On Personality Conflicts And Integration And The Creation Of The Show

Personalities of great artists are always in conflict. Virginia WooW known as"the greatest female novelist in her times", is no exception. While integratedpersonalities are alike, conflicting ones are different in many ways. This thesisstudies Virginia Woolf s conflicting personality from two dimensions: one fromthe reality of her life; the other from the world of art, and also explores the causeof her morbid character, which may help us understand her thoughts of integratedpersonality that transcends herself.Chapter I Virgin of Wisdom According to Carl Jung's theory ofpersonality, hereditary factors and environment play a very important role in one'spersonality development. Born into an aristocratic family of intellect, VirginiaWoolf inherited not only the genes of genius, but also genes of lunatic diseasefrom her father's side and melancholy temperament from her mother's side. Allthese helped to produce her duel psychology of conflicting feelings about herparents which was love interwoven with hatred. To make matters worse, the heavyblow of the bereavement received in her childhood and mental trauma broughtabout by her stepbrothers' sexual infraction to her helped to form the consequentmorbid sexual handicap which led her to live in a Platonism's conjugal life, whichin turn worsened her mental disease. As a lonely vagrant, mutineer and a guerillafighter living in the frontier of a society in the Victoria Age, she combated againstthe social and literary system all her life. In this fight with disparity in strength,sometimes she had a conscious frantic inclination, which could be explained as aresponse of survival in a society with overdue burden on her, and an outcome inrealizing her creative value in a traditionally man-dominated society.Chapter II Extension of Personality Conflict This part studies themajor characters and the inner conflicts reflected in these characters. I think theconnection between a writer's personality and his works is tacit, because in asense every piece of art is a self-revelation. Woolf also thought that" Every secretof the writer's soul, every experience in his life, every trait in his mind, all arerecorded in his works". She even drew the conclusion: "Works are not descriptionof the real world, and instead, they are depiction of the inner world of the author".It is not easy to explain clearly the connection between an author and his works3because of its complexity. Since the author may live a life independent of hisworks, his attitude and characteristics can never be observed in his fiction, or inhis diary, but written records excluded in his fiction must be of some help inunderstanding his works. What's more, we need to make some bold speculationson the basis of the writer's biography and his works.Chapter III Ideal Integrated PersonalityAndrogyny Woolf spersonality was conflicting, morbid, and disunited, but all these in turn pressedher to pursue a life of higher order and a personality of more harmony. Woolflived up to the name of a female novelist who "overthrows all idols". She calledupon people to pursue an ideal personality by killing "the angels in the house", theideal heroines in the traditional literature dominated by man, they adopted man'scriterion completely. These heroines are beautiful, industrious, meek, humane andattractive, and they are the most popular figures in the gallery of literature.Androgyny哪the perfect personality, which Woolf held in esteem, is apersonality that combines masculine temperament with feminine temperament,manifesting the fusion of mentality and reason, tenderness and grimness,benevolence and strength, sentimentality and decidedness. The theory ofandrogyny is a defection to the single criterion with male value being the sOlearbiter. In view of th...