Defective Personalities In Modern Marital Relations

Edward Albee is the pioneering playwright of the Theater of Absurd in America. Most of his works involve the dysfunctional marital relations. His plays mostly concern the themes of illusion, frustration, alienation, isolation and loss. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and A Delicate Balance, as his best-known dramas, are the representatives of these subject matters. The characters in the plays are all bothered in dysfunctional marriage. Their personalities are defective or have not been consciously developed. The dysfuntion in every character's inner psyche influences the relation to others. Every character has different obstacle in interacting with his or her spouse in the marital relations. This thesis applies Jungian theory of archetypes to analyze the characterization of these two plays. The thesis attempts at the exploration of the characters'inner psyche and discovers the defective potentials of their personalities, and reveals the complicated relations between defective personalities and their abnormal marriages.This thesis consists of five chapters. Firstly, Edward Albee and his major masterpieces, as well as the plot summary of the dramas are introduced. A literature review on domestic and overseas study on these two plays, including the originality of this thesis is presented. The three couples in the two dramas have deformed personalities. Secondly, the theory of Jungian archetypal criticism, including the major archetypes is introduced. Thirdly, this thesis makes researches on the negative archetypes of the three wives and husbands--Martha, Honey and Agnes; George, Nick and Tobias, including their defective potentials of personalities are respectively investigated. Meanwhile, the author makes a comparison and contrast between the couples to illustrate the relationship between personalities and marriages. Finally, the thesis offers a conclusion.The efforts made for this thesis are meaningful that negative archetypes of characters' personalities contribute complicatedly to modern marital relations. The author hopes to offer a new angle to study the plays of Edward Alee.