Abstract
Flannery O’Connor is identified today as one of the most outstanding American Southern writers. Enlightened by Christianity, she treats spiritual crisis as her works’ eternal theme. She believes that writers’ responsibility is to help the readers get profound insight into humanity. The critical reviews on O’Connor’s works have focused on the religious motif and the characters’ grotesqueness, sin and salvation, etc. So far, researches have been conducted within the framework of new criticism, feminist criticism, violence aesthetics and narratology and so on. Until now, however, few Freudian psychoanalytic studies have been done to explore the internal reasons for the characters’ grotesqueness and the author’s writing motivations. So this paper applies such Freudian concepts as libido, defense mechanisms and life- and death instinct to interpret the protagonist in O’Connor’s “Good Country People”, in an attempt to shed light on Hulga’s actions and minds as well as the author’s motivations. Moreover, the integration of Freudian psychoanalysis into the social background and the author’s experiences provides us with a new perspective to scrutinize the inner nature of O’Connor and her fictional figures.
Highlights
Flannery O’Connor is identified today as one of the most outstanding American Southern writers
With the support of such Freudian concepts as libido, defense mechanisms and life- and death instinct, this paper aims to investigate the interrelations between Hulga’s actions and emotions
With the support of textual evidences centering on the protagonist Hulga, the psychoanalysis of the target story is to be made from three aspects: the respective reflection of libido, defense mechanisms as well as life- and death instinct in Hulga
Summary
As one of the main branches of western psychology, psychoanalysis was originally popularized by the Austrian neurologist and psychologist Sigmund Freud. In the 1890s, Freud began to work on his psychoanalysis and spent nearly five decades establishing his theory. His psychoanalytical concepts mainly include the unconscious, the tripartite account of the personality structure, defense mechanisms, life- and death instinct and so forth. During the process of refining his psychological theory, Freud expanded its scope to various fields of human life and cultural development. He once pointed out that “literature, all art forms, are largely products of unconscious forces at work in the author, in the reader” or “in our society as a whole” Freudian psychoanalysis has provided a sound perspective to analyze the characters’ psychic activities in literary works, in which way the ultimate causes underlying their behavior and emotions can be well examined
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
