A Comparison between A Rose for Emily and Letter from an Unknown Woman—Based on Freud’s Personality Structure Theory

Abstract

The two works Letter from an Unknown Woman and A Rose for Emily have made excellent description of woman’s love and contained profound meanings. The former is a passionate confession, and the latter is an implicit critique. This essay compares and analyzes the two heroines’ love tragedies from the perspective of Freud’s Personality Structure Theory and attempts to explore how the id, ego and superego influence the heroines’ psychology and behavior. The Psychoanalysis approach offers insight into the cause of their tragedies, it’s the imbalance of their personality structure leads to their doomed tragic fates.