| Life and death is an ever-lasting theme in literature; Virginia Woolf unfolds a peculiar life pattern before readers. Living in a turbulent society, she cares more about society and human existence, devoting all her life seeking what people are living for in modern world. All her unique perceptions on life and death have caused serious public concern about the existential predicament of modern people.Different from the traditional manner of novel-writing, Woolf calls for a new kind of novel, like Ulyssess, and asks writers to explore and portray the inner life. Through her creation, she presents her characters' inner-mind activities, traces the succession of their impression, thought and mood, and reveals the basic structure of human personality with its capacity for joy and pain. Among all her works, Mrs. Dalloway is considered as her masterpiece on exploration on life and death. For so many decades, Mrs. Dalloway has been interpreted from various angles, and some theories of literary criticism have helped readers know better about this novel and the author's view of life. One of the most important theories of literary criticism is Freudian Psychoanalysis, which provides readers with a new angle to interpret literary works. In Freudian theory of sublimation, it is thought that literary work is a sublimation of the writer's repressed feeling or an unrealized idea, which can sometimes be improved by the writers' self-statement. In her diary Virginia Woolf writes about her intentions in Mrs. Dalloway: "I want to give life and death; sanity and insanity..." In this thesis, an attempt is made to analyze the themes of life and death in Mrs. Dalloway by virtue of Freudian Psychoanalysis. Woolf reveals her subtle understanding of human life and death by means of psychological demonstration of concepts of life and death held by the two main characters: Mrs. Dalloway and Septimus. The thesis is mainly divided into three chapters.Chapter One focuses on the psychoanalysis of one of the themes of Mrs. Dalloway—life. In this part, Freud's theories of personality and anxiety are introduced to interpret Clarissa's living states. It conveys an idea that people cannot avoid the mental torture in life as the result of the persistent conflicts between the instinctual impulse id and the conscious ego.Chapter Two concentrates on exploration of the significance of death by virtue of Freudian psychoanalysis. Compelled by the death drive, main characters in this novel hope that death can end all misery in life and achieve equal communication with other people. Septimus' chose to commit suicide not only for his pursuit of soul independence but also because of the compelling force of death drive. So Septimus' death can be interpreted as the combination the two forces of Freudian Death Instinct: internally, it makes death as people's final destination where they can find permanent peace and consolation; externally, it creates massive violence that kills.Chapter Three digs out the close relation between life and death in this novel. Death is not the last refuge for miserable life; on the contrary, Woolf imparts the transcendental meaning to death for people to retrospect their own life. Facing the dilemmas of life and death, the author Virginia Woolf is not pessimistic; instead, she firmly believes the possibility of harmony in life. People can regain their confidence toward life through experiencing the death of others. This unique perspective can be explained by Freud's Defense Mechanism.Based on the interpretation on Mrs. Dalloway by Freudian Psychoanalysis, especially the defense mechanism, we may have deeper understanding of Woolf s view of life in this novel. When life could not go on as one expected, people may choose either compromise or defiance. At the end, this novel reminds us that each person must attach importance to quality of his or her own mental life. Only by simultaneous development between body and mind can we establish a harmonious relationship with each other in society. |
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