Hester’s Tragedy as the Narcissistic Melancholy in Marina Carr’s By the Bog of Cats... (마리나 카의 『고양이 늪』(By the Bog of Cats...)에 나타난 나르시스적 멜랑콜리로서 헤스터의 비극 연구)

Jeong Youn Gil (정윤길)

Hester’s Tragedy as the Narcissistic Melancholy in Marina Carr’s By the Bog of Cats...

Journal of Modern English Drama
Abbr : JMBARD
2019, 32(3), pp.135-160
Publisher : 한국현대영미드라마학회
Research Area : Humanities > English Language and Literature > English Literature > Contemporary English Drama
Published : December 31, 2019

Jeong Youn Gil ¹

¹동국대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This essay examines Marina Carr’s By the Bog of Cats... through the lens of Julia Kristeva’s concept of narcissistic melancholy. By the Bog of Cats... is a tragic play about a woman who suffered abandonment and rejection and became imprisoned by her past resulting in the death of her brother and child. Hester is depicted as a desperate mother figure who is othered in her society out of her social position as an Irish traveller, her problematic relationship with her absent mother and her single motherhood. She feels obliged to compensate for the loss and waits for the time of her mother’s return, as she desperately desires to prove herself to the missing mother. I think that her situation can be interpreted by connecting with Christeva’s concept of Melancholy related to the loss of mother as the object of desire. According to Kristeva’s theory, women are unable to accomplish the complete separation from their mother and it would enable them to successfully negotiate their passage into the symbolic domain of language and law. I provide a psychoanalytic reading of the play’s representation of the lost mother and grief, showing how it represents grief as a turning away from the realm of signs, a disintegration of bonds, and a retreat into asymbolia. Finally, I assert the cause of Hester’s sorrow and tragedy lies in her frustration to separate herself from her mother in order to be autonomous and the continuous longing for her mother’s return.

KEYWORDS

By the Bog of Cats..., Marina Carr, Julia Kristeva, Narcissistic Melancholy, The Lost Mother and Absence

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

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