A Feminist and Psychoanalytical Analysis of Flannery O’Connor “Good Country People”
Main Article Content
Abstract
Flannery O’Connor is one of the greatest American writers during the twentieth century whose writings have been analyzed as criticism for the emptiness in the American society. She dissents the new attitudes towards rejecting religion and resorts to her literature to bridge the chasm that was highly expanded with the prevalence of Darwinian nihilism between religion and the individuals. However, critics assume that the complexity in O’Connor’s works transcend the theological limits; thus, they have started to analyze her literary production from new perspectives. This paper provides a close feminist and psychoanalytical reading for “Good Country People” to highlight the acts of repressing women in patriarchal society , applying a psychoanalytical approach to examine Hulga’s psychological defenses to maintain the balance between herself and the society, in addition to dissect the spiritual transformation of Hulga by resorting to a clear analysis for the psychological and archetypal symbols in the text.
Metrics
Article Details
College of Education for Humanities, TIKRIT UNIVERSITY. THIS IS AN OPEN ACCESS ARTICLE UNDER THE CC BY LICENSE http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
References
Freud, Sigmund. Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Trans. James Strachey. Ed. Gregory Zilboorg. New York: Norton, 1975. Print.
---. On Freud's "Analysis Terminable and Interminable" Ed. Joseph Sandler. London: Karnac, 2013. Print.
Fowler, D. "Flannery O’Connor’s Productive Violence." Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory 67.2 (2011): 127-154. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/arq.2011.0011
Jung ,C.G. The Archetypes And The Collective Unconscious, New York : pantheon, 1959.print
Mahmood, Wafa Salim “The Tone of Female Characters in William Shakespeare's As You Like It” Journal of Tikrit University for Humanities, Vol 27 No 6 (2020): http://www.jtuh.tu.edu.iq/ DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.25130/hum.v27i6.1108
Petocz, Agnes. Freud, Psychoanalysis, and Symbolism. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999. Print. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511583452
Rogers, Jonathan. The Terrible Speed of Mercy: A Spiritual Biography of Flannery O'Connor. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2012. Print.
Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today. New York: Taylor and Francis, 2006. Print.
Wilson, Natalie. "Misfit Bodies and Errant Gender: The Corporeal Feminism of Flannery O’Connor." "On the Subject of the Feminist Business": Re-reading Flannery O'Connor. Ed. Teresa Caruso. New York: Peter Lang, 2004. 94-119. Print.