Psychoanalysis.  2020 Jul;31(3):52-61. 10.18529/psychoanal.2020.31.3.52.

Study for Novelist Han Kang’s Short Story 「My Woman’s Fruit」 in the Perspective of the Unconscious: With Other Short Stories at That Time

• Lee HK
• Yoon HR

• KMID: 2504544
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.18529/psychoanal.2020.31.3.52

Abstract

The novelist Han Kang’s short story 「My Woman’s Fruit」 is the prototype of his representative work 『Vegetarian』. In the flow of all her novels, this novel is a period when conflict, psychological trauma, and deficit reach the extreme, condensing the wife’s mental symptoms and eventually leading to catastrophe. The author analyzed that ‘the wife who became a tree’ was the result of the compromise formation by the reaction of the wife’s unconscious libidinal satisfaction, aggression, defense, superego, and repeated frustration regarding her husband. Additionally, the narratives of husband and wife were analyzed to define the writer’s setting in which male and female face catastrophic results in a patriarchal society. The author’s analysis of this novel defined a crucial position in analyzing the entire Han Kang novel from the unconscious perspective, and has proven that the unconscious aesthetics from the clinical experience occupy a meaningful position in contemporary literature.

Keyword

Novelist Han Kang; My lady’s fruit; Vegetarian; The unconscious; Compromise formation