A Study Of The Theme Of Desires In Anthony Trollope’s Fictional World

Anthony Trollope(1815-1882)was one of the most important figures in the Victorian Era. As the literary review indicates, both the researchers at home and abroad seem to have over-exploited his works from the angle of society, history and culture, but they have showed little concern for the psychology of the characters in his novels. In fact, his novels are filled with depictions of man’s greatly changed psychology of desire which is determined by the change of the outer social environment. Through portraying their emotion, life career and economic fate, Trollope truthfully reveals their inner struggle and moral choice on their way to realizing the desires. Therefore his works becomes one of the most vivid reflections of the British current society and human existence.In order to understand the world of Trollope’s desire and those characters’in his novels, the dissertation takes Jacques Lacan’s theories of Mirror Stage and desire as the theoretical foundation and critical perspective as to explore the characters’desire and their different means to realize the desires. Considering that Lacan’s psychological theory attaches more importance to the influence of the external social context on the individual psychology of desire, the study can better reveal how the external social and historical environment influence Anthony Trollope’s life and the inner world of the characters in his works, and how they determine their destiny to a certain extent.The dissertation consists of the following parts. Introduction reviews the previous studies about Anthony Trollope at home and abroad, and then proposes the central argument and research method of the dissertation. Chapter One establishes Lacan’s theories of Mirror Stage and desire as the theoretical foundation. With the guidance of this research strategy, the dissertation explores the two main factors which have greatly affected the author’s ways of desire-writing in Chapter Two, namely the unique life experiences and the external social environment. Under the specific multiple social discourses of the Victorian society, considering characters’different ways to realize the desire, the author of this dissertation divides desire into three categories, namely, the desire for emotion, the desire for power and the desire for wealth.Based on the textual analysis of Can You Forgive Her?, The Prime Minister and The Duke’s Children, the third chapter discusses why the characters in these novels put emotion in the first place for their specific growth experiences and how they are greatly affected by the current society, specially the discourses of patriarchy, and how they are lost into the mire of emotion ------ the more one wants to release emotion, the more he would feel suppressed, that is the very dilemma of human existence. The fourth chapter takes the main characters in Phineas novels, Can You Forgive Her? and The Prime Minister as the typical cases to illustrate the second kind of desire, the intense desire for political power. To pursue the power, the characters even take the cost of their emotion and marriage to continue their painful and hopeless journey of struggling for power. The fifth chapter is devoted to the analysis of characters’desire for wealth as manifested in The Eustace Diamond and The Way We Live Now. Although the means of crazily pursuing wealth for winning the recognition of others and society should not be encouraged, it is the only way to gain attention from others in that society. This is the very living dilemma that the characters like Lizziz and Melmotte cannot escape from. Conclusion of the dissertation summarizes the views of the previous chapter, and then assesses the value of this research.Based on the close reading of the works by Anthony Trollope, the dissertation is expected to deepen a understanding of the writer, his novels and his thoughts. Meanwhile, by adopting the theories of“Mirror Stage”and desire set up by Jacques Lacan, it intends to break the traditional border between the discipline of psychology and that of literature, therefore, so as to provide an effective case for the interdisciplinary studies of British realist novels.