珍妮姑娘悲劇分析論文

1、on the causes of jennies tragedy in jennie gerhardt專業(yè)：英語班級：09 姓名： contentsintroduction51 influences brought about by social transformation111. 1 ethic transmutation111. 2 moral confusion142 causes of the tragedy from the perspective of freuds psychoanalysis192.1 the viewpoint of psychoanalysis192.2

2、jennies psychology213 causes of the tragedy from the perspective of darwinism253.1 darwinist analysis253.2 the environment of early 20thcentury314 causes of the tragedy from the perspective of feminism384.1 feminist analysis384.2 jennies feminist thought40conclusion44acknowledgement47bibliography48a

3、bstractin the first half of the twentieth century, the american literature stepped onto a new stage, which is the golden time of the american literature. during these years, a lot of writers who flourished the literary world turned up. and american literature experienced an unprecedented booming per

4、iod in the history. at that time, theodore dreiser played an incomparable role in the literary world. he is not only the most outstanding writer in the twentieth century, but also the pioneer of american modern literature. in the history of american literature, he is the first one to describe the ne

5、w city life in american without any prejudice, which is the great contribution to american literature. just because of this, he draws more and more attention of recent readers.jennie gerhard is theodore dreisers second novel, which brought him first true commercial success. it told us a story about

6、a poor girls miserable life at the end of 19th century. since its publication in 1911, it was well received by critics. many people have made a lot of analysis about the reason of jennies tragedy. since the researches of both domestic and abroad pay close attention on society and class, while the au

7、thor of the paper will analyze jennies tragedy from spiritual analysis theory, social-darwinism and feminism under the background of the special social transformation in america. at that time, because of social transition, the rapid economic development and rapid urbanization, there were a variety o

8、f social problems. in the prevailing social conditions, social ethic changes and moral confusion makes jennies tragedy a social necessity. according to freuds psychoanalysis theory, analyze jennies psychological process. this is the origin of jennies tragedy. survival of the fittest was not only the

9、 core and the sole of darwinism, but also applies to the social-darwinism, that is to say, every creature in the world must face all kinds of influences and challenges from inside and outside and those who couldnt adapt must be eliminated. jennie is in the low status in the capital society, she coul

10、dnt be accepted by the upper class, and her final density must be abounded by the upper class. take family as the most important thing, jennie gerhard has all of the typical traditional womens virtues-she was pure, kind and fable; she has no dependent social status but only has to depend on men. dif

11、ferent from those new women who didnt comply with men and were independent in economy, the fate of jennie gerhard must be a tragedy. the thesis is divided into three parts to discuss the cause of jennies tragedy by mainly applying the two theories above and discuss dreisers writing features in jenni

12、e gerhard. the first part describes the specialty of the social transformation in which jennie lives-on the way of rapid modernization, the social economy of jennies time developed rapidly, so as the urbanization, but there are also many social problems such as social moral crisis and ethnical trans

13、mutation, while those are important reasons which led to jennies tragedy. the second part is to explain jennies tragedy by using the theory of freuds psychoanalysis. her psychological process, include desiring for material world, submitting to reality difficulties and imagining love and marriage. th

14、ese internal factors make jennies tragedy inevitable. the third part is to explain jennies tragedy by applying the social -darwinism. the social-darwinisms core is “struggle for existence” and “survival of the fittest”. in the origin of species by charles darwin, natural environment play an importan

15、t part in biological living. in jennies life, because of her poor family, she struggled for the existence of her family unceasingly, but was hurt again and again. so social environment is one of the factors of jennies tragedy. the last part will tell jennies tragedy from the perspective of feminism.

16、 from the novel, one fact can be recognized, thats women and men are unequal at jennies time, especial for jennie who was a traditional woman without social status, and different from those new women who required equality with men in every area. traditional women were of flabbiness, and they suffere

17、d a lot from society, take the family as the only core of their lives and depend completely on men in economy. that was also the inevitable reason for jennies tragedy. the social environments specialty, her psychology and personality, the influence of social-darwinism and jennies own feminism though

18、t are the key reasons for jennies tragedy, her tragedy is the result of both the inner reason and the outer reason. key words: jennie gerhard;tragedy;analysis摘 要二十世紀上半葉，美國文學揭開了一個新的時期，這是美國小說創(chuàng)作的黃金時代。這些年美國文學界群星璀璨，異彩紛呈，文學創(chuàng)作呈現(xiàn)出空前繁榮的景象。西奧多德萊賽作為最耀眼的作家在當時文學界異軍突起。他既是二十世紀最杰出的作家，也是美國現(xiàn)代小說的先驅(qū)。在美國文學史上，他率先如實地描寫了新的

