

            These authors each touch on the idea of having two selves in varying ways. Augustine clearly highlights the existence of two selves by coining the phrase “two wills” (Book 8, 1-18). Musil writes about his main character being two people, not just one: “At this moment there were two Ulrichs, walking side by side” (164). Erikson’s description of the two selves is less distinct, but still compelling, stating that adolescents in particular deal with conflict between two selves, because they are “primarily concerned with what they appear to be in the eyes of others as compared to what they feel they are” (261). There is an autonomous self perspective, and a self that exists through the eyes of society. Winnicott’s divides the self into a True and False Self. The former is “central and powered by instincts” (essentially autonomous) and the latter is “turned outwards and is related to the world,” meaning that it is influenced by external forces (140). Du Bois dubs the dualistic nature of the self as a “double-consciousness,” which is a “sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others” (3). For Clark, there is the self he shows to society, the straight self, and the self he represses, which is his authentically gay self (87). 

            The autonomous and dependent selves have a tendency to want different things, which causes a contrast of character to arise within an individual. The autonomous self, if acting upon instinct as claimed by Winnicott, has agency within itself and acts upon the drives and wants of the individual. The dependent self reacts to the pressures of external, moral forces. Musil, Erikson, and Du Bois all describe how social moral structures shapes their contradictory dependent self by pressuring it to attain its duty or maintain ingroup status. Musil’s Ulrich does not know exactly where the influence is coming from, but he reflects on this idea of needing to fulfill a purpose. He says, “One day I woke up . . . with the firm conviction that there was something I had to accomplish. They gave me cues, but I felt they had nothing to do with me” (Musil 164). Here is the conflict between the perceived moral obligation of the dependent self and the autonomous self (the “me” that his duty had nothing to do with). Erikson touches on this same sense of duty when he describes the adolescent stage of identity versus role confusion, the latter of which represents the individual’s inability to figure out where he or she fits in with society, occupationally. These individuals are focused on “the question of how to connect the roles and skills cultivated earlier with the occupational prototypes of the day” (Erikson 261). Du Bois describes the pressure felt to be an American as well as a black man in American society, two identities which cause a “waste of double aims, this seeking to satisfy two unreconciled ideas, [which] has wrought sad havoc” (5). He is striving to be included in two contradictory ingroups due to the pressure imposed upon him by American society, which wants him to assimilate. Clark struggles weighing the consequences of being disowned by different ingroups as a result of coming out, compared to the emotional drain and self-destruction that comes from repression of his true sexuality (88). For each of these writers, the dependent self struggles against the autonomous self and can result in confusion and inner dissonance. 

Augustine and Joyce are examples of how religious morality creates a dependent self by pressuring it to conform to standards elicited from the will of God, therefore belonging to God. In the Bible, Jesus says, “All who love me will do what I say” (John 14:23, NLT), which means that in order to belong to God one must follow his commands. Both Augustine and Dedalus have this perceived moral obligation to love others well and bring them to God, yet their autonomous selves, independent of God and his moral code, want different things. However, these parts of them are difficult to repress, which causes inner turmoil. Augustine asks God for forgiveness because he sins against his decrees (42) and acts upon the desires of his flesh (49). Joyce’s Dedalus says he is not worthy of being called a child of God, not worthy of belonging to God, due to his sin (137). Thanks to Augustine’s conflict between his two selves, or wills, he says that “I had become a great puzzle to myself” (45) and further laments, “I was dragging around my torn and bloody soul” (46), which had been pulled in two directions, the direction of the autonomous self, or the flesh, and the dependent self, or the side of him considered to be God’s child. 

            These external pressures which create the dependent self can attempt to override the autonomous self in the internal battle between the wills, but the autonomous self may fight back with different levels of success. Augustine does not fight for his autonomous self, but instead believes it is better to give up the innate desires of his flesh rather than continue to struggle between his own wants and religious ideals (49). He decides to lose himself in order to gain something else, the peace of mind and inclusion into God’s community that comes from conforming to Christian ideals. In the Bible, Paul provides a description for what Augustine is allowing to happen: “Not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith” (Galations 2:20, KJV). Christ is now in control, not Augustine’s autonomous self. This condition of losing the autonomous self results in man only being conscious of himself as a member of his ingroup, not as an individualistic “self” (Burckhardt 70). In Du Bois’ case, he desires to maintain both selves, but admits that his prospects are dim: “the history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. . . . He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American . . . without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face” (4). Du Bois wants the opportunity his American ingroup status would grant him, but does not wish to leave behind his identity of being black. The issue with this is that they are mutually exclusive. One self cannot exist while the other remains (Du Bois 3). However, in the case of Ulrich, the autonomous self fights back against the dependent self. Musil describes how “an impassioned struggle for self-assertion began. A heightened sense of self had to contend with him with the uncanny feeling that he was not settled inside his own skin . . . Outside and inside were all tangled up together” (166). Ulrich is caught in the conflict between duty to society, which is an ingrained influence that he cannot get free from that also enables him to belong, and autonomous self which wants to be free, never settle, burn with passion, and do what it wants. Even if Ulrich tries, he cannot seem to shake the burning core that is his autonomous, centralized self (Musil 162). 

