| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立清華大學 === 外國語文學系 === 98 === Winesburg, Ohio is Sherwood Anderson’s most famous work, and among the twenty-five stories, Anderson depicts various grotesques in a fictional town. Though these grotesques have different reasons, they have mental traumas in common. The characters in town harbor a grudge and can’t show their emotion through communication; the gloomy and dull life day after day stifles them and offers no way out. They are not able to resume normal mental state. When the invisible trauma grows from inside, the outward behavior are out of their control and transform them into grotesques. Anderson suffered from mental breakdown in 1912, and at the time he laid his business aside and left his families. He later got life back on track by writing creative works. Winesburg, Ohio, published in 1919, is the collection of his composition just after he recovered from the confused mental state. Anderson shows great concern and sympathy toward the characters of Winesburg. However, among the characters he created, through one lad, George Willard, Anderson hints the possibility of not being a grotesque by means of psychological adjustment.
This thesis includes two chapters. Chapter one delineates the Oedipus complex of psychosexual development from Sigmund Freud’s Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, and id, ego, and superego. Then I apply the above theories to review the family background and process of growth of Elizabeth Willard, George’s mother. Further, I analyze the inarticulate relationship between the mother and son. With the employment of Anna Freud’s mechanisms of defense, I regard Elizabeth’s process of seeking love as failure; for she mistakes the meaning of marriage and misuses the defense mechanism. Finally, she cannot turn the corner in life, and dies with a deep grief, as a grotesque.
In the second chapter, I continue to use the theory of id, ego, and superego, and the mechanisms of defense to examine George Willard’s quest for love. Like his mother Elizabeth Willard, George also sets out the journey of seeking love. Although frustrated by other female characters in the romantic relationship, George avoids the pitfalls which traumatize the other Winesburg characters and turn them into grotesques. On the contrary, he is no longer bonded to the influence of libido from id, and he can make use of the defense mechanisms of ego to let off his emotion and reach self-fulfillment; thus he is able to proceed on his quest by getting along with different women. Till the end of the book, George realizes that love is not acquired through sexual desire or verbal commitment but mutual understanding. Hence George becomes immune from the physical and mental plight in Winesburg.
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