A Study Of Female Characters’ Existential Anxiety In The Poisonwood Bible From The Perspective Of Anxiety Theory

Barbara Kingsolver is celebrated as a female political writer in American contemporary literature.Influenced by feminism and her past working experience as a political journalist,she is extremely sensitive to such socio-political topics like social injustice and human right violation.For this reason,she is inclined to describe the existential dilemmas of oppressed females,marginalized minorities and colonized nations in her works.Her masterpiece The Poisonwood Bible,hailed as a political allegory,is based on the real history of U.S.imperialist interference in Congo’s independence.It takes the Price family’s experience of preaching Christianity in Congo as its main line to show females’ existential anxiety in hostile environment and the process of their recovery from existential anxiety.Up till now,previous studies on this novel mainly involve feminism,post-colonialism,eco-criticism,etc,but few studies touch upon female characters’ existential anxiety.In view of this situation,this thesis takes Orleanna,Leah and Rachel’s existential anxiety as its research object.In the light of Rollo May and Freud’s anxiety theories,this thesis aims to probe into the manifestations of their existential anxiety,their negative coping strategies to escape existential anxiety and their positive coping strategies to cure existential anxiety.In Rollo May’s view,individuals exist in the three modes of world simultaneously,namely,Umwelt(the physical world),Mitwelt(the interpersonal world),and Eigenwelt(the self-awareness world).Once individuals’ existence in any of the three modes of world is menaced,they will be overwhelmed by existential anxiety.Plagued by existential anxiety,individuals will adopt negative or positive strategies to cope with it.Negative coping strategies can assist individuals in escaping existential anxiety,but meanwhile they will make individuals lose real existence.On the contrary,positive coping strategies can help individuals achieve self-realization and in the meantime heal their existential anxiety.This thesis consists of 5 chapters in all.Chapter One gives an overview of Barbara Kingsolver,The Poisonwood Bible,the literature review of this work and the theoretical framework and research significance of this thesis.Chapter Two takes the three modes of the world,i.e,Umwelt,Mitwelt,Eigenwelt as its breakthrough points to analyze the manifestations of the three females’ existential anxiety.Three manifestations are found : anxiety over death in Umwelt,anxiety over interpersonal freedom in Mitwelt and anxiety over racial belief in Eigenwelt.Chapter Three,based on Rollo May and Freud’s theories of defense mechanisms in anxiety,analyzes their negative coping strategies to escape existential anxiety.It is found that they escape their existential anxiety by shrinking their self-awareness,distorting reality and indulging in fantasy world.Escape helps them get temporary mental consolation at the cost of losing their real existence.Chapter Four explores their positive coping strategies to heal their existential anxiety from the perspective of Rollo May’s theory of constructive ways to deal with anxiety.It concludes that by building up courage,they choose “being-towards-death” and finally heal their death anxiety;by physical and economical self-reliance,they win back their female subjectivity from patriarchal control and eventually dissipate their anxiety over interpersonal freedom;by reconstructing the belief in racial equality,they deny the incorrect thoughts of binary opposition between the white and the black and finally dissolve their anxiety over racial belief.The conclusion summarizes the arguments of each chapter and points out three points.Firstly,the novel is a psychotherapy novel whose theme is about how females cure their existential anxiety.It mirrors Barbara Kingsolver’s deep concern for contemporary females’ mental health.Secondly,the novel conveys its author’s philosophical view on females’ existential anxiety: females can never cure their existential anxiety by escaping it because escape not only leaves the conflicts between them and their existential threats untouched but also makes them abandon their chances to become their real existence.The effective ways for females to realize their real and correct existence and finally dissolve their existential anxiety lie in three aspects: building up courage to confront existential threats,developing self-reliance to enhance self-defense abilities and reconstructing correct beliefs to deny wrong mental existence.Thirdly,the novel also reflects the author’s socio-political orientation:supporting female’s struggle for justice and female rights to gain psychological salvation.