            William Wordsworth and Equiano also exhibit a resilience of the autonomous self against the dependent self, similarly to Ulrich. Though countless forces act upon and can attempt to control the self in many ways, such influences can be counteracted through expression of the self in making autonomous choices toward the development or solidifying of the true self’s outward manifestations, as evidenced by these two authors. Wordsworth’s autonomous choice is to remove himself from the social framework which repressed him: “To none more grateful than to me; escaped / From the vast city, where I long had pined / a discontented sojourner: now free, / Free as a bird to settle where I will” (Prelude 269). He throws off the burden of his dependent self by leaving the city for the country, where he feels free from constraint. Wordsworth encourages the following of the spontaneous self (Preface 231), a quality Winnicott attributes to the expression of one’s “True Self” (146). As Wordsworth distances himself from the previous, repressive morality of society, he gets closer to becoming himself. Equiano keeps hold of himself even in the midst of his restrictive framework that moralizes slavery. In the midst of slavery, Equiano preserves his self’s sense of autonomy by rebelling against that which tries to enslave both his body and his mind. He wonders at flying fish (Equiano 68), utilizing the human emotions which slavery tries to repress through dehumanizing him. Slavery may be able to claim his body, but his mind still has the capability of roaming free, regardless of his bleak condition. 

            Though the autonomous self has potential to overstep the dependent self through breaking ties with the moral frameworks that created the second self, those ties may be too strong to sever completely. For example, although Wordsworth may be able to escape the morals of his previous society by physically moving, Crusoe is still influenced by the social pressures and religious laws that he left in England when he moves to the island. This second self in conflict with the autonomous self has such strong connections with that which brought it to life, such as the morality of society, religion, or environmental pressures, that it makes it difficult to hold on to the autonomous self in its pure form. Guignon’s idea of the authentic self encapsulates this pure view of an autonomous self. The authentic self is free from external influence and simply what is at the core of a person (3). Conversely, the conflicting self exerts influence in that it demands that an individual maintain ingroup status with the framework which created it, and this can cause further damage to the potential for the autonomous self to resurface or gain power over the dependent self. Ulrich reflects, “A world of qualities without a man has arisen, of experiences without the person who experiences them, and it almost looks as though ideally private experience is a thing of the past, and that the friendly burden of personal responsibility is to dissolve into a system of formulas of possible meaning” (Musil 158-159). This “burden” to conform and belong to the system as a result of external forces raises the question of authenticity and being able to know one’s true self. Winnicott describes this notion when discussing how the False self is covers the True self: “The False has one . . . important function: to hide the True Self, which it does by compliance with environmental demands” (147). If this False self is hiding the True self and acting in its place, are the decisions made by the False self still considered to be from the self, and autonomous? Can one still be authentic even if the autonomous self is overtaken by the dependent self, which is so influenced by external factors that it is unable to make a decision without bias? 

            Charles Cooley provides a theory as to how the new, conflicting self causes a person to not know his or her autonomous self because of how dominant the dependent self is. Cooley’s view of the dependent self encompasses the idea of seeing one’s own self through the eyes of everyone else, which can both warp what is there by varying perspectives, and influence how the autonomous self acts or manifests itself in the environment. Cooley’s looking-glass self models how perceptions of others shapes the self. This looking-glass self is essentially one’s own perception of others’ perception of them. One of the ways perspective contributes to the inability to know the self is through the varying opinions people can have of the same person. For example, if a person’s friends are asked to describe who that one person is, none of them will give the same answer. This holds true for portraits of selves, as well. Thomas Eakins’ paintings are unique in that they attempt to capture the person, not just the painting (Lubin). The way in which Eakins painted them causes the audience to ask, “Who is this, and what are they thinking?” Though these paintings raise questions that are important to consider about the self, they do not necessarily offer concrete answers. Each person has a different perspective on what the subject of the portrait is thinking, or what kind of personality they may have. The selves of the subjects cannot be defined both due to differences in perspective by the audience and the discrepancy between the artist’s perception of the person and the subject themselves. Eakins’ paintings show how the self can be recognized as existing, but still not be able to be defined. 

            Cooley also asserts that the self is purely social—and thus infinitely influenced by the demands of social morality, which can be to fulfill purpose and to belong. Calkins echoes this idea by making the claim that relationships equal the self. Oftentimes, in order to belong to multiple ingroups and maintain multiple, various relationships that have various differences, inauthenticity is required, according to Erving Goffman. Goffman postulates that a person’s self is made up of several fronts which he or she puts on when around different groups of people, adapting to best fit in with them. Which, if any, of these socially-motivated selves is the real, authentic self? How can people ever attain authenticity when they are continuously presenting themselves with varying fronts, acting different for different people? Just as Goffman proposes the idea of putting on different external fronts to fit in, Judith Martin suggests that in order to avoid being outcast a person must conform their speech to societal standards of politesse and manner. For both, inauthenticity is a consequence of belonging. 

This resulting inauthenticity of self due to pressures from external moralities can make a person feel like a stranger to himself, increasing cognitive dissonance and distance from the autonomous self. The warring of two selves, the autonomous and the dependent self, creates dissonance within oneself. Since two polarized wills cannot exist peacefully with one another, which can lead to repression of the autonomous self, that leaves a person with the influenced, dependent self that is dissimilar from the real one. Durkheim proposes that humans all have something that is a part of them, and something that is not a part of them, which he considers a passing guest who is a stranger to the self. This loss of autonomous self can wreak internal havoc. Not only that, but there is also the possibility of not being aware that a person is not who he or she thinks they are. Augustine laments that he is a stranger to himself (45) and also muses about how it appears as if God was piloting him, “though most secretly” (52). Ulrich questions whether he is actually in control of himself and knows the source of his wisdom. He says, “Everything I think I am attaining is attaining me . . . is the truth I am learning my truth” (Musil 135)? Essentially what he is asking is, am I in control of myself, do I know what is real? His answer appears to be no.