Fanny Price's Searches Of The Self

It is generally believed that Jane Austen(1775-1817),a famous female writer in the history of English literature,mainly focuses her novels on the marriage and life of the young women in the squire family,and creates many typical female protagonists with her unique meticulous observation and lively writing.However,there is a very different image of heroine in her later work Mansfield Park—Fanny Price.Actually when examined from the perspective of psychoanalysis,Mansfield Park is a novel which reflects Fanny Price's relationship with the self(self-identity and emotional belonging).Therefore,this thesis,taking Portsmouth and Mansfield Park—the two places where Fanny Price lives as its main line,tries to analyze Fanny Price's different dominant psychological states in the three stages of her relationship with her self: her loss,searches and acquisition and further loss of the self,and finally finds that Mansfield Park is the place where Fanny acquires the self.Apart from the introduction and conclusion,the main body of this thesis consists of three chapters.Introduction part gives a brief introduction to Jane Austen and the novel Mansfield Park,as well as some key terms in Freud's theories of psychoanalysis.Chapter one concentrates on Fanny Price's loss of the self which stems from her childhood.At Portsmouth,her parents Mr.and Mrs.Price's ignorance of her brings her a traumatic experience and the repression of her id;and at Mansfield Park,Fanny's relatives' alienation results in her childish fear and the conflict of her id and ego.Chapter two discusses Fanny Price's searches of the self.In her searches from peers at Mansfield Park and family members at Portsmouth,Fanny experiences transference and the censorship of her superego.In this stage,Fanny gets to know what kind of the self she really wants to pursue.Chapter three focuses on Fanny Price's acquisition and further loss of the self.Through her searches,Fanny finally acquires the self at Mansfield Park and further loses the self at Portsmouth.At Mansfield Park,her adoptive parents begin to treat her as their own daughter,or in other words,she becomes a “Miss Bertram” which fulfills her childhood desire of enjoying parental love;Fanny's marriage to cousin Edmund reveals her attachment to father.While at Portsmouth,Fanny clearly knows she has become an outsider in her own family;and she acts as a substitute for her mother because of her latent hatred of her mother.Finally,the conclusion part is a brief summary of the whole process of Fanny Price's searches of the self.