Analysis of Abbie’s Tragedy From the Perspective of Androgyny

As the representative tragedy of Eugene O’Neill, the preeminent American playwright, Desire Under the Elms has been a blockbuster since its advent due to its unique pulchritude in tragic art, and it is hailed as one of the greatest American tragedies. Critics generally ascribe the cause of Abbie’s tragedy to O’Neill’s deliberate design. This thesis attempts to probe into the cause of Abbie’s tragedy based on a relatively new perspective—androgyny, initiated by Swiss psychologist Carl Jung and introduced into literature by English feminist writer Virginia Woolf, and therefore to remind modern people of the appropriate way to pursue happy life.