Personality Disorder in Karen Dionne’s The Marsh King’s Daughter: A Psychoanalytic Study
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21271/zjhs.27.2.27Keywords:
Keywords: Sigmund Freud, Personality Theory, Personality Disorder, Id, and Familial Treatment.Abstract
The present study attempts to critically map Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory to examine personality disorders in the bestselling novel The Marsh King’s Daughter (2017), written by the American novelist Karen Dionne (1953-). It aims to analyze a combination of factors that cause personality disorder which is reflected not only in the character of the Marsh King (Helena’s father) but also in Helena, who hides her true identity from her husband. Based on Freud’s cohesive theories of personality development as well as notions of other theorists, the study explores the impact of abusive and chaotic family life on forming a tyrannical, ambiguous, and narcissistic personality like the Marsh King. It is no wonder abused children remain perplexed even when they get released from familial pressures in the later stages of life. Therefore, a psychoanalytic reading of the novel is used to determine that the id, as the component of personality, provides the basis for the characters’ most primitive impulses.
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