My Antonia Essay: Psychoanalytic Criticism -- My Antonia Essays

Psychoanalytic Criticism of My Antonia Abstract This essay uses psychoanalysis as the strategy of interpretation to postulate Willa Cathers My Antonia. Freuds well-known theory--the Oedipus complex--and Lacans theory of the reflect Stage are used as the modes of approaching the novel. I use psychoanalytic criticism as a government agency of interpreting Willa Cathers My Antonia because I find some similarities between My Antonia and Peter Pan, between that and The Awakening when reading Keith Greens Critical Theory and Practice A Coursebook. In the decrease of Freuds Oedipus complex, like Peter Pan who sees Windy as a lover and mother, and who develops his sexual identity through this complex, Jim Burden also has a mother-like lover, Antonia, and finally comes to channelise his sexualized and gendered identity in this world. In the view of Lacans Mirror Stage, like Edna Pontellier who wishes to return to her childhood memory, to return to the world of the Imaginary, in w hich sometimes I feel this summer as if I were walking through the green meadow again idly, aimlessly, unthinking and unguided (Chopin 520), Jim Burden recollects his boyhood living in the great midland absolute of North America where he feels he and Nature are one, but, unlike Edna who goes back and does not come back, Jim goes into the realm of the Imaginary and comes back to the Symbolic, experiencing the process of the Mirror Stage. These are the reasons why I try to apply psychoanalysis in the interpretation of the novel. General ideas will be given after the summery of the novel. Willa Cathers My Antonia begins with Jim Burdens an never-failing journey across the great prairie of North America (Cather 5), a journey back ... ...one sometimes finds ones self behaving in bad dream (Cather 158). After then, he feels he never want to see Antonia again and he hates her as much as he hates Cutter. This accident pushes Jim to leave Antonia and to go to Lincoln for study. The kind between psychoanalysis and Willa Cathers My Antonia has not been defined. I hope that this essay is the first step towards seeing this wonderful novel from a new perspective. Works Cited Cather, Willa. My Antonia. capital of Massachusetts Hougton Mifflin, 1988. Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Nina Baym. 3rd ed. New York Norton, 1989. 508-598. Green, Keith, and Jill Lebihan. Critical Theory & Practice A Coursebook. New York Routledge, 1996. Wright, Elizabeth. Psychoanalytic Criticism Theory in Practice. New York Methuen,1984.