On Tragic Love And Marriages In Maugham’s Works-From The Perspective Of Trauma Theory

As a productive writer, Maugham creates numerous love stories in his lifetime writing, but most of love and marriage stories are full of frustration and misery, ending in tragedies. Why does Maugham incline to create tragic love and marriage stories?Trauma, as a common life experience of human beings, is often manifested in the literary creation. Maugham, full of ups and downs in his life, regards his writing career as his whole life. It is natural that his works could not be separated from his own personal experiences. Analyzing from the perspective of trauma theory, the author intends to dig out the deeper reasons of tragic love and marriage stories in Maugham’s works.There are five chapters in this paper, and the main contents are as following:The first chapter gives a brief introduction to Maugham’s life, tragic love and marriage stories in his works as well as some researches on the related subject at home and abroad, and presents the aim and significance of the thesis.The second chapter mainly introduces a theoretic basis for the thesis. In this part, it gives a brief introduction of trauma theory, including basic understanding of trauma definition, traumatic symptoms and its reasons.The third chapter analyzes the manifestations of Maugham’s traumatic psychology in his literary works. He mainly manifests his traumatic symptoms in his works from two aspects. One is his characters’ negative attitudes towards love and marriages. In most of his works, the female characters often betray their love and marriages, finally bringing disasters. While for male characters, they often try hard to get rid of bondage of love and marriages, thus causing tragedies. The other is his intention of uglifying the female images. In his writing, most female images are not sweet at all; on the contrary, they are even disgusted and ugly. Basically, the female characters under his pen can be classified into three types:dissolute women, hypocritical women and materialistic women.The fourth chapter analyzes the causes of his characters’tragic love and marriages from the perspective of trauma theory. The first one is personal traumatic experience. That is, Maugham loses both of his parents at his early age which deprives his happy childhood memory, and especially the early death of his dearest mother makes him refuse to believe that any other woman can give him the selfless love like his mother. Besides, Maugham encounters heavy blows in his puppy love and marriage, which makes him lose confidence completely in women as well as in love and marriage. What’s more, his physical defects including his stammer and short stature double his pain in life, which inevitably lead to his low self-esteem and sense of inferiority. The second one is the impact of social trauma. In the time of Maugham, people experience a shift from late Victorian to Edwardian. With the transition of social patterns, people suffer the spiritual crises, and value alienation becomes the major problem. Love and marriage, as an important form of interpersonal relationship, becomes twisted and loses its charm. All of these bring traumas to people, including Maugham. So in his writing, many love and marriage stories finally end in death or splitting up, love and marriages are always full of cheating, betrayal and torture. The third one is men’s collective traumatic experience. With women’s increasing self-consciousness and radical behavior, patriarchal culture is on the decline. Men begin to realize that their dominant position is gradually shaken, and men’s authority retreats from the center to edge. As a man, patriarchal culture is deeply rooted in Maugham’s mind, which makes him difficult to accept the reality. Being a realistic writer, Maugham shifts his trauma into his work. He creates in his works many tragic love and marriages which are caused by women. In this way, he releases his hatred and disgust.The last chapter is a conclusion. It is feasible to analyze Maugham’s repeatedly created tragic love and marriage stories in his writing by applying trauma theory. It not only broadens our understanding of Maugham’s works from a new perspective, but also provokes our reflections on love and marriages in reality.