Incest Wish vs. Incest Taboo: Incest Patterns in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre

• Main Authors: Jinyi Guo, 郭晉宜
• Other Authors: Chao-Fang Chen
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2006
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/25286994250657050985

碩士 === 國立成功大學 === 外國語文學系專班 === 94 === Abstract 　　This thesis explores the incest patterns in Charlotte Brontë’s self-revealing narrative of Jane Eyre (1847) as the unconscious manifestation of the novelist’s inner conflict between incest wish and incest taboo. The thesis begins with the discussion about the father-daughter incest－its background, attraction and horrifying effect on human consciousness. The life of Brontë offers us a glimpse of her relationships with her father and the men from the class of “fathers,” which, if viewed from the Freudian theory of Oedipus complex, can explain the motive for her father fixation. But as Freud contends in Totem and Taboo (1913) that incest taboo is our innermost fear, Brontë’s incestuous yearning therefore will always be under the dark shadow cast by this powerful force. The hidden incest themes in Jane Eyre are closely examined along with her own personal experiences to illustrate the struggle between incest wish and fear in both her novel and life. Concluding with the Freudian concept of the connection between the creative writers and their works, this thesis suggests that the incest implications in Jane Eyre are attributed to the clash of incest desire and incest taboo within the psyche of its creator－Charlotte Brontë.