Fantasy and Disillusion: A Tentative Study on Norma Jeane’s Psychological Dislocation in >Blonde< [幻与灭:试分析小说《浮生如梦》中主人公的心理错位], Master thesis, English Language and Literature, Shandong Normal University, Jinan, Shandong, China 2008, 76 pp. [Application of Fromm's theories to art]

  • 马克思的异化理论在20世纪得到重视,并引发了东西方学者对于现代社会各种弊病的诸多思考,而弗洛姆作为一个人道主义学者,自始至终都非常关注人的异化问题。但是,由于学术背景和所处时代的不同,马克思与弗洛姆在异化问题上的阐述方式有很大的差异,这使得对两者的异化观点进行准确的比较成为极具挑战性的事情。而在商品经济高度繁荣却又危机深重、人类生活水平不断提升却又面对着愈发严重的全球问题的今天,对人的生存状况进行反思是使我们得以保持谨慎态度的重要途径。马克思与弗洛姆分别从人的外部世界的生活实践角度和人的意识领域的心理规律角度对异化的产生、发展和前景进行了考察,这为我们揭示了异化的原理。两者不同之处在于,马克思的劳动异化是建立在人的矛盾本性对象化表现的层面,而弗洛姆的心理异化是建立在人的矛盾本性的反思性体验层面的。马克思认为劳动的历史展开过程也就是异化的现实发展过程,因此他从分工和私有制两个角度分析了这一过程,而弗洛姆将理性或自我意识当做人之为人的本质特征,认为理性使人渴望独立并在独立中体会孤独,所以,健全人的理性是人摆脱内在束缚从而达到积极自由的唯一途径。整体而言,弗洛姆对马克思关于人的社会属性的观点的接受和继承使两者的异化观点有了一个共同的前提,也使得对两者观点进行比较成为可能。但是弗洛姆在对异化的现实根源进行分析并作出消除异化之途径的表述时,却由于学科倾向而部分地重归唯心思路了。可以说,对两者的理论进行比较可以得到形而上与形而下以及理想与现实的统一。
  • Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1938) is one of the most prolific and versatile writers in the contemporary American literary circle. She is skilled at revealing the complicated modern American society and the existential predicament of men and women by integrating the unique point of view and the delicate depiction of characters’ inner world with psychological realistic and surrealistic approaches. Her protagonists often suffer as a result the conditions of their social milieu or their emotional weaknesses. Based on the historical people, namely, Marilyn Monroe, Oates fictionalized in her longest novel Blonde the brief life of Norma Jeane and her illusion and disillusion while in search of her idealized career, marriage and familial life. The novel offers readers a quite different perspective to perceive the tragedy of the protagonist. To a large extent, it reflects, from the Great Depression of 1930s to the late 1950s, the psychological progress of American middle and lower class during their pursuit of material life as well as spiritual comfort through hardship and humiliation when confronted with the multiple pressures of family, economy and society. This thesis aims to employ some concepts and theories of psychoanalysis in order to analyze Oates’s novel Blonde, focusing on the subject of Norma Jeane’s fantasy and disillusion in familial and social life and uncovering the way in which Oates exposes the existential dilemma of modern people. The paper consists of five parts, in which the first is the introduction. Contained in this part is a general overview of Joyce Carol Oates’s works as well as the literature review on her novel Blonde. Based on the analysis of the protagonist’s psychological condition while confronting survival predicament, this paper proposes Erich Fromm’s concept of alienation as a departure of analysis to interpret the novel. Through the study of the protagonist’s family complex and perplexity towards social life, this paper attempts to reveal the causes of her alienated mind and psychological dislocation resulting in her tragedy.– Chapter one concentrates on the concept >Alienation<. This chapter divides into three parts. Part one mainly provides a detailed illustration of Marxist dual attributes of men and alienation of modern people. Part two analyzes on the one hand Fromm’s concepts on the existential dichotomy of men, which coincides with Marxist natural and social human being; and on the other hand, how he develops and applies alienation into the diverse dimensions of society. As one of the symptom or manifestation of alienation, psychological dislocation is introduced in Part three.– Chapter Two lays emphases on three stages in which Norma Jeane struggles in quest of the familial love. The first stage is Norma Jeane’s teenage years. During this period, she is searching for maternal love but confused while staying with her biological mother, in the orphanage, and with her foster mother. The second stage is her adulthood during which she experiences three different marriages and suffers from great dilemma while in comparison with her idealized marriage. Her illusion towards marriage illustrates that the family complex still dominates this period of her life and results in her psychological dislocation. In the third stage, influenced by the family complex and obsessed from her childhood with the Electra complex, Norma Jeane increasingly falls into the strong desire of owning a father. Her brief life of thirty-six years, so to speak, is the journey to seek her spiritual father unconsciously. Indulged in the insatiable quest of paternal love, Norma Jeane transfers her father-seeking towards males around her especially her three husbands in order to realize a particular kind of compensatory satisfaction. The more paternal care and love she expects from her husband, the deeper she is trapped into psychological dislocation of idealized father image that leads to her disillusion in reality. The truth about her >father’s letters< shatters her hope to reunite with her never-to-be-seen father.– Chapter Three, with an elaboration of the dramatic representation of alienation and dislocation in the novel, analyzes Norma Jeane’s struggle and disillusion in her social life. Due to her miserable family, she is overwhelmed from her childhood by the >Cinderella< story in which the ordinary girl marries the prince who saves her from poverty and abusiveness of her stepmother. Norma Jeane increasingly desires such a salvation and wants to be the princess like Cinderella. After all, that is her expectation from which she could get somewhat satisfaction. She, indeed, meets different versions of >Dark Princes< in different phases of her life. Actually, what they want is to take advantage of her or seduce her other than to save or help her, by taking her naked pictures to earn money like the photographer Otto, by seduction and cruel manipulation of the worst womanizer like the President. She is always confronted with the conflict between ideals and reality, feeling alienated and distorted, unable to cope with the real world. From her childhood, Norma Jeane experiences the mirror stage in which she constitutes her own idealized self. For her, this stage creates a permanent sense of being imperfect, but looking forward to perfection. In other words, she never reckons the ego in reality as the >true self<. She searches in the mirror, or in the cameras of movies, to find her perfect self. Confused with her identity, namely loss of self, Norma Jeane contains within herself different versions of self: Norma Jeane, Marilyn Monroe, the Beggar Maid, the Fair Princess and the Blonde Actress. She is alienated and has to struggle for her spiritual pursuit in the absurd world. In her career, Norma Jeane’s life-long serious pursuit and the sexy roles allotted her in movies consist of the gap between the reality and her ideal world. People only need and idolize Marilyn Monroe, the sexpot, rather than Norma Jeane, the ordinary girl. Having suffered from the failure as a serious role for the first time in her career, Norma Jeane is trapped into the huge psychological crisis. The conclusion summarizes the analysis by pointing out the significance of the study. By portraying in the novel a whole picture of an ordinary girl with fantasy and disillusion, loneliness and alienated mind in the unremitting pursuit for an idealized familial and social life, Oates gives us a deep insight into the existential predicament and psychological crisis of people as a whole in America and in the world as well.

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Metadaten
Author:Jun Liu
Document Type:Dissertations
Language:Chinese
Year of first Publication:2008
Release Date:2014/01/28
Format:no copy existent / keine Kopie vorhanden
IdNo:Liu_Jun_2008
Writings about Erich Fromm (Secondary Literature):Dissertations / Dissertationen
Erich Fromm's Library and Erich Fromm Archive:Dissertations / Dissertationen
Licence (German):no access / nicht zugänglich
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