Anxiety And Resistance: A Horneyan Interpretation Of Hester’s Anxiety In The Well

Elizabeth Jolley is a famous Australian female writer.Her novel,The Well,has been widely acclaimed since its publication,and won the Miles Franklin Prize,the highest literary award in Australia.Jolley’s works mostly pay attention to the survival status of the marginal groups in society,and The Well is no exception.The heroine,Hester Harper,is a typical marginal person.She and her adopted orphan girl,Katherine,are dependent on each other on a remote farm,but a car accident completely changes their fates.At present,domestic and foreign studies on The Well are mainly focused on Gothic style,postcolonial studies,feminist studies and trauma themes,while few have studied about Hester’s anxiety.In fact,Hester’s inner state runs through the whole book and cannot be ignored.Moreover,Hester’s anxiety reflects the important issues of people and people,as well as people and society in contemporary society,which is of universal significance.Therefore,this thesis uses the anxiety theory of Karen Horney,a representative of the psychoanalytic sociocultural school,to conduct an in-depth study of Hester’s anxiety and further point out the social meaning conveyed by The Well.This thesis consists of five chapters.The first chapter is the introduction,which introduces Elizabeth Jolley,The Well,and its literature review at home and abroad,untangles Karen Horney’s anxiety theory,and explains the structure and focus of the thesis.The second chapter mainly discusses the manifestations of Hester’s anxiety,which includes Hester’s emotional anxiety as a lesbian,Hester’s status anxiety caused by constructing discourse power,and Hester’s moral anxiety for her indifference to life.The third chapter analyzes the causes of Hester’s anxiety from the perspective of individual experiences and sociocultural environment.And it further points out that the oppression of patriarchal society and the prevalence of hedonic culture after World War II are the root causes,while the personal special experiences are the direct causes of Hester’s anxiety.The fourth chapter discusses Hester’s unremitting efforts to resist anxiety and get rid of her survival dilemma.In this process,although Hester has not yet successfully overcome her anxiety,she has been able to face her real self and reestablish connections with others to some extent.The fifth chapter is the conclusion of the thesis.Through analysis,The Well seems to narrate Hester’s personal anxiety;but in fact,it exposes the oppression that women suffer in Australian patriarchal society and hedonism culture,which forces women to be marginalized in society,and explores their construction of living space.By interpreting The Well from the perspective of anxiety,the fate of Hester can be better understood based on personal psychology and social condition.And it can more intuitively reflect the psychological survival plight of the marginal groups and attract social attention,which is of certain practical significance.