Loss of Loved Ones and Identification

    • Cover Photo
    • Presentation speakers
      • Aylin Bayrakceken Akin, Atilim University, Ankara, Turkey

    Abstract:

    Loss of loved ones and identification find expression in D.H. Lawrence’s American writings in the form of replacement which becomes a routine habitual compensation for the loss of love-objects. Psychologically, human beings color aspects of their relation to the world outside them. Thus; they defamilliarize the affair to fill the void, replacing other(s) for the lost love-object. According to Freud, “the most obvious reaction is to identify oneself with it, to replace it from within, as it were, by identification.” (Freud, 193) Kate Leslie, the main character of the novel “The Plumed Serpent” as a reflection of a self-exiled writer, D.H. Lawrence, finds the primal wisdom, mechanical England has lost in the American continent. Kate replaces the husband lost with a native American Mexican general Cipriano and marries him. Identification with the indigenous culture deposes the concept of the other and self is assimilated to bloom a new self which is different from her Englishness. The new liberated soul leaves judgment and prejudice behind while confronting, recognizing and accepting the native American culture with its vices and virtues. In conclusion, despite the marriage and the will to settle down in aboriginal America, Kate’s ambivalence prevails as her English self rises although she is aware that it is wrong to impose European values on the unassimilable other.

 

Related Presentations

 

Cover Photo

How are Iranian Gay Men Coping with Systematic Suppression Under Islamic Law? A Qualitative Study
  • Mohammadrasool Yadegarfard

Cover Photo

Locating the Self through Representing the Other: Occidentalism as a Strategy for Self-exclusion and Recognition in Mohja Kahf’s The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf
  • Ishak Berrebbah

  • Euroacademia Supports the Initiative

     

  • Euroacademia Partner

     

Euroacademia. Copyright © 2020 .

0