A Psychoanalytic Interpretation Of The International Theme In The Portrait Of A Lady

The American author Henry James is generally acknowledged as the founder of psychological novels in English literature.His works dramatizing the International Theme focus on the psychological activity and character development of the innocent Americans confronting the sophisticated European civilization.Based on psychoanalytic criticism represented by Freud,Jung and Lacan respectively,the thesis probes into the constructive process of the International Theme on the psychological level in the target story The Portrait of a Lady.To begin with,based on Jung's theory,the study analyzes the founding background of the International Theme and present the widely divergent manifestations of the collective unconscious through examining the characters and the social and historical cultural roots.The paper follows to employ the Freudian exposition of the unconscious in an attempt to investigate the individuals' mental experience of anxiety,the work of defense mechanism and the struggles of seeking for balance caused by the cultural shock,and thus to illustrate the furtherance of the International Theme.Finally,in light of the Lacanian Three Orders,the thesis interprets the marriage choice of the female protagonist who has gone through the baptism of European culture to reach the accomplishment of the International Theme.The study discovers that the exquisite psychological depiction in the work,that of Isabel Archer in particular,well accords with the establishment,development and accomplishment of the International Theme,which is a brilliant display of the constructive/structural function of James' s psychological realism.