Mubashir Mehmood

Introduction Background of study Topic Maternal love and Oedipus Complex It is a psychoanalytical research of mother,s love and oedipus complex of child. Psychoanalytic criticism adopts the methods of "reading" employed by Freud and later theorists to interpret texts. It argues that literary texts, like dreams, express the secret unconscious desires and anxieties of the author, that a literary work is a manifestation of the author's own neuroses. One may psychoanalyze a particular character within a literary work, but it is usually assumed that all such characters are projections of the author's psyche. Like psychoanalysis itself, this critical endeavor seeks evidence of unresolved emotions, psychological conflicts, guilts, ambivalences, and so forth within what may well be a disunified literary work. The author's own childhood traumas, family life, sexual conflicts, fixations, and such will be traceable within the behavior of the characters in the literary work. But psychological material will be expressed indirectly, disguised, or encoded through principles such as "symbolism" (the repressed object represented in disguise), "condensation" (several thoughts or persons represented in a single image), and "displacement" (anxiety located onto another image by means of association). Oedipus complex, in psychoanalytic theory, a desire for sexual involvement with the parent of the opposite sex and a concomitant sense of rivalry with the parent of the same sex; a crucial stage in the normal developmental process. Sigmund Freud introduced the concept in his Interpretation of Dreams (1899). The term derives from the Theban hero Oedipus of Greek legend, who unknowingly slew his father and married his mother; its female analogue, the Electra complex, is named for another mythological figure, who helped slay her mother. Freud attributed the Oedipus complex to children of about the age’s three to five. He said the stage usually ended when the child identified with the parent of the same sex and repressed its sexual instincts. If previous relationships with the parents were relatively loving and non-traumatic, and if parental attitudes were neither excessively prohibitive nor excessively stimulating, the stage is passed through harmoniously. In the presence of trauma, however, there occurs an “infantile neurosis” that is an important forerunner of similar reactions during the child’s adult life. The superego, the moral factor that dominates the conscious adult mind, also has its origin in the process of overcoming the Oedipus complex. Freud considered the reactions against the Oedipus complex the most important social achievements of the human mind. Megan Hunter was born in Manchester in 1984, and now lives in Cambridge with her young family. She has a BA in English Literature from Sussex University, and an MPhil in English Literature from Jesus College, Cambridge. Her poetry has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize. The End We Start From is her first novel. The novel has also won the prize of Aspen Words Literary Prize for Longlist 2018. She wrote this book just in a catastrophe to the London in flood and a mother giving birth as she used to like these readings of different authors since her childhood. The purpose behind this novel is to evoke the maternal live and dignify the effort of a mother to save her child even in the harshest days of her life. The opening of novel describes the birth-giving process which is the most critical part of a mother’s life and after this she just want her son to be close to her all the time. This much deep observation and dedication of Meghan Hunterr has given this book a life, and these specialties of this book has made the way to win 3 prizes as it was the first work of author. 1.2. Objectives of Study. 1. The objective of study is to highlight the child’s extra love towards her mother and the over-possession towards mother except father. 2.To find out the Oedipus complex theory of Freud’s components in the novel. 3.To analyze the distance happening between couple after the child birth and the mega attention diversion of mother towards the child rather than husband. 4. To figure out which elements reveal the child’s unconscious attraction towards his mother in his infantry age. 5.To compare the maternal love from two different eras (ages) as one of R’s mother and other of Z’s mother. 6.To explain what differences have been interpreted between old age mothers and new era mothers. 1.3. Research Questions 1. What elements of Oedipus complex theory by Sigmund Freud have been interlinked with the novel The End We Start from by Meghan Hunterr? 2. What are the comparing features of mothers from different ages and eras (narrator and G) and how they showed their maternal affection to their children? Theoretical Framework: Definition: The Psychoanalytic Theory is the personality theory, which is based on the notion that an individual gets motivated more by unseen forces that are controlled by the conscious and the rational thought. 1. Sigmund Freud is closely related to the psychoanalytic theory. According to him, the human behavior is formed through an interaction between three components of the mind, i.e. Id, Ego 2. Id: Id is the primitive part of the mind that seeks immediate gratification of biological or instinctual needs. The biological needs are the basic physical needs and while the instinctual needs are the natural or unlearned needs, such as hunger, thirst, sex, etc. Id is the unconscious part of the mind; that act instantaneously without giving much thought to what is right and what is wrong. Example: If your Id passed through a boy playing with a ball, the immediate urge to get that ball will drive you to snatch it by any means, this is irrational and may lead to the conflict between the boys. Thus, Id is the source of psychic energy, a force that is behind all the mental forces. 