earticle

영어

This study seeks to examine Harold Pinter’s A Slight Ache through Freud’s Oedipus complex. We will see Edward as a neurotic who is mother-fixated which suggests his Oedipus complex has not been resolved. His motherly wife, Flora, becomes a catalyst who summons up his mother to him, unleashes his regression to infancy and provokes him into projecting his mother onto her. He again unconsciously feels the most primitive desire for her forbidden by his father and accordingly has competitive spirit upon him. However, he also feels guilty about his resentment against his loving father and fears that he will be punished by him for these feelings which Freud termed ‘castration anxiety’. Edward’s phobia of the Matchseller is related to this anxiety and he sees the old man as his father figure who has come back to castrate him and take his wife and his place back. To keep his place, Edward tries to emasculate his father but with the eye problems which symbolizes his destruction he gets weaker and through his weakened eyesight he finds out his father has become a big bullock. Admitting his inadequacy, he gives up desiring his mother to save his penis. To conclude, the play could be read as Edward’s process of resolving Oedipus complex and possibilities of forming an healthy adult personality.