A Psychoanalysis Of Female Personality Constructed In Runaway

People have different understanding in gender in the process of the formation of social culture because men and women have different body constructions, living styles and group identities. Men have superiority in economy, politics, culture and other aspects leading to the inferiority of women in society. Therefore, social gender has formed gradually. Alice Munro, a master of short stories, is good at describing the fates of ordinary women from the perspective of female delicately and exquisitely. She gives every female a unique personality and a lively living style on the basis of her own understanding of life. Most of the characters in her short stories are experiencing conflicts from society and families, repression, desire, hope, pursuit, etc. In the description of their ordinary lives, readers especially women can find their own shadows in the stories and realize their status in society. This thesis chooses her most representative short story collections Runaway as the reading text and selects several coherent short stories as the studied texts: “Chance”, “Silence”, “Soon” and “Runaway” to discuss the reasons of the characters’ runaway and the growth of the female ego in the process of runaway.The research approach adopted in this thesis is the textual analysis from the theory of Freudian personality structure together with feminism. This thesis is divided into three parts to analyze the growth of female mind. Based on the id in Freudian personality structure, the first part analyzes the performance of id in female spirit and body. The id is the original program of human beings, which is the representative of desire and needs. It makes people pursue the pleasure, avoid the pain and release the self. Like men, women have the same desire and pursuit, yet their id is laid in patriarchal society which can highlight their inferiority. At the same time, it can pave the way for the awakening of their ego-consciousness. The second part analyzes the restraint of the superego to women and the conflicts in female inner mind. The superego represents the rights and wrongs of the society and helps to control the id’s impulses. It stands for values and becomes the internalized symbol of the social culture, which often has complex conflicts with the objects. In Alice Munro’s short stories, female characters have conflicts with the traditional living style, social principles and family structures. The thesis analyzes the reasons of the conflicts, including the internalization of phallocentrism, etc. The last part analyzes the process of the balance of individuals with the ego. The ego can be dissimilated because of the influence of society. The ego defense mechanism can work to help the formation of the ego like denial mechanism, reaction mechanism and repression mechanism. In Alice Munro’s short stories, the female ego lies in patriarchal society. These female characters experience the oppression from patriarchal society in spiritual and physical aspects, trying to struggle and fight for their own rights and equal status. They try their best to search for and pursue their healthy ego with the awakening and exploration of female consciousness.The study suggests that the experiences of female characters in Munro’s works are the miniature of the women’s lives in society. Society is one of the most influential factors in the construction of female personality and the formation of self-consciousness. Women as the objects in patriarchal society experience double oppression in physical and mental situations. Meanwhile they meet with the unfair treatment in politics, culture, economy and bear the constraint of the superego. However, they still have the id which wants to enjoy the pleasure principle. Females should realize their inferiority, challenge the constraint, protest against unfair treatment, and pursue their own values and dreams in order to form a healthy individual.