19、美國城市生活，為美國文壇做出了巨大的貢獻。正因為如此，他越來越多地引起現(xiàn)代讀者的關(guān)注。珍妮姑娘是德萊賽的第二部小說，這本書也為作者帶來了真正意義上的成功。它講述了十九世紀末期一個善良女子珍妮的悲慘生活。自從1911年出版以來，珍妮姑娘受到評論界的廣泛好評，很多人對珍妮姑娘的悲劇根源做出了大量的闡釋。國內(nèi)外對于珍妮姑娘的研究多關(guān)注于社會和階級這一客觀的外部因素，而本文將主要從弗洛伊德精神分析角度、社會達爾文主義角度對處于美國社會轉(zhuǎn)型期這一特殊時期的珍妮姑娘的遭遇進行分析來闡釋其悲劇形成的原因。由于當時社會轉(zhuǎn)型、經(jīng)濟急速發(fā)展、城市化進程突飛猛進，社會存在著各種問題。在當時的社會狀況下，社會倫理的改

20、變及道德混亂使得珍妮悲劇的發(fā)生具有社會必然性。社會達爾文主義依據(jù)達爾文理論的核心物競天擇、適者生存，闡述了珍妮姑娘作為資產(chǎn)階級社會中的弱者，不會為上層社會所接受，其最終命運必定是被上層社會所拋棄。以家庭為中心的珍妮姑娘身上具有傳統(tǒng)女性的一切特征純潔、善良、軟弱、沒有獨立的社會地位、一味地依賴男人. 而這些與那些不依靠于男人，經(jīng)濟上獨立的新女性是截然不同的,珍妮的命運注定只能以悲劇收場。本論文將主要運用以上三個理論來討論珍妮姑娘的悲劇成因，并將討論珍妮姑娘的深層意義。本論文共分為四個部分來分析珍妮的悲劇成因。第一部分闡述了當時正處于美國社會轉(zhuǎn)型期的特殊性在急速的現(xiàn)代化進程中，珍妮所在的社會經(jīng)濟高

21、速發(fā)展，城市化進程異常繁榮，同時也帶來了許多社會問題，其中的社會倫理嬗變和道德混亂使得珍妮悲劇的發(fā)生具有不可避免的社會必然性。第二部分運用弗洛伊德精神分析理論來解釋其悲劇的成因。深入分析珍妮的心理過程，包括她對物質(zhì)生活的渴望，對現(xiàn)實困難的妥協(xié)和對愛情與婚姻的幻想。這些內(nèi)在的因素致使珍妮的悲劇不可避免。第三部分運用社會達爾文主義來其解釋悲劇成因。社會達爾文主義對珍妮悲劇的影響重大，它的核心理論同達爾文主義一樣，都是講的“生存斗爭，適者生存”。從物種起源一書中，我們得知自然環(huán)境對生物的生存及發(fā)展起著重要的作用。珍妮出身貧寒，但是她為了自己及家人的生存，不斷地與外界環(huán)境作斗爭，卻一次一次地受到傷害，

22、從而可以得知社會環(huán)境是導(dǎo)致珍妮悲劇的一個重要因素第四部分從女性主義角度來分析珍妮的悲劇成因。從小說中可以得知，在當時的社會，男女地位極不平等，尤其是像珍妮這樣出身貧寒且沒有社會地位的傳統(tǒng)女性與那些剛剛興起的要求各方面與男性平等的新女性形象截然不同。具有傳統(tǒng)女性特征的珍妮性格懦弱，逆來順受，生活中以家庭為中心，經(jīng)濟上完全依賴男性，在社會中處于極其不利的地位，這也是造成珍妮悲劇不可避免的因素。社會轉(zhuǎn)型期的特殊性、珍妮錯誤的心理行為，社會達爾文主義的影響及珍妮自身的女性主義思想都是珍妮悲劇的決定性因素，她的悲慘命運是內(nèi)在因素與外在因素共同影響的結(jié)果。關(guān)鍵詞：珍妮姑娘；悲劇；分析introductio

