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Escapists in Predicaments: On the Escape Theme of Katherine Mansfield’s Short Stories, Master thesis, World Literature, Shandong University, Jinan, Shandong, China 2021 [application of Fromm’s theories to art].

  • The prominent modernist writer Katherine Mansfield exhibits her innovative modernity, mixture of complex sentiments and rational interior exploration most conspicuously in her short stories. Yet despite the modernity of her thought, spontaneity and extroversion, of her expression and her other pivotal contributions to modernist literature, she is marginalized in literary arena with some of her themes, such as escape, being neglected by her readership and scholarship. However, escape as a complex and action has actually been one of the most essential themes recurring in Mansfield’s short stories and her life when she has kept struggling between idealism and realism. And escape as a shared choice of her characters trapped in predicaments or psychological dilemmas is often formulated in the contradiction between the escapists and society as well as their own intrapsychic conflict. Therefore, the thesis will engage Erich Fromm’s theories of human nature and escape to offer a socio-psychological reading of Mansfield’s escape theme accordingly. The thesis discusses the escape theme of Mansfield’s 16 short stories in three aspects of manifestations, causes and final destinations of escape. Chapter one focuses on the two major patterns of escape in terms of its manifestation: retreat and camouflage, which are respectively defined by escapists’ receptive orientation or marketing orientation. Receptive oriented Rosabel and the old lady and marketing oriented Gregory and Duquette are among the train of escapists examined here.– Chapter two unrolls the causes of the escape. The external determinants include three kinds of social forces restraining various human needs and two kinds of alienated family relations caused by authority or immature love. Miss Brill’s escape posed by social ostracism, Linda’s escape stemming from social convention and Ma Parker’s escape due to social hierarchy demonstrate how these three social forces determine their escapes. Moreover, escapes of Kezia and Matilda as results of their alienated relations with parents and the escapists including Monica and Mr. Salesby formulated in their alienated relations with spouses highlight the causality between the alienated family relations and escape. And the internal determinant refers to the identity dilemma that stems from one’s doubt over either his real self or social self. Both Bertha’s escape from her real self and Millie’s from her social self are made in a common backdrop of their identity dilemma.– As for the two opposite destinations including the positive and the negative ones, chapter three elucidates them as respectively the results of positive freedom or negative freedom procured by escapists represented by Miss Moss. Briefly, either through retreat or camouflage, most escapists perpetuate or exacerbate their predicaments after transient alleviation brought by their escapes. Only a few productive oriented ones could escape from predicaments ultimately for their escapes underpinned by their productiveness are quintessentially spontaneous negotiations with the world rather than self-deluding compromises or evasions. Hence they could realize their inherent potentiality, remain self-consciousness and external connection in the midst of escape and extricate themselves from their predicaments afterwards.– Besides, the theme of escape illustrated in the thesis is actually imbued with Mansfield’s own life experience and philosophy. Through offering a socio-psychological interpretation of Mansfield’s escape theme, the thesis hence hopefully aims to enrich the understanding of Mansfield and her characters, draw more attention to Mansfield and invoke, in particular, more reflections on the escape of her short stories, especially in the contemporary context of human existence. [English: www.cnki.net, 4/2022]

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Metadaten
Author:Yuting Tian
Document Type:Dissertations
Language:Chinese
Year of first Publication:2021
Release Date:2024/04/04
Format:no download and copy possible
IdNo:Tian_Yuting_2021
Writings about Erich Fromm (Secondary Literature):Dissertations / Dissertationen
Erich Fromm's Library and Erich Fromm Archive:Dissertations / Dissertationen
Licence (German):
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