An Analysis Of The Grotesques In Winesburg, Ohio From The Perspective Of Freudian Psychoanalysis

Sherwood Anderson has a special status in contemporary American literature. Nothaving received formal education or well learned in writing, he is still regarded as“the masters’ father”. Winesburg, Ohio is Sherwood Anderson’s masterpiece, whichplays a significant role in contemporary American literature. Moreover, Anderson’swriting style exerts a great influence on other writers like Faulkner and Hemingway.The novel consists of twenty-five short stories which are about twenty-threegrotesques’ spiritual world and weird behaviors. The book tells the stories about thesmall town people who strove for strong desires to be understood and loved, but theirinstincts are restrained in the transitional society. The purpose of this thesis is toanalyze the grotesques in Winesburg, Ohio with Freud’s theory of Pan-sex and Libidoand the three structures of personality. With the help of Freud’s psychoanalysis, thisessay mainly probe into the inner spiritual world of the small town grotesques.This paper consists of an introduction, the main body and conclusion. The maincontents are as follows:The first part is the introduction, which introduces Sherwood Anderson and hisworks, his predecessors’ comments on Sherwood Anderson and his works, theprevious studies in this field, as well as the realistic significance of this paper.The second part is the main body, which is made up of three chapters:The first chapter is mainly about the author of the book, Sherwood Anderson, andFreudian psychoanalysis. The first chapter is divided into three parts, the first one ofwhich is Anderson’s life experience and his representative works Winesburg, Ohio.The knowledge of the author’s life experience helps achieve a better understanding ofhis works. In19thcentury, America was in a transitional period, which meant that theagricultural society was changing into the industrial society. Anderson himself is anexperiencer, a doer and a seer in this transitional society, so he expressed his feelingsin Winesburg, Ohio. The second part of the first chapter offers Freud’s main theoriesrelating to Winesburg, Ohio, which are the theory of Pan-sex and the three structuresof personality. In the third part of the first chapter, this paper analyzes Anderson’swriting motivation. Because of his own painful experience of adjusting the transitional society, he expressed his nostalgia of intimate relationship among peoplein the agricultural society and his sympathy towards the grotesques in the industrialsociety.The second chapter is analyzing the grotesques in Winesburg, Ohio with Freud’stheory of Pan-sex. According to Freud, people’s behavior is determined by the mostpowerful instinct, sexual instinct, i.e. sex instinct and love instinct. The vital functionof sexual instinct is considered as “libido” by Freud. If people’s fundamental instinctis restrained and failed to find a proper way to release, they will become grotesques.The first part of the second chapter is about the conflicts between Puritanism andMaterialism. Before the industrialization’s invasion, Puritanism dominated people’sconcept of morality. Puritans have many principles and sexual morality is one of them.In order to pursue spiritual and religious goals, puritans give up all kinds of worldpleasures. According to Puritanism, people should be loyal, dedicated, faithful andsubmissive. Although the industrial movement approached, the puritan principlesrooted in people’s mind deeply. With the approach of industrialization, materialism, asa new concept, was brought to the society. That is to say, money was becoming theaim of people’s behaviors. The development of the cities gave birth to a new cultureand made the old one mortal. As a result, the puritan culture was replaced by materialculture. Therefore, the conflict and contradiction of the two different concepts madethe people who lived in the transitional society feel suffered. The second part is therelease of sex that can be reflected from the grotesques. According to Freud’s theory,the mental disorder, spiritual repression might be brought about by the depression ofsexual impulse. In the consequence, if the sexual impulse can not be released, thepeople might be abnormal in the aspect of personalities. Many people in Anderson’sWinesburg, Ohio are called grotesques just because of sexual repression and so. Mostof all, those grotesques are not born grotesques for they chose to release theirdepression in their own ways, the grotesque ways.The third chapter deals with the analysis of the grotesques with theory ofunconsciousness, the three structures of personality, which are id, superego and ego.By using Freud’s theory and analyzing the id, superego and ego the characters reflect,it best reaches out to a clearer understanding of the grotesques’ spiritual world and behaviors. Besides, the reasons why the small town people become grotesques canalso be reached. In transitional society, they found themselves confused and lostbecause of deformed ego between the id and superego.The conclusion part makes a summary to the preceding analysis and points out themain purpose of this essay. By applying Freudian psychoanalysis, this paper succeedsin analyzing the grotesques in Winesburg, Ohio from a new angle. The application ofFreud’s psychoanalysis to literature is no doubt a contribution to literature analysis.Through analyzing the connection between the grotesques’ weird behaviors and theperiod, we could find the reason why modern people feel suffered from agony ofloneliness. In this paper, the author will focus on revealing the spiritual world of thegrotesques and discuss about the distorted relationship between id and superego.Therefore, this paper has realistic significance to modern people in nowadays society.