Jim Burden's Oedipus Complex

Willa Cather's My Antonia is her masterpiece. It has been interpreted from many perspectives by many scholars in years. Antonia, an immigrant girl from Bohemia, experiences great hardships but eventually becomes a blissful mother, which gratifies us. While Jim Burden, a successful lawyer who has received college education, is trapped in an unhappy marriage and has no children. People do not have reasonable explanations about this. This thesis would try to use Lacan's theories of psychoanalysis to explore the reasons of Jim's unhappy marriage.In Lacan's discourse, Oedipus complex is divided into three stages: the dual stage between mother and child, the triangular stage between father, mother and child, then the dual stage between father and child. Hereafter, children smoothly move from the imaginary order into the symbolic order. But because of human's pursuit for perfect personality, people try to pursue the real which can only be reached by death. In Jim's mind, he has two concepts of mother: mother of nature and of Antonia. In the novel, nature appears in the form of mother's womb for many times and Jim wishes to be dissolved into it; with Jim Burden's narrative development, Antonia is gradually motherized and naturalized and becomes the object of Jim's Oedipus complex. At the beginning of the novel, Jim lives on the prairie together with Antonia and he feels satisfied and happy. Later, Jim moves from prairie to town and at last to the east. It is caused by his submission to the Law of Father and he estranges himself from mother. He marries a rich New York girl and achieves success in his career. But the Law of Father is not approved of by the mother and Jim's subjectivity has not been reasonably established. Thus occurs the split in his personality. He still longs to be in a unity with mother. He tries to put off visiting Antonia; but in his unconsciousness, through his death drive, he can come back to mother's arms. He always goes back to the west and at last comes back to Antonia.Through the analysis, this thesis would come to such a conclusion: Jim Burden's personality development is deeply influenced by his Oedipus complex, thus causing the failure in his marriage.