3. Super-Ego: The Super-Ego is related to the social or the moral values that an individual inculcates as he matures. It acts as an ethical constraint on behavior and helps an individual to develop his conscience. As the individual grows in the society, he learns the cultural values and the norms of the society which help him to differentiate between right and wrong. Example: If the super-ego passed that boy playing with a ball, it would not snatch it, as it would know that snatching is bad and may lead to a quarrel. Thus, super ego act as a constraint on your behavior and guides you to follow the right path. But if the Id is stronger than super-ego, you will definitely snatch the ball by any means. 4. Ego: Ego is the logical and the conscious part of the mind which is associated with the reality principle. This means it balances the demands of Id and super-ego in the context of real life situations. Ego is conscious and hence keep a check on Id through a proper reasoning of an external environment. Example: If you pass through the same boy playing with the ball, your ego will mediate the conflict between the Id and super-ego and will decide to buy a new ball for yourself. This may hurt you Id, but the ego would take this decision to reach to a compromise situation between the Id and super-ego by satisfying the desire of getting a ball without committing any unpleasant social behavior. Hence, these are the fundamental structures of the mind, and there is always a conflict between these three. The efforts to attain the balance between these defines the way we behave in the external environment. These aspects show the daily life conscious activities in the light of this theory. The theorist is trying to convey the relation of a son to her mother according to the Oedipus complex theory. Freud explained the natural attraction of child towards mother and that affiliation is totally unconscious of the child’s memory. Under the influence of this theory, many researches have been made and the pure perspective of the theorist is to develop a sense of knowing this issue and after this the measures are also provided to reduce the effect of this problem. 2. LITERATURE REVIEW Having a baby can feel like the end of the world. In her slim, fragmentary debut novel, Megan Hunter examines new motherhood against an apocalyptic scenario in which flooding tips England into chaos: as the narrator’s waters break, the waters in London rise. As in Emma Donoghue’s Room, where the notorious Fritzl case inspired an exploration of the claustrophobia and intensity of the mother-child relationship, the extremity of the setting powers the novel’s central metaphor at the same time as throwing the repetitions and revelations of parenting into sharp relief. It is also part of a growing trend to approach parenthood side on, smash it into fragments, and offer up the shards. Jenny Offill’s Dept. of Speculation did this brilliantly in 2014, jumbling together motherhood, marriage and stifled ambition. Rivka Galchen’s Little Labours, published this month, is a miscellany of new parenthood with its own arresting metaphor: to have a baby, she writes, is to welcome a puma into your apartment.But there is also a lot of blank space, perhaps more than the body of the story can carry. Hunter walks a fine line, stylistically speaking, between the spare and the sketchy, the profound and the perfunctory. Italicised interludes based on various creation myths “The earth was bare, and barren, and no trees grew, and no flowers, and all was still”, reads one in its entirety are not developed or differentiated enough from the main narrative to work as symbolic counterpoint. 3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 3.1 RESEARCH DESIGN This research is completely informative and explanatory in nature yet focuses on the qualitative analysis to scrutinize the features of psychoanalytic theory in “the end we start from”. Thus I utilize this approach to comprehend the approach of oedipus theory described in the book the end we start from. 3.2 SOURCE OF THE STUDY The primary source of this research is Meghan Hunter’s novel “The End We Start From” (2017).The theory of the oedipus complex by Sigmund Freud is used as secondary source of this present research along with this various maternal love works are also utilized. 3.3 RESEARCH TOOLS: The characters of the primary text are used as tools of this research mainly the protagonist M is highlighted tool during entire research because of her maternal love approach and significant writings which differentiates her in that society. Apart from her son is used as second tool of this research and he plays a role in the efforts of M against all difficulties and divert attention from those hardships.Thus these are the tools which provide authenticity to the research in the end. 3.4 RESEARCH FRAMEWORK Oedipus Complex theory was proposed by Sigmund Freud. The theorist is most prominently associated with analyzing the normative effects of mother;s love towards her son .Her attachment towards her son is keeping her distant from her husband and friends.It is like socially isolated person after the birth of child. And theme child dependency totally justify the them of maternal love and correlates to oedipus complex.The husband is feeling jealousy factor not because of the son but the time he is consuming with his wife is keeping his wife away from doing his works.The child is seeking a lot of attention of mother and when she goes towards husband the child unconsciously do things to repel her from her husband. The oedipus complex is also about the unconscious feelings of child towards their parents. These feelings and attachments of the mother and child are just highlighting the factors of oedipus complex. 3.5 DELIMITATION The overall objective of a research design was to explore the mothers love towards their children but also the diversions created and the distances that come across in all relations after the birth of a child. This highlights that how a mother gets so involved in her child that she forgets everything and in meanwhile the child also show possession towards mother more than anyone else which gives rise to oedipus complex factors. Work cited: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/--the-end-we-start-from https://www.britannica.com/science/Oedipus-complex https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/megan-hunter/39d1bbc2-01db-4c8a-3b84-08d5 dd18a060