从心理分析的视角解读《玻璃动物园》中的逃避主义

唐 玫

（池州学院外语系，安徽 池州 247000）

从心理分析的视角解读《玻璃动物园》中的逃避主义

唐 玫

（池州学院外语系，安徽 池州 247000）

《玻璃动物园》是田纳西·威廉斯的一部带有强烈自传色彩的戏剧，剧中的三个主要人物，即阿曼达，劳拉和汤姆都一概被评论家们贴上了“逃避者”的标签。然而通过对这三个人物更深层的探讨，不难发现这一标签贴得过于一概而论。该文由心理分析学派学者阿尔弗雷德·阿德勒的自卑情结理论及卡尔·荣格的人格面具理论作为理论依据，深入探索人物内心，从而得出结论：人物阿曼达并非所谓的“逃避者”，相反，她敢于面对现实，活在当下；而她的一双儿女劳拉和汤姆却实实在在是逃避主义的奉行者。

《玻璃动物园》；逃避主义；心理分析；自卑情结；人格面具

0 Introduction

Rooting in Austrian neurologist and psychologist Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis which originally developed as a medical technique,psychoanalytic theory has seen its several distinct groups formed and triumphed through all these decades.From Freud’s models of the human psyche to Lacan’s Three Orders,each group adopts different psychoanalytic theories when analyzing a literary work.So for readers’sake,it is necessary to make it clear which group of psychoanalytic theory this paper mainly bases on.

Actually,the theory framing my paper does not come from Freud,Frye or Lacan,but another Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler,once a Freudians but later split with Freud and found his own institution.

As the founder of individual psychology,Adler achieved a lot in the research of the relationship between family and children as well as its influence on children’s psychology.The conception of “deficiency in body and compensation”, “inferiority complex”, “sense of superiority”and so forth in his theories are great contributions to the development of psychoanalysis.Besides Adler,this paper also owes to the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung.Similar with Adler,he was first Freud’s best pupil and successor but built up his own theory system later.Archetypal criticism as we call it when we apply his theories and methods to literature.But it is his persona conception that I am going to elaborate in the later part of this paper.

1 Amanda’s Practicality

About Tennessee Williams Adler once said: “No other American dramatist has created women character of such complexity portrayed with deep understanding and sensitivity.”①This is especially applicable to The Glass Menagerie in which the vivid depiction makes the two women characters not so unapproachable as characters in other plays.Some critics label this play as a story of escapees.In their viewpoint,Amanda is an escapee to the past,Laura the imagination and Tom the magical world.Actually,more persuasions are needed to convince us of that.It is true that Laura and Tom do attempt to get away from the reality,but in Amanda’s case it is more complicated.She is not,in a real sense,an escapee to which I am going to apply psychoanalytic theory.

Early in the play Amanda is presented as an actress,selfdramatizing and self-conscious:She lets the hat and gloves fall on the floor in “a bit of acting’’ (Glass Menagerie Scene Two)way;She shakes out her handkerchief“delicately and delicately touches to her lips and nostrils.”(Scene Two);She dabs at her lips and nostrils to indicate her distress before a typewriter keyboard to pieces.She could not let go of the old southern grace that makes her sometimes rather foolish and ridiculous.“Don’t quote instinct to me!Instinct is something that people have got away from!It belongs to animals!”(Scene Four)In her mind,Christian adults like her should want superior things.In fact,she knows clearly that one can not pursue things of the mind and the spirit without satisfying instinctive needs first.However,she behaves affectedly as if someone is watching her.She always absorbs in her glorious memory of the 17 gentlemen callers and bothers telling it repeatedly to her daughter and son.Sometimes it seems that she would rather stay in the memory and never come back to the present.Maybe this is why she is regarded as an escapee into the time—time of the past.But judging from common sense,we can not assert that he who is nostalgic must want to escape from the present.If that is true,Jim is surely an escapee too,for he also cherishes his sweet high school life a lot.

