Returning to the Maternal Body: A Woman’s Rebirth in Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing

• Main Authors: Jing-yi Xu, 許靖宜
• Other Authors: Yauling Hsieh
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2008
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/n6mwa5

碩士 === 東吳大學 === 英文學系 === 96 === The thesis explores how the nameless protagonist in Margaret Atwood’s novel Surfacing undergoes a spiritual journey on her return hometown to look for her missing father. From the feminist viewpoint of Julia Kristeva’s theories of the melancholia, the semiotic chora and the abject, this thesis examines how the protagonist enters the maternal body symbolically and acquires her subjectivity The thesis also deals with the journey motif by discussing Joseph Campbell’s concept of the mythic journey, scrutinizing how she come to be healed by maternal love in each stage and finally reenters to society. When the journey begins, the protagonist falls into a state of melancholia as she becomes oppressed by patriarchy and mourns for the maternal body. Julia Kristeva believes that a child must leave the maternal body to enter the Symbolic order. In the process, the mother must abject her child and be abjected by the child to make the separation become possible, which helps the child obtain its own its own subjectivity. If the separation fails, both the mother and the child may keep mourning for each other in a melancholy state. In Surfacing, the missing father appears as the image of a loving father, guiding the protagonist to re-enter the maternal body and re-experience of separation. In the end, she survives and rejects being a victim of the patriarchal system and her inner trauma. The thesis is divided into five parts, including the introduction, three chapters as the main body, and the conclusion. The introduction provides the thematic framework and description of the methodology. The main body is divided into three parts in accord with Joseph Campbell’s pattern of the mythic journey, and they are the three stages that the protagonist of the novel goes through: Departure, Initiation, and Return. The first part discusses the meaning of journey in literature and the protagonist’s outer oppression in the Departure Stage. The second part probes into the protagonist’s inner trauma. Her mourning for her dead mother and aborted fetus at the same time leads her into melancholia. Guided by her loving father, she dives into the lake, which symbolizes semiotic chora, to face the abject in her life. The third part discusses the protagonist’s return after surfacing the lake. With the maternal love, she sublimes the abject and speaks in a poetic language. At the end of the journey, she has the ability to establish a loving relationship with others. Maternal love can be regarded as the source and basis of all kinds of love. However, it can also be the origin of melancholia. Only by returning to the primordial mother and child relationship and dealing with the shadow and the complexity of her mind, can one achieve subjectivity and the ability to love others.