Walking Out Of The Predicament Of Soul:the Comparison Of Infanticide Between Beloved And Desire Under The Elms

Toni Morrison and Eugene O’Neill won the Nobel Prize in1993and1936respectively. The two writers’ writing style and skill are quite different while their representative works Beloved and Desire under the Elms share the same infanticide plot. This paper first analyses the reason why the two mothers murder their children, and then emphasis is put on the interpretation of differences between the two infanticides according to New Historicism. New Historicism focuses on the fate of edge figures: under what kind of historical condition will the edge figures murder their children?"Self-fashioning","Negotiation strategy" and Power, Consolidation, Subversion, and Containment are used to analyse the two mothers’ infanticides which contain different effect and results. So what is the very reason that is hidden behind? What will be the endings of the two mothers Sethe and Abbie? Are they able to walk out of the predicament of soul and to face the bright future bravely? These are the contents that will be dealt with in this paper.