Death of desire, desire of death : an exploration of narcissism and death in Madame Bovary and The Awakening
Date
1997
Authors
Martin, Linda
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Abstract
This thesis explores the psychological nature of narcissism and death in the mimetic characterization of Emma Bovary in Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary and Edna Pontellier in Kate Chopin's The Awakening. It also questions the differences between the protagonists' motives for and mode of their suicides, since they result from almost parallel emotional experiences. Emma's violent arsenic ingestion suggests moral punishment rather than the more instinctive death of Edna's tranquil drowning.
Investigation includes gender dynamics operating between author and character, as well as both conscious and unconscious authorial intuition. Chapter One discusses the foundational psychoanalytical theory of narcissism and the death drive. In addition, it deals with psychological and social elements that affected mythological Narcissus as well as nineteenth-century individuals. Chapters Two and Three examine Emma and Edna's emotional lives and predisposition to suicide, focussing upon their emotional injuries, libidinal object-choices, and ego-ideals.
Findings conclude that the authors' creative processes appear to parallel the narcissism displayed by their characters, in that their fictional representations serve as attempts to exorcize their own forms of narcissism.