A depth psychological analysis of Chicana/o narrative: Pocho, The Moths and Other Stories, and Under the Feet of Jesus.

Abstract

This dissertation explains and applies a depth psychological analysis to Chicana/o narrative, an approach not used by Chicana/o critics who mistakenly regard depth psychology as the purview of the mainstream literary canon. This theory is applied to Jose Antonio Villarreal's Pocho (1959) and Helena Maria Viramontes' Under the Feet of Jesus (1995), and The Moths and Other Stories (1985). Each novel depicts Mexican-born immigrant parents and focuses on one American-born child whose psychological development is central to the novel. The analysis of Under the Feet of Jesus traces the ego development of a young migrant worker, Estrella, in the context of her family's struggle for survival; her father's desertion; his replacement by Perfecto, the elderly companion of her mother, Petra; and her relationship with Alejo, a young farmworker whose plight energizes her coping mechanisms. Despite Perfecto's and Petra's own psychic conflicts, they contribute to Estrella's psychological growth which reflects the author's skills in representing both masculine and feminine complexity. A depth psychological approach to Pocho reveals the sexual conflicts underlying the novel and is of special value to Chapters I and IV, often regarded as unnecessary. It also accords importance to Consuelo (rarely mentioned in literary criticism of Pocho), who struggles against the tyranny of her husband Juan Rubio's machismo. Their son, Richard, is victim and vehicle of that machismo and of the splitting of representations of the mother into good mother and bad. The synthesis of this split in the Chicano is often impeded by the Spanish conquest's legacy of the pure, loving Virgin of Guadalupe as opposed to the immoral Malinche, Cortes' mistress, who allegedly betrayed her people as interpreter for Cortes and mother of his son, the first mestizo of an impure race. Chicano writers who use these female stereotypes tend to justify oppressive male behaviors toward women. Viramontes' eight stories present a range of women victimized by negative machismo, which gives men authority to force women to be good or brand them as bad. Chicana writers tend to present the positive and negative qualities of female characters who often suffer from male-imposed categorization. The psychodynamics of this suffering is accessible to the depth psychological literary critic.