Complexions Of A Mother-Complex Essay, Research Paper

Complexions of a Mother-Complex

Often in literature there exist characters that personify certain archetypes, or in other words exhibit a certain body of universally observable traits. C. G. Jung in his development of the theory of archetypes sets forth the idea of a mother archetype. Jung describes the mother archetype as being the symbols or qualities often used, specifically as it pertains to literature, in describing a mother, or some other mothering entity. This archetype, according to Jung lays the groundwork for a mother-complex, which is present in four variations, each of which is in part characterized by either a hypertrophy or an atrophy of the feminine qualities of the daughter. One example of a mother-complex is visible in the narrator of Maxine Hong Kingston s work entitled The Woman Warrior, who while not precisely fitting into any one of the four variations set forth, does however to some extent conform with the variation that Jung terms as The Negative Mother-Complex.

One would find it very difficult to argue that Kingston s narrator does not personify some form of a mother-complex as her mother plays such a large role in the narrator s perception of who or what she is, and of the world in which she resides. The Woman Warrior in large part deals with how the daughter strives to understand her mother, and what thoughts and desires motivate her actions. This behavior seems important to the narrator because, while she uses what her mother appears to outwardly be as a palette containing the colours she wishes to avoid in the painting of herself, she is nonetheless desirous of discovering what lies underneath so that she may perhaps find solace in some less obvious similarity that may exist with her own self.

It is the aforementionned behavior that is indicitive of The Negative Mother-Complex.

The narrator strives very much to define herself almost wholly by her outward dissimilitude with her mother, taking the more vague shape of what she is not, rather than a more finite shape of what she is. She violently tosses asunder much of what her mother would view through Chinese eyes as feminine, in favor of a more American defined femininity. She similarly pushes away many tradionally maternal traits, perhaps best witnessed in the scene involving her very uncompassionately taunting the quiet girl attending the same Chinese school as she. Jung also describes this complex as one by which the daughter attempts to distinguish herself intellectually from her mother. This is exemplified as Kingston s narrator takes a much more western, scientific view toward understanding and often disputing her mother s stories of ghosts and other such tradional Chinese lore.

In short, the narrator character of Maxine Hong Kingston s The Woman Warrior, does, it would seem, exihibit many of the characteristics associated with Jung s mother-complex. It is less clear though which of Jung s suggested variation she fits into. She appears to most closely conform to Jung s so called negative mother-complex, perhaps more by more obvious exclusion from the other groups than by clear inclusion in this particular category.