23、n regarded as one of the pre-eminent american novelists of the first half of the twentieth-century, theodore dreiser (1871-1945) draws more and more attention of recent readers. born in indiana in 1871, dreiser was the ninth child of the thirteen children in the family. his parents emigrated from ge

24、rmany to america and his childhood was spent in extreme misery. after his fathers wool mill was destroyed by fire, dreisers father was impaired and the whole family fell into poverty. without steady income to make body and soul together, the family was forced to move constantly from town to town, wh

25、ile his father could hardly keep a job for long because he was always in debt. seeing no hope in life, his father converted to christianity to avoid the countless troubles and to seek serenity in god. therefore the responsibility of supporting so many children was taken by his mother. she worked har

26、d to bring up her children, to prevent them from suffering cold and hunger. in his novel, jennie gerhardt, dreiser depicted his mother and father in the portraits of mrs. gerhardt and old gerhardt. dreisers harsh own experience of poverty and his early yearning for wealth and success later became do

27、minant themes in his novels. and the misadventures of his brothers and sisters in early adult life gave him additional material on which to base his characters. the life experience of one of his sister named mame later became his raw material to create his work jennie gerhardt. as far as such a fami

28、ly background is concerned, theodore dreiser scarcely had a sense of security from an early age. quite a lot of his novels mirror his own life experiences. in his novels, he mainly deals with social problems and with characters who struggle to survive. the reader can feel that he was a man who was u

29、tterly faithful to his own vision of life. like what maxwell geiswar expressed, “theodore dreiser is the most distinguished member of the whole group of modern american novelists. he was a realist yes, he, partly through his own innocence, perhaps, and early origins, told the truth about life when h

30、e could discover it. 1 probably no one else in our literature has had such a direct and intimate feelings for the common forms of experience, pleasant and disgraceful. what gave his work its remarkable texture, its glamour, really was his simple sense of the variety and mystery of life on all its le

31、vels.” at fifteen, he left for chicago alone to make a living , taking up various kinds of odd jobs like washing dishes, driving carriages etc. he was once financed by one of his teachers to study in indiana university, but the school life bored him and he returned back to chicago a year later. he w

32、orked as an apprentice with several journals and newspapers, which provided him with adequate training and experience in preparing for his literary writing. by working with these news agencies, he could have the opportunity to keenly observe the real american life at the time the rich indulging in s

33、eeking pleasures while the poor striving for survival. in his fictions, dreiser expressed his deeply sympathy with those who lack the means to satisfy their desire for things and needs that might seem trivial and even tawdry to others but to them constitute happiness and even beauty. to be poor, dre

34、iser realized meant not merely an inability to satisfy material needs but an emotional and a spiritual stifling and deprivation. he experience america life.dreiser portrayed the world of his fiction with truth; he powered the modern world of commerce and mechanization; he portrayed the dismal depers

35、onalization of the individual which results from urbanization and intensifying societal pressure to conform; he drew us frankly and primly as a nation of status-seeker. 2 dreiser believed that all life is at the bottom tragedy, he found it difficult to express exactly what constitutes life. life was

36、 dominated by invincible material forces, and of these the drives for power, money and sex were primary. in this sense, desire for what life appears to offer as self-fulfillment good clothes, a fine apartment, money to spend becomes the motive force for dreisers fictional figures, driving them eithe

37、r to a form of success, as with carrie in sister carrie or to tragedy, as with jennie in jennie gerhardt. one of dreisers favorite devices was the use of contrast between the rich and the poor, the power broker and the helpless. when he wrote about “raw” experiences of life on his earlier works, he

38、considered the economic society has an important impact on the life of his created people, which will be seen home in jennie gerhardt .dreiser began his work on jennie gerhardt since january 1901. as sister carrie, his first notable fiction which he had been based on the experiences of his sister em

39、ma, he would now write a novel about the early life of another of his sisters, mame. though he initially made some progresses and though a small publisher had agreed to subsidize its composition, he soon bogged down and had to put it aside because of the failure of sister carrie to achieve popular s

40、uccess which soon affected his ability to write. dreiser did not complete it until the year of 1910. the novel was read in manuscript by several friends, who suggested changes for its conclusion that dreiser adopted. the book was accepted by harpers in april 1911 for publication in the fall. the nov

41、el belongs to the realistic category, featured ordinary people in familiar, everyday contemporary circumstances. 3 after his first novel sister carrie was published, dreiser faced all kinds of attacks, misunderstanding, misrepresentation, artistic isolation and commercial seduction. since at that ti

