Identity Crisis in Strindberg’s Miss Julie and Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard: A Psychoanalytical Study
Abstract
August Strindberg’s Miss Julie and Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard have always been recurrently analyzed within disputable studies concerning the characters’ psychoanalytic makeup, the characters’ breakdown at the break of a new social class, and a naturalistic, existential approach. Such a foundational approach for analysis is overpoweringly highlighted in the two plays within an unshakable regularity to the assumption that female identities in the two plays have undergone intense turmoil, toppled heavily in the middle of socioeconomic changes with the decline of aristocracy. However, this paper aims to juxtapose and compare the concept of identity crisis in association with the traumatic experiences of the two characters Miss Julie and Mrs. Ranyevskaia through a comparative psychoanalytic approach. It is inexplicable how the two addressed characters grapple with their different circumstances with fractured identities, where they fail to stand up for their social and gender roles and elevate their sense of individuation and selfhood in the middle of the surrounding deteriorations. Through a comparative analysis, this study lays the groundwork needed for exploring, interpreting, and investigating more nuanced reciprocal relationships associated with identity crisis.
Downloads
Metrics
References
2. Chen, Y. (2019). Time and Memory in The Cherry Orchard. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 10(5):10731079. http://dx.doi.org/10.17507/jltr.1005.21
3. Chekhov, A. (1902). The Cherry Orchard. Dover Publications.
4. Erikson, E.H. (1946). Ego development and historical change: Clinical notes. The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 2, 359-396.
5. --- (1950). Childhood and society. New York: W W Norton & Co.
6. --- (1959). Identity and the life cycle: Selected papers. New York, NY: International Universities Press.
7. --- (1963). Childhood and society. New York: Norton
8. --- (1968). Identity: Youth and crisis. New York, NY: Norton.
9. Hoare, C.H. (2002). Erikson on development in adulthood: New insights from the unpublished papers. New York: Oxford University Press.
10. Jain, S. (2015). Miss Julie: A Psychoanalytic reading. Journal of Transdisciplinary Studies, 8(2). http://dx.doi.org/10.21533/epiphany.v8i2.168
11. Kernberg, O. (2006). Identity: Recent findings and clinical implications. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 75, 969-1004. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/j.2167-4086.2006.tb00065.x
12. Kluft, r., & Foote, B. (1990). Dissociative identity disorders. American Journal of psychotherapy, 53(3), 1-19.
13. Latham, J.E.M. (2010). The Cherry Orchard as a comedy. Educational theater Journal, 10(1).
14. Mahal, R. (2012). A comparative study of portrayal of women in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll House and August Strindberg’s Miss Julie. International Journal of Emerging Trends in Engineering and Development, 2(5).
15. Mayavan, L. (2021). Psychological state of individuals in seeking the self: A critical study of 21st century literature. International Journal of Engineering Applied Sciences and Technology, 6(5), 2455-2143. http://dx.doi.org/10.33564/IJEAST.2021.v06i05.047
16. McAdams, D.P., Josselson, R., & Lieblich, A. (2016). Identity and story: Creating self in narrative. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/11414-000
17. Ogunc, O. (2017). A Comparative study of the social class concept in Anton Chekhov’s the Cherry Orchard and John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger. Karadeniz, 33.
18. Rose, N. (1999). Governing the soul. London: Free Association books.
19. Singh, A.D. (2014). Sexual, textual, and traumatic subjectivity: August Strindberg representation of class and sexual conflict in Miss Julie. Journal of Research and Social Studies, 2(10), 18-21.
20. Soesilo, A. (2014). Trauma experience, identity, and narratives. Buletin Psychologie, 22(1,) 1-17. http://dx.doi.org/10.22146/bpsi.11449
21. Stockenström, G. (2004). The dilemma of naturalistic tragedy: Strindberg’s Miss Julie. Comparative Drama, 38(1), 39-57. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/cdr.2004.0010
22. Strindberg, A. (1958). Miss Julie. New York: C. Scribner's sons
23. Styan, J.L. (1975). The dramatic experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
24. Wilson, J.P. (2006b). Trauma and the epigenesist of identity. In J.P. Wilson (Ed.), The posttraumatic self: Restoring meaning and wholeness to personality. (pp. 69-116). New York: Routledge.
25. Willoughby, R. (2017). Key concepts: Identity. In book: Eductaion Studies, 53-58. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781315661506-10
26. Xu, X. (2019). The subversion of gender, the immensity of desire: A psychoanalytic interpretation of Strindberg’s Miss Julie. Advances in Social Science, Education, and Humanities Research, 268. http://dx.doi.org/10.2991/sohe-19.2019.80
Copyright (c) 2024 Rana Al-Husseini, Lutfi Hmadi
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
.jpg)
