The Great Mother Archetype In Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth

Pearl S. Buck is widely recognized as a famous American writer who has a bicultural identity. Her works are mainly concerned with her living experience in China and have received worldwide popularity since they were published. The bicultural background enables Buck to gain insight into the different connotations of the Western and Chinese cultures. This thesis attempts to analyze her masterpiece The Good Earth from the perspective of archetypal criticism, with emphasis being put on the Great Mother archetype. The Great Mother is a major archetype in archetypal criticism. It represents an all-powerful numinous female on whom people were dependent in all things during the primitive period. In The Good Earth, Western and Chinese cultures are intermingled and displayed in archetypal characters and images. Hence the interpretation of the Great Mother archetype in this book becomes a must if we hope to better understand Buck’s bicultural identity. Besides, this interpretation also carries great significance in exploring the primordial motherhood worship in the history of human civilization, thus enabling us to fully appreciate the historical and cultural value of this novel.This thesis consists of four parts.The first part begins with a brief introduction to Pearl S. Buck and her works. Based on the aim to analyze the Great Mother archetype in this book and then associate it with Buck’s bicultural identity, two research questions are then raised.The second part is the literature review in which two aspects are included. The first is a review of the studies on Buck and The Good Earth that have been made by scholars both abroad and in China. Those studies are in large quantities and cover a great variety of literary critical theories; nevertheless, few scholars have conducted researches from the perspective of archetypal criticism. For this reason, the present study becomes more meaningful and necessary. The second aspect is a review of archetypal criticism and the Great Mother archetype. The Great Mother emerges from the primordial archetypes and manifests as a union of positive and negative attributes. On the one hand, she is endowed with the eternal motherhood, but on the other hand, she overawes people with overwhelmingly destructive force. The third part analyzes the concrete manifestations of the Great Mother archetype in The Good Earth and their association with Buck’s bicultural identity. First of all, the heroine O-lan is portrayed to be an archetypal woman. Her close connection with the Great Mother is directly unfolded in her appearance and name. Then her personality gives full expression to the dual character of the Great Mother. On the one hand, she is a devoted and capable housewife who exhibits all the virtues of the Good Mother. Facts prove that only with her existence could the family get survived from the hardships. On the other hand, she objectifies the darkness of the Terrible Mother by killing and neglecting her own children and humiliating her past opponent vengefully. Furthermore, earth and water are two important archetypal images of the Great Mother. Earth means a lot for the people in The Good Earth. Generation after generation, they are born on the ancestral land, live by it, and after death they are buried in it. The relationship between Wang Lung and his land is the most eye-catching clue that runs through the novel. Staying with his land, Wang Lung is filled with vitality and positive strength, but once being separated from it,he soon becomes a vacuous and depraved person whose life is haunted by troubles. Another archetypal image is water. Owing to its fertility, water nurtures the lives on the land and brings Wang Lung with peace and prosperity. However, when water changes into floods, things are different. Wang Lung has experienced two great floods by which everything in his village are destroyed relentlessly. Thousands of innocent people lose their homes and lives, and the corpses are buried and become decomposed under the ground, making the earth as spooky as the devil’s dwelling.Through the interpretation of the Great Mother archetype in The Good Earth, we can feel the influence of Buck’s bicultural identity. Both the Western and Chinese cultures are demonstrated in these archetypal character and images. On the one hand, the flood is full of biblical meaning, and the relationship between Wang Lung and earth bears great similarity with that between Antaeus and Gaia in Greek mythology. On the other hand, O-lan’s appearance and virtues correspond to the characteristics of Chinese Earth Mother, and Wang Lung’s attachment to earth and the eternal cycle of life centered on earth both cast light upon the Chinese traditional life style and life consciousness.The above analysis contributes to the ultimate conclusion in the fourth part. The Great Mother archetype exists universally in the collective unconsciousness of all humankind, but its forms and connotations may have some changes in different cultural groups. Those various culture-loaded manifestations are integrated and harmoniously coexisting in Pearl S. Buck’s novel, exhibiting the inviolable motherhood worship in the history of human civilization.