A Study Of The Uncanny In The Elected Member

Bernice Rubens(1928-2004)is a famous Anglo-Jewish female writer,whose fame rises with her vivid description of Anglo-Jewish living condition and deep concern for human beings' existence.The Elected Member,as her representative work,wins the Booker Prize for fiction in 1970.The novel depicts how the protagonist Norman descends to degeneration and madness in a disturbing Jewish family.In the sense of Jewish sacrifice ritual,he is elected as a scapegoat to bear the failure of his family.Norman's mental breakdown is actually an epitome of all the members' collective repression in the family.Rubens makes a detailed description of the characters' negative emotion in The Elected Member.Rabbi is distressed by the degeneration of his son and the elopement of his daughter.As the scapegoat,Norman goes insane under his self-imprisonment.The singleton Bella suffers from her pathological illusion for incestuous love.The negative emotions of the three charactes are driven by their emotional distress.Considering that Freudian uncanny is the psychoanalytical explanation of people's repression both in literary works and real life.Therfore,this thesis chooses the uncanny as the theoretical basis to study the characters' negative feelings in The Elected Member,illustrates the representations and causes of the uncanny,and explores people's methods of releasing the uncanny.Besides,The study of this thesis is conducive to refresh the studies on The Elected Member.This thesis is composed of five chapters.Chapter one makes a brief introduction to Bernice Rubens and The Elected Member.Then the literature review of Bernice Rubens and her works is presented in order to find out that the uncanny study is a perspective to throw a new light on this novel.Meanwhile,the development of the uncanny and Freudian uncanny are also introduced in this chapter,including the key concepts,such as castration complex,double and repetition compulsion.In Chapter Two,the representations of Rabbi,Norman and Bella's uncanny are discussed through the combination of theory and text.The uncanny is represented through double,repetition compulsion and the dread of evil eye.Thus the characters are tortured by the recurrence of the repression.Chapter three explores the causes resulting in the three characters'uncanny from the aspects of culture,family and individual.The three characters are tortured by the unspeakable dread caused by the marriage against Jewish tradition,the manipulating mother in the family,and their character defects.Chapter four discusses the characters' tentative attempts to release the uncanny.By re-establishing relationship,speaking out the repressed memory and caring for others,the characters released themselves to various degrees.Chapter Five is the conclusion.This thesis endeavors to discuss several possible ways to reconstruct self-identity so as to release the uncanny in light of Freudian uncanny.What's more,the study helps the readers to get a deeper understanding of Rubens' humanistic concern and have a better appreciation of the intuitive sensations in the novel.Hence,this thesis can arouse reader's attention to Anglo-Jewish literature.