‘Can’t Repeat the Past? Why, of Course You Can!’:Manifestations of the Death Drive in the Works of F.Scott Fitzgerald and Virginia Woolf

The topic of the Freudian death drive has remained a contentious concept throughout the twentieth century and, although research concerning psychoanalysis and modernism is in abundance, there remains a significant lack of attention to this notion within the field of literary studies. The primary task of this thesis is to examine the manifestations of the life and death drives that saturate the literary works of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Virginia Woolf, spanning their canonical novels, from This Side of Paradise (1920) to Tender Is the Night (1934) and Mrs Dalloway (1925) to The Waves (1931), together with their often-overlooked short stories. The analysis explores the struggle between the life and death drives in these texts, arguing that a ‘vacillating rhythm’ underlies a sense of duality, leading characters inexorably towards a sense of nonbeing or inertia, just as they experience diametrically opposite yet unified emotions, often at the same time. This thesis underscores the value of employing psychoanalytic approaches, including both Freudian and neo-Freudian theories, to enhance our understanding of the psychological themes in the works of Fitzgerald and Woolf. Integrating foundational Freudian ideas with the theoretical advancements of Melanie Klein and Hanna Segal, the research offers a new interpretative framework that extends beyond traditional Freudian analysis, to reveal the underlying tensions and conflicts inherent in the post-war experiences of these modernist authors and their characters.