In And Out Of Neurosis:Women's Confusion And Growth In Munro's Short Story

Munro,a housewife writer depicted the lives of ordinary people,especially females' lives.Her series of works described the hopelessness,helplessness,weakness and feebleness etc.of the females and showed us the misery we are all trying to escape.Through her works,we can feel her humanistic care for common people.A little bright in the dark is enough to guide the way forward.With her delicate psychological description of the spiritual world and the strong vitality of characterization,the paper attempts to apply Horney's neurotic personality to analyze the different personalities of the heroines for the first time.According to Horney's neurotic personality,the characters in Munro's stories are divided into three types:(1)the compliant type—Doree and Maureen,they would adopt moving towards people.(2)the aggressive type—Del and Rose,they would adopt moving against people.(3)the withdrawn type—Carla and Juliet,they would adopt moving away from people.The paper will bring us to comprehend the heroines' confusion and growth from the perspective of neurosis personality.The practical significance of the paper is to provide guidance and reference for the different females in real life,so that they can get along well with the world around them.In addition,Horney puts forward that the imbalance of parent-child relation in childhood is the fertile soil for the adulthood neurotic personality,which has a positive significance for how to build a harmonious parenthood.The deficiency of the paper is that due to the limited text,there is no comprehensive analysis of the possible neurotic tendencies of many female protagonists in Munro's stories.The future research direction may also be conducted from the interwoven relationship between the writer's own personality and her works.