Freudian Criticism: Reading Characters' Trauma In Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita & Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye
Ian Tsai 00121145
Professor Grace Ma
Selected Reading in English & American Novels
20 June 2013
Freudian Criticism: Reading Characters ' Trauma
In Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita & Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye According to Sigmund Freud, the unconscious of every individual are residual traces of prior stages of psychosexual development, form earliest infancy onward, which have been outgrown, but remain as "fixation" in the unconscious of the adult. When triggered by some later event in adult life, people 's repressed wishes which are repressed by the censor into the unconscious realm are revived and motivate a fantasy, in disguised form, of a satisfaction that is modeled on the way that the wish had been gratified in fancy or early childhood.1 Nevertheless, if a repressed wish is not fulfilled and not repressed by the censor into unconscious realm, an adult would have a deficiency or vacancy of mental condition called trauma in psychology.2 I would like to use this theory and some psychoanalytical terminologies to analyze characters ' mental condition to prove that their mental deficiency become characters ' trauma in Vladimir Nabokov 's Lolita & Toni Morrison 's The Bluest Eye. In Nabokov 's Lolita, the protagonist Humbert Humbert would be regarded as a pedophile by a reader because he adores nymphets, a girl 's age ranges from nine-year-old to fourteen-year-old. However, if we apply Freudian Criticism to analyze Humbert 's mental condition, we could know that his sexual experience in childhood, which is a fail one, makes him has a deficiency in his mental condition. When Humbert kisses Annabel that night, "[Annabel] trembled and twitched...her legs [which] were not too close together...[then] she [rubs] her dry lips against [Humbert 's lip and she] let [Humbert] fed on her open mouth...a sudden commotion in a nearby bush prevented [them] from overflowing－and [they] drew away from each other" (13). From this quote, we can know that both Humbert
Professor Grace Ma
Selected Reading in English & American Novels
20 June 2013
Freudian Criticism: Reading Characters ' Trauma
In Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita & Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye According to Sigmund Freud, the unconscious of every individual are residual traces of prior stages of psychosexual development, form earliest infancy onward, which have been outgrown, but remain as "fixation" in the unconscious of the adult. When triggered by some later event in adult life, people 's repressed wishes which are repressed by the censor into the unconscious realm are revived and motivate a fantasy, in disguised form, of a satisfaction that is modeled on the way that the wish had been gratified in fancy or early childhood.1 Nevertheless, if a repressed wish is not fulfilled and not repressed by the censor into unconscious realm, an adult would have a deficiency or vacancy of mental condition called trauma in psychology.2 I would like to use this theory and some psychoanalytical terminologies to analyze characters ' mental condition to prove that their mental deficiency become characters ' trauma in Vladimir Nabokov 's Lolita & Toni Morrison 's The Bluest Eye. In Nabokov 's Lolita, the protagonist Humbert Humbert would be regarded as a pedophile by a reader because he adores nymphets, a girl 's age ranges from nine-year-old to fourteen-year-old. However, if we apply Freudian Criticism to analyze Humbert 's mental condition, we could know that his sexual experience in childhood, which is a fail one, makes him has a deficiency in his mental condition. When Humbert kisses Annabel that night, "[Annabel] trembled and twitched...her legs [which] were not too close together...[then] she [rubs] her dry lips against [Humbert 's lip and she] let [Humbert] fed on her open mouth...a sudden commotion in a nearby bush prevented [them] from overflowing－and [they] drew away from each other" (13). From this quote, we can know that both Humbert
Cited: Nabokov, Vladimir. Lolita. London: Penguin Books, 1995. Print. Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. London: Vintage Books, 1979. Print. Abrams and Harpham, eds. A Glossary of Literary Trems Eight Edition. The United States of American: Thomson Wardsworth, 2005. Print. Booth & May. The Norton Introduction to Literature Shorter Tenth Edition. New York: W.W. Norton Company, 2010. Print. SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on Lolita.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2005. Web. 12 Jun. 2013. SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on The Bluest Eye.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2002. Web. 12 Jun. 2013.