Umbrella | Sexual References

The interpretation of an umbrella as an erotic symbol dates back to Greco-Roman god Bacchus and his followers called bacchantes. Since Bacchus’s cult was mainly associated with pleasure, rave, and ecstasy, the usage of the umbrella in different occasions like festivals or events by cult members assigned an erotic meaning to that object. Later its associations were generally made with royalty and wealth and this aspect has been forgotten. After a long time has passed, the character named Henrietta Petowker in Nicholas Nickleby was portrayed as “[she] knows that she is admired at the theatre by the jauntily phallic appearance of a most preserving umbrella in the upper boxes” by Charles Dickens, while he was pointing out the erotic perception of the object. Sixty years later Freud explains the relationship of umbrellas with the unconscious as such “all elongated objects, sticks, tree-trunks, umbrellas (on account of the opening, which might be likened to an erection), all sharp and elongated weapons, knives, daggers, and pikes, represent the male member” in the Interpretation of Dreams. C. Philip Wilson analysis his patient’s dream based upon the Freudian umbrella as a symbol of the male genital and associates the umbrella image in his patient’s dream with his erection the day before he sees that dream. For him, the shaft of the umbrella symbolizes his erect phallus and the cloth of the opened umbrella represented the cloth of his trousers stretched by it. A similar association was made by Jacques Derrida in his book called Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles. He describes an umbrella as “hermaphroditic spur… of a phallus which is modestly enfolded in its veils” by rendering the umbrella simultaneously both as masculine and feminine.