摘 要

查尔斯·狄更斯是英国维多利亚时期最卓越的批判现实主义小说家之一，他的作品情节曲折丰富，内容广泛全面，涵盖了当时英国社会生活的方方面面。狄更斯笔下的典型主人公通常是孤儿或即使有父母却对他们不闻不问的儿童。这些主人公身上有着年轻时的狄更斯在鞋厂遭受痛苦和去债务监狱看望父亲的影子。

卡尔·荣格是西方现代著名的心理学家，其分析心理学中的人格心理学与情结理论为文学作品的评论提供了心理学理论基础。本论文将主要以荣格的分析心理学作为理论指导，挖掘狄更斯的“孤儿情结”产生的原因，并且将以《雾都孤儿》《大卫·科波菲尔》《远大前程》这几部小说为例分析其笔下的孤儿形象。而前两部小说中的主人公奥列佛和大卫·科波菲尔都有着悲惨的童年遭遇，例如做童工被虐待，以及受到司法机关的不公平对待，这无疑是狄更斯本人的早期生活写照。而狄更斯笔下的孤儿形象也随着其写作心理的变化而有所改变，本文将结合其个人经历和英国当时的社会环境探讨这种人物刻画转变的原因，为狄更斯作品研究提供参考。

关键词: 查尔斯·狄更斯；孤儿情结；卡尔·荣格；分析心理学

Abstract

Charles Dickens is one of the most outstanding critical realist novelists in Victorian England. His works are full of twists and turns, and the content is comprehensive, covering all aspects of British social life at that time. The typical protagonist of Dickens is usually an orphan or a child who never receives enough love even if they have parents. These young protagonists have similar experience that Dickens suffered in the shoe factory and went to the debt prison to visit his father. As a famous contemporary psychologist in the western world, Carl Jung’s complex theory and personality psychology in analytical psychology provides the theoretical basis of psychology for the review of literary works. This essay will mainly use Jung’s analytical psychology as a theoretical guide to explore the reasons for Dickens’s “orphan complex”, and will analyze many novels including Oliver Twist （1838） and David Copperfield（1850）, Great Expectations（1861）Especially the protagonists Oliver Twist and David Copperfield, have had tragic childhood experiences, such as child labor abuse and unfair treatment by the judiciary, which is undoubtedly Dickens’s early life portrayal. Besides, the characterization of Dickensian orphans also changed with his writing career, and this paper will analyze the reasons from his personal life and the British society at that time. Meanwhile the paper will provide a reference for the study of Dickens’s works.

Key Words：Charles Dickens；orphan complex；Carl Jung; analytical psychology

Contents

1 Introduction 1

1.1 Charles Dickens 1

1.2 Carl Jung and his analytical psychology 1

1.3 Research questions and methodology 2

1.4 Research significance 2

1.5 Organization of the paper 3

2 Literature Review 4

2.1 Studies on Dickens and his work 4

2.2 Studies on Jung’s analytical psychology 4

3 Background of Dickens’s Orphan Series 6

3.1 Abuse of child labor during the industrial revolution 6

3.2 Widening wealth gap between classes 6

4 Origins of Dickens’s Orphan Complex 8

4.1 Dickens’s childhood trauma 8

4.2 Early career as a journalist 9

5 Stages of Characterization in Dickensian Orphans 11

5.1 Kind-hearted and persevering orphans in his early works 11

5.2 Inner-tortured and self-conflicted orphans in his late works 12

5.3 Reasons for the alteration 12

6 Conclusion 15

References 16

Acknowledgments 18

Exploration on Dickens’s Orphan Complex from Jung’s Analytic Psychology

1 Introduction

1.1 Charles Dickens

Charles John Huffam Dickens is an English writer and social critic, who had made his name world-known. Many of his characters are so impressive and attractive that they have been played by famous actors. Born in 1812 Portsmouth, Dickens grew up in a naval family and spent much happy time with his parents and siblings. In 1836, he published his first novel The Pickwick Papers (1836) that established his reputation and encouraged him to continue with his writing career. During his whole life, Dickens created 14 full-length novels and numerous short stories, dramas and essays. Among all the excellent works, Hard Times (1854), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), David Copperfield (1850), Oliver Twist (1838), are the most famous ones (Carney, 2017).

1.2 Carl Jung and his analytical psychology

Carl Gustav Jung is a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. His work has huge impact on the fields of psychiatry, literature, philosophy, anthropology, and religious studies. Carl Gustav Jung was born in Kesswill，a small village of the northeast Switzerland on 26 July 1875. During his childhood, he spent most of his time alone. In 1900, Jung went to Zurch and started working in a psychiatric hospital, and this experience gave him the chance to get acquaintance with Sigmund Freud, one of the most distinguished psychiatrists in the world. They collaborated well at first, but disagreements emerged between them when Jung worked on his Psychology of the Unconscious: a study of the transformations and symbolism (1906). Instead of underlining the significance of sexual development that was the core of Freud’s research, Jung emphasized more on the collective unconscious (Moore, 2017). Later Jung formed a systematic psychology that was called analytical psychology or Jungian psychology, focusing the value of the individual psyche and the personal pursuit for wholeness. Main concepts of it are the personal unconscious, the collective unconscious, individualism, the persona, the complexes, archetypes, the shadow, the anima and animus, and the self (Hall amp;Nord, 1972). In a word, Jung’s analytical psychology is quite different from psychoanalysis, a psychotherapeutic system invented by Sigmund Freud.

In the system of Jung’s psychology, the whole personality is called the psyche, which originated from Latin. It means “spirit” or “soul” at first, but it has been explained as “mind” recently (Hall amp; Nord, 1972). The word psyche includes all the thoughts, emotions and actions, be it consciously or unconsciously. The role of the psyche is like a guide to adapting individuals to their social and natural environment. Jung put it this way: “Psychology is neither biology nor physiology, nor any other kinds of science, but precisely a kind of knowledge about the psyche” (1912).

1.3 Research questions and methodology

As for methodology, this paper will use the psychological approach to analyze the Dickensian orphans and go further into the study of Dickens’ personal experience, trying to find the bound between them. And in this paper three questions will be mainly focused. What is a Dickensian orphan? Why dose Dickens like to write about them? How does Dickens portray them?