Research Of Iris Murdoch's Novel The Black Prince From The Perspectiye Of Psychoanalysis

Iris Murdoch(1919-1999)is a well-known contemporary English woman writer and philosopher,whose writing has strong narrative and profound moral philosophy meanings.The Black Prince written in the 1970s is very important among her twenty-six novels.It has been widely discussed by a lot of scholars on its unique narrative structure and deep philosophic spirit.This thesis will analyze the sadism and masochism relationship,its transformation and reason between different characters with psychoanalytic theory on the basis of previous researches,hoping to explore the moral philosophy of Iris Murdoch.This thesis consists of five parts.The first part summarizes previous researches of Iris Murdoch and The Black Prince,combs the development process of sadism and masochism theory in psychology,states the theory of Ehrlich Fromm,Simon Freud,Alfred Adler related to my research,and at last briefly summarizes relationship between characters of the novel.The second part concentrates on the sadists.Through the analysis of Anorld and Bradely's sadistic manifestation and reason,I think that Arnold is a sadist of behavior,his sadistic psychology causes family violence to his wife,and Bradley is a verbal sadist,he treats others indifferently because of his avoidance and inferiority.The third part explains the masochists who are Rachel,Priscilla and Francis.As women,Rachel and Priscilla's inherent weakness and the lack of consciousness of independence cause their suffering and Priscilla's death when facing cruel torture.As a homosexual,Francis becomes masochism inversion and he tries to find the existence and security feelings from the enjoyment of masochism.The forth part focuses on the characters' identity transformation in this novel.Bradely becomes a masochist because of his selfish love to Julian,and Rachel becomes a sadist under the unbearable violence and betray at the end of the novel.The last part summarizes the above analysis,points out the communication dilemma between people,and make a conclusion that sincere love is an important way out of interpersonal distress.