UPSI Digital Repository (UDRep)
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UPSI Digital Repository (UDRep)
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| Abstract : Perpustakaan Tuanku Bainun |
| Hysteria was a phenomenon commonly portrayed in the twentieth century's literature, and for its
importance, it needs to be discussed in the current context. In this research, I argue that
patriarchal, physical, and sexual violation are the causes of a psychological disorder that weakens
females' personality that may lead to hysteria among them. Toni Morrison is a post-modern feminist
contemporary writer, whose work focuses on the problems of slavery and women. In her Paradise, A
mercy, The Bluest Eye, and Beloved, hysteria appears as a female character that symbolizes their
problems and difficulties. This research aims to examine how females are pushed to be hysteric by
family or society, how Toni Morrison depicts it, and how these female characters get rid of
hysteria to help them live as ordinary human beings based on Kristeva's concept of abjection. In
general, females are more reserved to express their feelings openly as males do, and as such, the
former develop a hysteric body language to reflect what they could not articulate. Examining
hysteria by using the psychoanalysis approach, namely Sigmund Freud's and Luce lrigaray's concepts
of hysteria together with Julia Kristeva's concept of abjection, helps highlight the causes of
hysteria among women, how it influences females' lives, and how new identities are restructured
through abjection. These hysterics rebel against suppression, degradation, and exploitation by
using their bodies as the only means of expressing and restructuring their identities through
abjection. Thus, this expressive subversion becomes a potent women's strategy to regain power. In
this study, the researcher explored the causes of hysteria and its influences on females' lives and
examined the impact of Kristeva's concept of abjection as a kind of remedy to help women to get rid
of the stigmatization of hysteria, enabling them to live as normal human beings. The findings of
this study can pave the way for other researchers to apply such concepts to other writers' works,
especially those dealing with women's lives and their sufferings
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