Electra in Fiction
Fiction affords people the opportunity to identify with the protagonists of fantastic stories depicting what might be if they could act upon their desires. Often, in aid to promoting social conformity, the myth, story, stage play, or film presents a story meant to frighten people from acting upon and pursuing their desires. In the course of infantile socialization, fairy tales fulfil said function; boys and girls identify with the hero and heroine in the course of their adventures. Often, the travails of hero and heroine are caused by an (evil) stepmother who is envious of him, her, or both, and will obstruct their fulfilling of desire. Girls, especially in the three-to-six year age range, can especially identify with a heroine for whom the love of a prince charming will sate her penis envy. Moreover, stories such as Cinderella have two maternal figures, the stepmother (society) and the fairy godmother; stepmother represents the girl's feelings towards mother; the fairy godmother teaches the girl that her (step) mother loves her, thus, to have mother’s love, the girl must emulate the good Cinderella, not the wicked stepsisters.
Read more about this topic: Electra Complex
Famous quotes containing the words electra and/or fiction:
“We are sheep in a herd of sheep,
but Clytemnestra, Electra and Death
are burnt like star-names in the sky.”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)
“To value the tradition of, and the discipline required for, the craft of fiction seems today pointless. The real Arcadia is a lonely, mountainous plateau, overbouldered and strewn with the skulls of sheep slain for vellum and old bitten pinions that tried to be quills. It’s forty rough miles by mule from Athens, a city where there’s a fair, a movie house, cotton candy.”
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