In fact,Amanda has the practicality that none of other characters show in this play.She knows everything that is undergoing and what kind of reality she has to deal with.Just exactly like what she says:“There is so many things in my heart[…].”(Scene Five)She notices that Laura feels inferior for her crippled leg.Unlike Laura who just stays there,doing nothing but isolating herself from the outside world,she reacts to it quite positively and tries to find a way to handle it:“When people have some slight disadvantage like that,they cultivate other things to make up for it[… ]” (Scene Three)She blames Tom for his selfishness and keeps questioning him why he goes to the movie so frequently.But actually she is quite clear about what is going on in her son’s head. “I know your ambitions don’t lie in the ware house […]I saw that letter you get from the Merchant Marine.I know what you are dreaming of.I’m not standing here blindfolded […]”(Scene Four)She talks about it with him,trying to persuade him to face the fact that life is not easy and he must have Spartan endurance to survive in this world.She is somewhat sharp-eyed,noticing her son’s resemblance to his father.“More and more you remind me of your father!”(Scene Four)She has foreseen that sooner or later Tom will leave them,so she makes preparations in advance and warns Tom that he can not leave till there is someone to take his place.As the guard of the family,she tries every means to improve their life,selling magazines,urging her children to make themselves more capable and inviting Jim to dinner whom she thinks will change their life.Needless to say that she is the only one who really does something for a better life while Tom gets himself numb in the movies and Laura amuses herself with the glass menagerie.What Bigsby commented is very apt and objective:“She is confused,pathetic,even stupid,but everything has got to be all right.She fights to make it that way in the only way she knows how.”(42)

2 Laura and Tom’s Escapism

Compared with Amanda,Laura and Tom are more fit for the hat of escapee.

Laura,as we have seen in the play,has a deformed foot caused by pleurosis,“crippled” as she calls it.She becomes self-conscious because of her deficiency,blaming it as a barrier for her to be normal.According to Adler,a body that can not meet the needs of the circumstance will be treated as a kind of burden by the psyche.Therefore,one who has deficiency in his body has to deal with more hindrance in the development of his psyche.If he is always held back by that physical defect,he will have no spare attention to be attached to the outside world.He will find it difficult in cultivating interest in anybody else.As a result,his social feeling and ability in coordinating with others can not get full development(33).Laura,being too conscious of her deficiency,can not shift a part of her attention and energy to others.Consequently she could not finish high school,nor the business school.Gradually,she isolates herself from others,indulging in the world of glass animals.Her behavior is just like what Adler claimed in his book:“如果他觉得软弱，他会跑到能使他觉得强壮的环境里去，他不把自己锻炼得更强壮，更有适应能力，而是训练自己，使自己在自己眼中显得更强壮。”（阿德勒47）She escapes into the glass menagerie because she can experience more sense of superiority there than in the outside world.When staying with the glass animals,she is the commander and none of the animals will mock at her deficiency,which gives her a sense of security she yearns for.“个人限制了他的活动范围，苦心孤诣地避免失败，而不是追求成功。他在困难面前会表现出犹疑，彷徨，甚至是退却的举动。”(48)That is why reaching for a glass is always her first reaction to difficulties and troubles that she has to deal with.Glass is her refuge.

As a matter of fact,Jim is quite a good amateurish psychologist,for he points out exactly what Laura’s problem is—inferiority complex.But hers is,precisely speaking,a very severe one.She is not merely terribly shy,but reacts rather fiercely:In the business college,her“hands shook so that she couldn’t hit the right key! ”(Scene Three)The first time they had a speed test, “she broke down completely—was sick at the stomach and almost had to be carried into the washroom!”(Scene Three)When it is time to have a dinner with Jim,she suddenly falls ill:“she is obviously quite faint,her lips trembling,her eyes wide and staring.She moves unsteadily toward the table.”(Scene Six)It seems that illness and break down always come and go in a sudden.In Adler’s viewpoint,these sorts of physical pains are actually a king of wise invention of her which can bring the pay back she expects(57).She knows that if she is ill,she can temporarily escape from the present current trouble and stay in her refuge where she can gain back her strength and confidence.Therefore,she keeps wishing that she could fall ill when troubles come.The wish strikes her conscious so repeatedly that it evolves into a kind of reflex which will be displayed whenever she meets trouble.In this way,she succeeds in escaping from the horrible reality and protecting herself in the castle of glass.

