Complexions of a Mother-Complex

A detailed Summary of 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 Maxin

e 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.

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 i

Some common words found in the essay are:
Negative Mother-Complex, Woman Warrior, Complexions Mother-Complex, Hong Kingston's, woman warrior, negative mother-complex, Maxine Hong, maxine hong kingston's, kingston's narrator, mother archetype, hong kingston's, jung describes, maxine hong,

Approximate Word count = 516
Approximate Pages = 2 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English

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