Title:

Catherine's Dilemma between Love and Marriage in Wuthering Heights

-psychoanalysis of love triangle and Freud's personality theory

abstract:

Wuthering Heights tells a story of superman's love and revenge in the English wasteland. This paper attempts to analyze the love triangle relationship that leads to Catherine's dilemma between love and marriage in Wuthering Heights with the help of Freud's personality theory.

Key words:

Freud's Theory of Love Triangle in Wuthering Heights

In Catherine's heart, she knew what was right, but she chose what was wrong. It was her wrong decision that got her into an inescapable predicament. Her dilemma between love and marriage; It was her wrong choice that threw the two families into chaos. Ideologically, she really doesn't fit her way.

According to sigmund freud (1856-1939), the structure of mind or personality consists of three parts: id, ego and superego. "I am the storage of biological impulses, which constitutes the whole personality of the baby at birth. Its operating principle, protecting people from painful tension, is called the pleasure principle. The inevitable frustration of the id, coupled with what the child has learned from his encounter with the external reality, produces the ego, which is essentially a mechanism to minimize the frustration of biological drive in the long run. It operates according to the principle of reality. The superego consists of conscience and self-ideal. The former is a partial consciousness system containing moral taboos, and the latter is the source of personal behavior standards. Just like the external reality from which it originates, superego often creates obstacles to the satisfaction of biological drive. " "In mentally healthy people, these three systems form a unified and harmonious whole.

White stripe organization On the contrary, when these three personality systems contradict each other, this person is called disorder. Freudian psychoanalysis can well explain Catherine's tragic psychological process.

I can't express it; But you and everyone must have a concept, there is or should be a presence outside of you. If I am completely included here, what is the use of my creation? " Catherine's strange words reflect that the clever emily bronte thought about the same problem in her works earlier. What is "the existence of Catherine other than Catherine"?

Here, we can believe that Heathcliff represents Catherine's instinct and strongest desire-the "ID" in her soul; Edgar is her ideal "superego", which represents another part of her personality: educated elegance and sense of superiority of rich family; And she, herself, is the "self" tortured by the friction between the two in a disharmonious situation.

According to Freud's personality theory, "superego is the expression of traditional social values and ideals passed down from parents to children in personality". Catherine chose Edgar as her husband in order to satisfy her ideal "superego" and gain wealth and social status. This is a symbol of her class, which is based on the reality of family education and childhood. She is a young lady of a noble family with a long history of 300 years. Only a marriage that matches social and economic status can satisfy everyone: her family, society and even her actual self. "This will turn me into many Heathcliff now ... If Heathcliff marries me, should we be beggars?" This is her real worry about her future. Catherine succumbed to the pressure from her brother. Similarly, in fact, she succumbed to social moral norms. Without the recognition and recognition of these norms, she could not live a better life or even survive.

Not at all.

However, Catherine underestimated the influence of her other, more inner self on her. Catherine's most striking claim is probably the best evidence to distinguish Heathcliff from Edgar's different roles-her "ID" and "superego";

"My greatest pain in this world is Heathcliff's pain. I have observed and felt everyone from the beginning: my greatest thought in life is himself. If everything else disappears, he still exists, and I should continue to exist; If everything else disappears and he is destroyed, the universe will become a powerful stranger: I shouldn't seem to be a part of it. My love for Linton is like a leaf in the forest: time will change it. I know very well that when winter changes trees. My love for Heathcliff is like the eternal rock below: an invisible source of happiness, but it is necessary. Nelly, it's Heathcliff! He is always in my mind: for me, he is not a pleasure, but my own existence. So stop talking about our breakup: it won't work. "

It is a happy idea to make her fall in love with Edgar who is kind, rich, weak and elegant, but if she succumbs to her superego against her id, she will fall into self-loss. Because the id is the most primitive foundation of personality, and the ego is formed by the id, Catherine's life depends entirely on Heathcliff, who is the whole connotation and truth of her life in the universe, her existence and the significance of her existence. Heathcliff is the most important part of her life. She married Edgar, but Heathcliff still embraced her soul in his warm arms. Although she felt a little ashamed of her early playmate, she loved him with a passionate abandonment, which dwarfed culture, education and the world. Catherine's wrong choice of marriage went against her inner desire. This choice is a victory of self-indulgence-sacrificing the main thing for the secondary thing. She paid the price for it.

