Citation:
Date Published:
6 June 2023Abstract:
Kurt Vonnegut’s Bluebeard is among the least researched of his works, the few critiques on it limited to explorations of the art and the artist in the novel. This article examines the main characters, mostly women, in Bluebeard, in a psychoanalytic framework based on the studies on archetypes and complexes by Carl Jung, Robert Moore, Douglas Gillette, and Joseph Campbell. The article uses these findings along with feminist critiques of Jung to assert that Bluebeard refutes Jung’s essentialist anima-animus model by its anti-sexist depiction of characters. By analyzing the male protagonist’s immature masculinity in Bluebeard and the feminine influence in his turning from an elitist impulsive man-child into an empathetic old artist, the article concludes that Bluebeard replaces the male-biased Jungian schema with a more balanced structure in the post-Jungian feminist vein, presenting a quest for mother, rare in the otherwise father-centric American fiction.
March 2023: Ankit Raj is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Government College Gharaunda, Karnal and has a PhD in English from the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee. His current research interests include Postmodern Fiction, Archetypal and Myth Criticism, Psychoanalytic Criticism, and Comparative Literature, on which he has published in Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, Scrutiny2, The Explicator, and ANQ among other journals. Ankit is a guest editor for Essence & Critique: Journal of Literature and Drama Studies (Bingöl University, Turkey). His poems and short fiction have appeared in numerous print and online venues across seven countries. He is a winner of the Hawakal Young Poets 2022 series and the author of Pinpricks (Hawakal, 2022). Prior to entering academia, Ankit has been a software engineer and lead vocalist with rock bands in India. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4565-7682
Nagendra Kumar is Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Roorkee, India. He has been the recipient of the Teachers’ Research Grant of the American Studies Research Center, Hyderabad (1996) and the Outstanding Teacher Award, IIT Roorkee (2015). He is a Fellow of the Salzburg Seminar (Austria) and the International Shaw Society (Canada). He has travelled extensively around the globe on academic and professional assignments. His articles have appeared in Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, Scrutiny2, ANQ, The Explicator, South Asian Review, South Asian Popular Culture, Neohelicon, and Media Watch among other journals. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002- 8292-794