Lack Of Sense Of Security:an Analysis Of Abbie’s Tragedy In Desire Under The Elms

Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953), the greatest American dramatist, was honoured as "the Father of Modern American drama". He has a miserable life experience, which has exerted a significant impact on his works. Almost all Eugene O’Neill’s dramas are autobiographical in one way or another. Desire Under the Elms is one of his greatest dramas, readers and researchers see it as Eugene O’Neill’s unconscious autobiography, and the cause of Abbie’s tragedy is always attributed to O’Neill’s deliberate design.Since its publication, many researchers have been analyzing this drama from many different perspectives; especially no agreement has been reached on the reasons for the protagonist Abbie’s tragedy. Based on the achievements made by the former scholars, this thesis is intended to analyze the tragedy of Abbie from a new perspective--lack of the sense of security.As an important psychological conception, the sense of security first appeared in Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic writings, and is improved and implemented constantly by other scholars, which evolved into a very important theory of psychology and sociology. The theory of the sense of security reveals the reason why people lack the sense of security, the harm caused by the lack of it, and the methods of how to build it.By using the theory of the sense of security and the textual analysis of Desire Under the Elms, the thesis explores the reasons why Abbie lacks the sense of security, and deeply analyzes Abbie’s actions to pursue the sense of security, as well as the tragedies brought to her and her family by these actions. Her tragedy is the tragedy of hundreds of thousands of women who are similar with her in the contemporary society; her tragedy also sounds the alarm for the women in the modern society.Besides the introduction and the conclusion, this thesis consists of four chapters.The introduction concentrates on Eugene O’Neill and Desire Under the Elms, the literature review, the research questions and the significance of the study. Chapter One is the theoretical framework. This chapter begins with the theory of Lacan about the sense of security, which mainly concerns the growing-up process of an individual, the reasons for the infant’s lack of the prime sense of security, the ways the infant makes up for the sense of loss caused by his mother’s absence and then regains the sense of security. Secondly, other researchers’contribution to the theory of the sense of security and their main ideas are discussed; especially the theoretical contribution and the soul of the sense of security of Sigmund Freud and Maslow.Chapter Two is about the reasons why Abbie lacks the sense of security from three aspects. Firstly, Eugene O’Neill’s miserable life and his lack of the sense of security are the motivations of his shaping the female protagonist who lacks the sense of security as him. Secondly, the specific social environment Abbie lives in leads to her lacking of the sense of security. Finally, the thesis reproduces Abbie’s miserable life and her actions because of the lack of the sense of security. Through the above analysis, it can be seen that it is the external factors and internal factors combined that lead to Abbie’s lack of the sense of security.Chapter Three studies Abbie’s desire for different senses of security:material security and spiritual security. This chapter mainly researches how Abbie pursues her desire and how her pursuit changes from the material security to the spiritual security step by step.Chapter Four analyzes how Abbie’s excessive desire for the sense of security leads to her and others’tragedy. Because she fails to control her expanding desire timely, her desire generates terrible destructive power, her mind is filled with insatiable desire for the sense of security, which not only leads to her own tragedy, but also leads to the tragedy of Eben and Cabot.The last part of the thesis is the conclusion. Through the textual analysis of Eugene O’Neill’s play, Desire Under the Elms, from the perspective of the sense of security, this thesis reveals that Abbie’s tragedy is caused by her excessive desire for the sense of security. Her tragedy serves as a warning for our modern people:When we face various desires, especially the desire for the sense of security, we should accommodate it in a proper way and get our desire for the sense of security under control so that we can avoid many similar tragedies.