Similarly,Tom also suffers from psychological problems.As the only male in the family,he has not had an easy life during his growth.In Adler’s theories,men like him may defend themselves against the dominance of females in the family.They feel that they must confirm their own extraordinariness and superiority(133).It is not difficult to find proofs to support this assertion.In Scene One when they are at table,Tom responds quite fiercely to his mother’s instruction on how to eat:“I haven’t enjoy one bite of this dinner becaus3e of your constant directions on how to eat it.It’s you that make me rush through meals with your hawklike attention to every bite I take,sickening—spoils my appetite[…].”（Scene One） Obviously Tom is defending himself from his mother’s intrusion.When his mother blames him for the “hideous” book by Lawrence,he blames back right away,emphasizing that it is him who pays rent on the house and makes a slave of himself to support the family.He needs to declare his importance.

As I have mentioned in the previous part,Tom is not content with his life.He thinks that he sacrifices all his own dreams for the family:“I’ve got no thing,no single thing—in my life here that I can call my own!”(Scene Three)He dreams to be a poet but in reality he can only work in a warehouse,doing boring mechanic work day after day.In his own words it is“a double life,a simple,honest warehouse worker by day,by night a dynamic czar of the underworld [… ].” (Scene Three)The expression“double life” is precisely what Jung contended in his theory of the persona,one of the four important archetypes:“人格面具这个词本义是为使演员能在一出剧中扮演某一角色而戴的面具[···]在荣格心理学中，人格面具的作用与此类似，它保证一个人能够扮演某种性格，而这种性格却并不一定就是他本人的性格。人格面具是一个人公开展示的一面，其目的在于给人一个很好的印象以便得到社会的承认。”（霍尔48）Base on this theory,I may draw a conclusion that Tom is not the original Tom when he goes to work.He is merely wearing a mask and playing the role of someone else.He has to do so in order to make money to support his family.After he returns home he is still not himself,but a performer who wears a mask of a filial son and considerate brother,just like Jung’s claim that each person can own more than one persona.Eventually he get tired of this “playing” game,realizing that his true self can not get satisfaction:“Man is by instinct a lover,a hunter,a fighter,and none of those instincts are given much play at the warehouse!”(Scene Five)He yearns for space to release himself.Therefore he goes to the movies frequently because he can experience adventures in the movies:“Adventure is something I don’t have much of at work,so I go to the movies.”(Scene Five)Only being involved in adventures can he become who he really is.In this sense,it is more accurate to say that Tom is escaping from his personas rather than his responsibilities he bears to his family.

3 Conclusion

Having finished the body part here and looking back at what I have stated,I suddenly find that this paper is actually not an exact psychoanalytical one,for the theories I quoted from Adler and Jung are used as medical techniques,but seldom adopted in literary criticism.Even though I am stuck in a total embarrassment from having written something wondering between a psychological diagnosis and a psychoanalytic criticism,I still want to say that these theories enlighten me quite a lot in understanding the characters’inner world,especially their escapism.Perhaps these theories are not very appropriate to be hired in critical paper,but they are really good tools for we readers to get a better comprehension of a literary work.

［1］Williams,Tennessee.The Glass Menagerie[M].Literature:Reading,Reacting,Writing.Ed.Kirszner and Mandell.Beijing:Peking University Press,2006:1909-57.

［2］阿德勒·阿尔弗雷德.自卑与超越[M].黄光国,译.北京：作家出版社，1986.

［3］C.S.霍尔.荣格心理学入门[M].冯川,译.北京：三联书店，1987.

［4］Bigsby,C.W.E.Entering The Glass Menagerie[C]//Ed.Margreta de Grazia&Stanley Wells.Cambridge Literature Guidebook.Shanghai:Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press,2003:29-43.

注释：

① I can’t remember exactly where I read it,probably in a classmate’s presentation in drama class.

A Psychoanalytic Approach to the Escapism in The Glass Menagerie

TANG Mei
(Department of Foreign Languages,Chizhou College,Chizhou Anhui 247000,China)

The three main characters in The Glass Menagerie,Tennessee William’s strong autobiographical tragic play —Amanda,Laura and Tom,have all been labeled “escapees” by some critics.Yet with more thorough exploration into these characters this claim will prove its flaw—it overgeneralizes them.With the theoretical support of Alfred Adler’s “Inferiority Complex theory” and Carl Jung’s “Persona theory”,a conclusion can be drawn from the exploration that Amanda is more a character of practicality than escapism,while Laura and Tom are,in a real sense,escapees.

The glass menagerie;Escapism;Psychoanalysis;Inferiority complex;Persona

唐玫（1987—），女，安徽石台人，硕士，助教，主要研究方向为现当代英美文学。

曹明明］