The main aim of literature is to share thoughts, emotions, and even just impressions from the world with the reader. There are different types of literature: poetry, drama, and fiction. Poetry is the most emotional and symbolical, fiction has the narration form in most cases and drama is more close to real life by the way of expression and structure. The construction of drama allows the reader to understand the relations between people, the atmosphere inside the play through dialogues. Dialogue is the main concern in the drama.
Psychological Critical Perspectives aim to follow and analyze the changes in society, the differences between social classes and groups which can impact some individuals and groups of people. (Holdstock 2000)
The plays under consideration are “A Doll’s House” by Henrik Ibsen (1879) and “Oedipus Rex” by Sophocles. The current paper aims to give the Psychological Critical Perspectives of these two plays.
“A Doll’s House” by Henrik Ibsen gives the reader the vision of traditional relations between man and woman, their social roles, and the relations inside the marriage in the XIX century. The play involves the reader into the world of the XIX century. The characters are so interconnected, have so many shared secrets that the reader has an impression that he also became one of the parts of their secrets. There are a lot of ironic and humorous circumstances in the play. (DiYanni 2003)
The reader may see Ibsen’s question through Nora’s quotes, whether that society was right when forcing women and men to some certain roles in the society. The reader is given the negative effect of the created men and women stereotyped roles in the society of the XIX century. The author presented the middle class in his play as limited, brutal, and unforgiving creations. He aimed to underline and emphasize the problems which existed in that society. Dr. Rank and his disease is a symbolic example of the sickness of the whole society during those times.
Henrik Ibsen tries to give the reader the understanding that the stereotypes and forced roles can create nothing but versa effect, that people should be given some freedom of choice what place in the society they want to take.
The play “Oedipus Rex” by Sophocles presents us with the person who understood his blame and punished himself for that. The difference between this play from the others of that period is that the end of the story is not connected with the passions and vices of the main character, but constructed by destiny. “Sophocles emphasizes the individual’s uncompromising search for truth, which is evident in his play “Oedipus Rex” (DiYanni 2003-958). The main character searches for the truth and conquers it.
The comic, maybe even ironic effect presents in the play “Oedipus Rex”, “when the messenger’s speech unsettled rather than reassures Oedipus about who is he and what he has done” (DiYanni 2003-917). This ironic effect is used to give the viewers a better understanding of what was happening. The author made us understand that the personal attitude, presented in the play depends on his/her social position.
So, the plays, we mentioned here, were characterized and analyzed from the point of view of Psychological Critical Perspectives. We followed the different social groups which occurred at absolutely different times.
Works Cited
DiYanni, Robert. Literature: Approaches to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. McGraw-Hill Humanities, 2003.
Holdstock, T. Len. Re-examining psychology: critical perspectives and African insights. Routledge, 2000.