On the one hand, Catherine did not find the heavenly happiness she longed for. Although as an "ambitious" girl, "being the greatest woman in the neighborhood" will be her pride, an enviable marriage can only satisfy her vanity for one second. After her marriage, the comfortable and quiet life in the grange was only a monotonous and lifeless imprisonment for her soul. She felt suffocated by the artificial and unnatural environment in the closed Thrushcross Grange-in this world, her thoughts became ruthless. "If I were in heaven, Nelly, I would be in great pain." Catherine finally knew that Linton's paradise was not her ideal paradise. She and Heathcliff really have their common paradise. As Catherine said, "no matter what our souls are made of, his and mine are the same;" The forest is as different as moonlight and lightning, or frost and fire. "

Catherine doesn't want to live in Linton's paradise; On the other hand, she lost her own paradise, which she and Heathcliff had in the barren wasteland when they were children. The deepest bend in her nature declared her fate-a wanderer between two worlds. When she was alive, she occupied a position between the two. In a sense, she belongs to both, and is constantly drawn to Heathcliff, then Edgar, then Heathcliff, and finally she completely loses herself. Her naive fantasy of using her husband's money to help Heatllcliff get rid of her brother's power has disappeared without a trace. It is futile for her to keep trying to reconcile two irreconcilable lifestyles, which will only cause more confusion in both worlds and herself.

According to Freud's principle, if the ego continues to fail in the task of satisfying the needs of the id, these three factors-the painful depression of the instinctive desire of the id, the guilt of resisting the desire of the superego, and the frustration of finding an exit failure in the external world-will lead to increasing anxiety. Anxiety accumulated and finally overwhelmed the man. When this happens, it is said that this person will have hallucinations, hope to be satisfied, and then completely collapse his nerves, which may eventually end this person's life. Catherine was destroyed by the friction between the two and became schizophrenic. Catherine lay on the floor of the grange, out of her mind. She dreamed that she was back in her old bed at Wuthering Heights. "Locked in an oak paneled bed at home, my heart ached because of some great grief ... My pain originated from Gendre's order to separate me from Heathcliff." She is still dreaming.

Trying to push open the panel of the oak bed, I found myself touching the table and the carpet of Thrushcross Grange: "My recent pain was swallowed up by a burst of despair. I can't tell you why I am so desperate ... everything about me, just like Heathcliff was at that time, suddenly became Mrs. Linton ... the wife of a stranger: an exile and an abandoned child. " She tried to forget the long years without soul, even when she was temporarily insane. "The strangest thing is that the last seven years of my life have become blank! I don't remember them. " Her mental and physical decline quickly led to her physical death. She died and didn't seem to enter a perfect peace.

But even after her death, she was still a wandering ghost. In the third chapter, Lockwood, a tenant living in Catherine's oak bed at Wuthering Heights, dreamed of the crying little ghost:

"Nightmare terror enveloped me: I tried to retract my arm, but the hand clung to it, and an extremely melancholy voice sobbed,' Let me in-let me in'. Who are you?'' Catherine Linton,' it replied trembling.' I'm home: I lost my way on the moor!' ! ... terror makes me cruel; I found it useless to try to get rid of this creature, so I pulled its wrist on the broken glass and rubbed it back and forth until the blood ran down and soaked the sheets. It still cried, "Let me in!" ..... Twenty years, twenty years. I have been wandering for twenty years! "

Catherine is eager to return to her paradise, even if it is a spirit. However, Lear's self-deception decision made her fall from the paradise full of demonic love between her and Heathcliff, and her disobedient nature made her break away from the paradise full of civilization and emptiness between her and Edgar. She pushed herself into her tragedy, the endless dilemma between her love and marriage, which will not end with her death.

Bibliography:

1. Wuthering Heights, Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, London: Oxford University Press 1995.

2. Freud Sigmund, Interpretation of Dreams, Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press 200 1

3. Travis Tracy, Heathcliff and Cathy, dysfunctional couples, Chronicle of Higher Education, Washington, D.C., 200 1

4. Stanitz Rebecca, Diary and Displacement in Wuthering Heights, Novel Studies, Denton Press, 2000.

/thesis/List_2 1.html contains the English papers you need. I will upload the old one, which is not suitable for viewing, hehe! ! !