Echo From The Great Mother-A Comparative Study Of The Female Characters In Strange Interlude And Strange Tales From A Lonely Studio

This thesis is a comparative study of the heroine Nina in O'Neill's Strange Interlude and the fox girls in Pu Songling's Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio. These female characters are analyzed with the theory of archetypal Great Mother, which is an image prevalent in human history. Due to cultural influences, the female characters in O'Neill's and Pu Songling's works have both similarities and differences, which can be explained by the Western and Chinese archetypal Great Mother.The thesis consists of six parts: Introduction, Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four and Conclusion. In the part of Introduction there is a general summary of the female characters created by Eugene O'Neill and Pu Songling and then introduces a detailed explanation of the overall thematic structure. It explains that the comparison between the female characters of Strange Interlude and Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio is possible in that it has a common ground of the Great Mother archetype. It introduces some researches, already done on the female characters in the two works.The first chapter is a detailed analysis of the Great Mother archetype and its features. It sets out with a general look at the historic heritage left by the primitive Great Mother worship in both the East and the West. According to all the evidences found so far, it can be confirmed that the Great Mother once was deemed as the creator of the world and there has been a religion worshipping the Mother God throughout the world. The primitive thinking equaled the Mother God with Mother Earth and thus the Great Mother archetype possess the quality of giving and taking back life. In myths, there are two mother gods: the evil and the kind. The mother who gives birth to all life is loved and praised by primitive human being while the one who renders death is feared. In this part it is also explained in detail how the mother archetype becomes a symbol of the origin and source of life. In primitive cyclic thinking, the return to the mother means rebirth. Many rituals celebrating rebirth are...