A Postmodern Reading of Versatile Writing in Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning Become Electra

Abstract

The present paper will offer a postmodern reading of interdisciplinarity by investigating the multifaceted writing and the coexistence between various disciplines in Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra (1931). Versatility in the O’Neillian text is elaborated through the intersection between psychoanalysis and Greek mythology. In this respect, the Oedipus complex will be analyzed from a Lacanian perspective. The rationale behind choosing Lacan is his efforts “[to transform] psychoanalysis from a modernist to a postmodernist discipline” (Horrocks 2001: 19). The paper will also examine the Electra complex from Jung’s perspective. What is specific about Jung is that “he was strictly a phenomenologist, to that extent a postmodern before postmodernism” (David 2003: 24). The inner psyche of the characters will be further interpreted through a postmodern reading of masks. Like the civil war which divided the States into a Northern and a Southern part, the inner self of some Mannons is composed of masks that are the outcome of the inner split between repression and free will. On the other hand, the postmodern reading of the play will focus on Barthes’ announcement of The Death of The Author. Interdisciplinarity will ultimately be mapped out with relying on Linda Hutcheon’s postmodern reading of intertexuality.