On Bright Young People’s Morbid Psychology In Vile Bodies

Evelyn Waugh is a distinguished satirical novelist in Britain in the 20 thcentury. His work Vile Bodies was published in 1930 is generally regarded as the first great success in his writing career. The work depicts the fashionable life of the upper class in the 1920 s. By describing bright young people’s pleasure of pursuing excessive wealth, chasing stimulation and seeking desire, it truthfully reveals the social crisis beneath material desire, noise,extravagance and disorder in Britain and reflects the morbid psychology of bright young people in the course of pleasure pursuit.Pleasure principle has been put forward by Austrian psychologist Sigmund Freud. He points out that id includes all basic desire. Its aim is to seek for pleasure and avoid pain.However, an individual’s desire is depressed because id is supervised by ego and constrained by superego. The depressed desires including sexual instinct follow pleasure principle to pursue satisfaction. When an individual fails to obtain satisfaction in an appropriate way, he or she will seek satisfaction by irrational method. At the same time, we generate immoral desires and behaviors which indicate the psychological morbidity. Combining the special background between two world wars and his personal experiences, bright young people’s morbid psychology forced by the pleasure principle in the Vile Bodies is worth being studied.With the morbidity as the key word, the thesis selects three groups of typical characters including gossip writers, drunkards and socialites, to discuss morbid psychology, focusing on calculation, paralysis and vanity to probe into individual’s psychological appeal in the transitional world and explore the spiritual predicament of that time. To begin with, the thesis gives a detailed literary review on Vile Bodies and a brief introduction to Freud’s pleasure principle. It puts forward three questions: Being gossip writers, how do Adam and Balcairn become calculating at work? As the drunkards, why do Drunk major and Miss Runcible wander into the parties and indulge in the recreation? As for socialites, Miss Runcible and Nina, how are they driven by the distorted value of the upper class to be indifferent in relationship between men and women?The first chapter mainly discusses the gossip writers’ calculation despite work ethic.Ignoring the professional ethics, Adam and Balcairn are blinded by the money and reputationto seek self-content by going for a lie in the gossip column. The gossip column, as the spiritual pillar for aristocrat, degenerates to the tool for profit. Chapter two is to analyze these drunkards’ paralysis stimulated by intoxicating substances. Drunk major and Miss Runcible drift from party to party and addict themselves to entertainment. Under the stimulation of noise and wine, they evade the debts and escape from their responsibility. As a kind of intoxicating substance, wine which is the origin of pleasure turns into the way to break the social order and violate the moral standard. The third chapter focuses on socialite’s vanity driven by loss of family love. The relationship between Nina and Runcible and their fathers is alienated and indifferent, so kinship becomes illusory. The lack of family love leads to young women’s emotional crisis. Hence, vainglorious Nina and Runcible desire to get material and sexual satisfaction to fill their void mind. The way to preserve their benefit reflects women’s emotional predicament.By detailed analysis of morbid psychology in the novel, Evelyn Waugh mainly concerns about the psychological predicament of Bright Young People in the transitional period. Under the complicated and unrest society, bright young people release their instinctual desire to get out of the dilemma but they lose their way. Gossip writers could not place the right position but descend to the slave of money and reputation. They cannot bear social responsibility. The drunkards are addicted to the illusory world to escape the obligation, but they cannot escape from the arrangement of the God. Vainglorious socialites stress the superiority of material and sex, so they can not gain the real love. In the early 20 th century, the British society is in the transforming period, the rapid development of science and technology and industry not only richens people’s life but also provides the way to abandon themselves to creature comforts which presents their extremely void spiritual world. Evelyn Waugh not only makes the reflection of the younger generation’s predicament in morality and spirit, but also calls on people to remold oneself with moral values in the new period.