A Psychoanalytical Approach to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Ethan Brand”

Yuqing Sun,Shuo Zhao

doi:10.22158/jecs.v2n3p154

Abstract

Psychoanalytical criticism to literary works is one of the important ways to uncover the depths of author’s thinking, which also contributes to readers’ understanding of actions, characteristics, plots or even endings of characters in the novel. From the perspective of psychoanalysis, this article focuses on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “Ethan Brand” written by him in 1850 to analyze Hawthorne’s unconscious intention of creating this story and the reasons of why he writes in that way instead of another.

Highlights

The foremost pioneer of psychoanalysis is the Vienna neurologist and psychologist Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) who lays the foundation for the approaches to the psychoanalytical criticism about literature
They want to escape the tremulous reality of the world. They would imagine the content of the art like a personal dream to hold their own spiritual world with as little interference as possible from “artificial” rules that dictated what a work should consist of. They would like to anthropomorphize evil in the form of Satan, devils, and ghosts, that are emblematic of human nature as Ethan Brand in his short story
“the rude lime-burner Bartram lifted his pole, letting it fall upon the skeleton, the relics of Ethan Brand were crumbled into fragments” (Bressler 228)

Summary

Introduction

The foremost pioneer of psychoanalysis is the Vienna neurologist and psychologist Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) who lays the foundation for the approaches to the psychoanalytical criticism about literature.

Results

Conclusion