샤론 올즈, 가족, 가족 로망스

Abstract

This paper explores how Sharon Olds’ poetry reconstructs a Freudian family romance, deconstructing the idealized image of ‘good father (good parent).’ Olds deliberately portrays a dysfunctional family dominated by a father whose abuse of power the poetic speaker responds to both as a child and an adult. Olds does not offer any American ideal of ‘home sweet home’ vision in her poetry. Olds’ poems focus on describing how the father damages the family structure and others suffer from his brutal presence. For example, in “That Year,” Olds tends to place family experience within a specific historical context; the loathing for the father depicted as Fascist and Nazi hints to the reader how the paternal figure causes the genuine anguish and pain to the family members. Furthermore, Olds examines an unsettling situation of the speaker being unsure what to do with reconciliation when the offending and abusive parent relinquishes authority and considers a sincere apology. In particular, The Father mines the rapprochement of the family through moving from the terminal stage of the father’s struggle with throat cancer to the process of mourning over his death. The final poem of The Father, “My Father Speaks to Me from the Dead,” demonstrates the speaker’s quest for affection from the father, which is impossible to achieve as long as he is alive. Whereas the speaker’s sympathy sometimes expands to the past and the dying father, Olds’ poem shows that the reconciliation with the parent cannot be neatly resolved. Entangled with the daughter-parent relationship under the boundary of the family, Olds’ speaker seriously questions how the romantic ideal of the family myth can be fulfilled in reality.