该冤孽既是鬼中篇小说以及有关维多利亚的性观念的灾难性作用的心理剧。与此同时，弗洛伊德的精神略论理论，英语毕业论文，英语论文范文，特别是精神略论批评，铺平知道女教师为我们的路径。这一理论提供了一个重要的角度来略论人类的精神和心态，并发挥对文学产生了深远的影响。
The Turn of the Screw is a famous novella written by famous novelist Henry James. Since its appearance in 1899, it has received such great attention that the studies on Turn of the Screw have been diversified ever since. Many critics have been trying to analyze the novella from the angles such as analysis of heroine’s characteristics, analysis of the novella’s structure, analysis of the novella’s techniques, etc. The author tries to analyze the novella in the psychoanalytic perspective, holding the view that the unnamed governess, the heroine, is a promiscuous woman and experiences several different mental processes in different periods. The is divided into four parts, including the summary of the novella, the introduction of the psychoanalytic criticism, the psychoanalytic analysis of the novella and the conclusion.
The Summary of the Novella
The Turn of the Screw mainly tells a story of a governess who takes the job of teaching and taking care of one beautiful eight-year-old girl named Flora and her ten-year-old brother. At the beginning, the young governess with no name met with a man, who was the children’s uncle on London’s Harley Street, for her first governess job. The young woman was very fond of him and thus the man was able to persuade her to accept the job of governess to his niece and nephew in his countryside house Bly. One situation should be noticed and mentioned: the young governess cannot contact him in the future and has to solve all the problems by herself. In one evening when she walks around the house and sees a man in one of the towers of the house, she thinks it were the children’s uncle at first but then she finds that she is wrong as it is a stranger. She is told that the man is the uncle’s former valet Peter Quint, who has been dead, when she talks the man with the housekeeper Mrs. Grose. Mrs. Grose also tells the governess that Peter spent a lot of time with Miles Before. Over time, she finds the other ghost named Miss Jessel as well. Thinking the two ghosts will hurt the two children, the governess decides to fight against the ghosts to protect the two children. However, with the development of the novella, the governess finds that two children’s behaviors are becoming odd, and seem to be possessed by the ghosts. The novella’s atmosphere becomes nervous, just like the screw is turned more and more tensionally.
Upon the novella’s publication, it attracts large numbers of critics’ attention and study. Some say the governess is a warm and kind person who fights against the ghost consistently to protect the children, while some think that the governess is mentally abnormally, holding the idea that what she sees the ghost is her illusion produced by her mental illness. I agree with the later idea and try to analyze the governess’s mental processes with theory of psychoanalytic criticism.
Psychoanalytic Criticism
The Turn of the Screw is either an outstanding example of the type of ghost novella written at the end of the 19th century or is a classic psychoanalytic study. When studying the novella in the perspective of psychoanalysis, the novella pays attention to sexual repression and the sources of insanity. Thus, based on the features of the Turn of the Screw that needs the theory of psychoanalytic criticism, it should introduce the nature of psychoanalytic criticism first.
Psychoanalytic criticism is form of literary interpretation that employs the terms of psychoanalysis (including the unconsciousness, repression, the Oedipus complex, etc.) in order to illuminate aspects of literature in its connection with conflicting psychological states (1900). The beginnings of this modern tradition are found in Frued’s The Interpretation of Dreams, which provides as “diplacements” of repressed wishes or anxieties (1900). In the “The Ambiguity of Henry James”, Wilson interprets the ghosts in the Turn of the Screw as imaginary projections of the governess’s repressed sexual desires.
Psychoanalysis of the Novella
The young governess in the novella has mental illness, which is produced by her subconscious mind. As we know, Frued takes the subconscious system as a big house, which is full of the governess’s admiration and love to the children’s uncle. The governess, born into a poor family, gets her first job and finds her master in the future is a gentleman, who is very handsome and vigorous as well as single. The governess has never seen such a good man in reality except for in her dream or in the novel. The words that I am easily smitten to someone, and I am smitten to one person in London largely reflect her unconscious love to the male master. In the Victorian era, the sense of class is pretty strong. The governess has no qualification to express her love to the man because of her poor family. Thus, the traditional concepts and the sense of inferiority cannot realize her dream but force her love to stay in her subconscious mind.
In the novella, we can see that the governess arrange herself in the place of lover in order to make her position close to the man’s position. When she arrives at Bly, she not only plays as the two children’s governess, but also moves the little girl’s bed into her room. She tries to play the role of mother, governess and lover or even the representative of the children. She says: “I have an illusion that we are the passengers in a floating boat. As for me, I am the captain”, which shows that she takes herself as a big heroine to save the world and the ghosts she imagined are just to present her charming and thus she can win the master’s love . The governess thinks the objective things or others’ behaviors as those things she has as well, to conceal her own inner weakness and wins the satisfaction of replacement and thus reduces her inner anguish.
Meanwhile, after meeting the failure from Flora, the governess becomes a strange “monster”, which is situated in the conflicts between “inner ego” and “super ego”. When Flora leaves away, she is worried about Flora, not because Flora is her student but because she concerns that Flora is so smart that she will persuade her uncle to fire her. So she stays at Bly to win Miles’ trust and support. However, she is so crazy that she forces Miles to admit he has some connection with Quint to establish a brave impression before the man.
Conclusion
|