42、me he was thought of as “he simply had no personal style at all. instead he absorbed the highly detailed, prolix, occasionally ornate but usually lucid magazine style the mauve decade and employed it as an impersonal instrument in the fashioning of his fiction.” 4 but he endured all these and stuck

43、to writing and survived to be accepted and became famous later, as with jennie gerhardt followed which had received an ambivalent reception, since many reviewers were attracted by the protagonists essential purity despite the “unsavory” character of her career. no wonder the 1930 nobel prize winner

44、in literature, also the first american who earned the honor, sinclair luis, believed that theodore drieser should be awarded the prize, since he had suffered so much before his works gained such fame and popularity. after jennie gerhardt , dreiser returned to an active career as a writer with a burs

45、t of energy that lasted fifteen years during which he created his famous trilogy the financier, which was based on the life of the american transportation magnate charles t. jerkes, in 1912, the titan, which showed the influence of the evolutionary ideas of spencer, in early 1914, the genius, a semi

46、autobiographical, in 1915 and his one of notable fictions an american tragedy, in 1925, etc.jennie gerhardt tells the story about a young girl who has two illicit sexual relationships with two wealthy men from the upper class. jennie is the daughter of a large and impoverished german immigrant famil

47、y living in columbus, ohio, where she and her mother are employed as cleaner in a local hotel. george brander, a middle-aged bachelor and u.s. senator who lives in the hotel, is deeply attracted by jennies youth and purity and seeks to aid her and her family. in return, jennie is attracted by brande

48、rs position and status. driven by their respective personal needs, they have a love affair. as a result, jennie becomes pregnant by brander, who dies suddenly of a heart attack before he can fulfill his promise of marrying her. jennies father, a devout lutheran, enraged by such a disgraceful thing,

49、which brings scandal to the family, demands that she leave home. and she has no choice but to obey her father and moves to cleveland with her illegitimate child vesta, where she finds employment as a maid at a well-to-do family. there she meets lester kane who is from a wealthy and prominent manufac

50、turer family and becomes his mistress. lester and jennie live together for many years, but lester has never married jennie, however. and when his familys discovery of their irregular relationship threatens his position in the family firm, he chooses to desert her and marry a wealthy widow who is fro

51、m his own plane. jennie returns to the starting point of her circle of seeking for life pleasure. she is left empty and alone with two orphans of others.the conventional review and criticism to this novel is that the protagonist is much more polished than that in his first work, sister carrie who wa

52、s commented as a character without any moral fiber in her. jennies emotional autonomy, her ability to make fulfilling emotional relationships with others, and her embedment within kinship and affective structures, all attracted many reviewers so much so that she had received an ambivalent reception.

53、the critics believe that jennie gerhard is a realistic novel. it emphasizes the importance of human beings in the environment and praises jennies sacrifice for others. the author believes that jennies self-sacrifice to some extent is a kind of social requirement or self selection in such a masculine

54、 dominated society. the heroine will not be forgiven or accepted until she sacrifices herself. in the novel the heroine jennie lives in a poor, hash family, she is a beautiful, warmhearted and hard-working girl. in order help her family to survive; she does some tiny works in a luxury hotel. from th

55、ere and from then, her life is changed a lot affected by the noble men: senator brander, the first of her two her two lovers in her life. she gets branders favorite and love, and then she helped her family a little. when brander died of diseases, jennie met her second lover, kane. this man influence

56、d jennies whole life. jennie devotes herself to the family and her lovers and is willing to sacrifice herself and bear all the painful results. but unfortunately, she lost her love from the beginning to the end of her life. she was not accepted by the upper-class. but the author give the heroine a m

57、ental satisfaction-she got kanes true words, thats, jennie is kanes only lover and forever. without material payment, the spiritual payment may be jennies best harvest. 1 influences brought about by social transformationon the way of rapid modernization, american social economy realized the rapid de

58、velopment too. it presented the social economy booming as well as many social problems. jennie gerhard was turned up in such a background of the turning of the century era. this part will discuss jennies tragedy by the reason of the moral crisis and the ethics transmutation in that society. 1. 1 ethic transmutation american traditional ethics criterion in the social transformation no longer fit the needs of the development of the time and the society. with american industrialization and urbanization, the transformation of society in america had already emerged the t