As a group, we chose to look at The Sympathizer through a

psychoanalytic feminist lens. This meant assessing the

representation of the included female characters, the lack of
representation of other female characters, and the complex
relationships between the female characters and the narrator.
The first thing we had to do was to research what psychoanalytic
feminism is. After doing some research we found that
psychoanalytic feminism has many theories and psychologists
have fairly different ideas of what it is and how it manifests in both
feminine and masculine psyches. The term has been
associated with Sigmund Freud in his discussion on femininity. He
discusses women as the problem. His claims have continuously
been discussed as they come off misogynistic and devalue
women. Something that we found interesting was that Freud
seems to claim that femininity is one symptom, so to speak, of the
Oedipus Complex and that they are correlated. This is an
interesting topic to think about and discuss in relationship to
feminism because The Sympathizer seems to have ideas of the
Oedipus Complex.
One really interesting piece of information that we found was that
psychoanalytic feminism is focused on the individual, not the
group psyche. It also functions as a way to explain the dynamics
between men and women, and the oppression of women that is
rooted in psychological structures. To break this down, society,
throughout history, has given women very few choices to be
socially acceptable. Those choices are to keep quiet and to
imitate what the patriarchy wants women to look and act like.
Another feminist theory that we found out about comes from
Helene Cixous. One aspect of her theory was the power of the
mothers bond with both men and women. This struck our interest
because the narrator in The Sympathizer has flashbacks quite
frequently to his mother and often describes his fond memories of
his mother, and this theory of the strength of his mothers bond
definitely seems to play out in the novel.
Many of the relationships between women and the narrator have
Oedipal undertones. The term Oedipal comes from the story of
Oedipus Rex, a play written by Sophocles. In the play, Oedipus
kills his father and marries his mother. This is later used as the
basis for Sigmund Freuds Oedipal Complex, where a child
forms an attachment to a parent of the opposite sex and searches
for him or her in their later partners. The Sympathizer has two
significant examples of this kind of relationship - the narrators
mother, and his lover, Sofia Mori. According to Freuds theory, the
narrator wishes to possess his mother, and projects those
feelings onto his lover. He holds onto an ideation of his mother,
who has passed away, and sees her as having deserved more
than she was given. He references Sofia in the same way, going
so far as to refuse to call her Sofia, only Ms. Mori.
Its interesting to consider the sources that we used for this
portion of the project, as its well known that Freuds theories have
essentially been thrown out of psychology for being wrong.
However, looking at the work through a psychoanalytic lens made
it apparent that these relationships between the narrator and
specific female characters were significant. Understanding that
the narrators relationship with his mother shaped the way he
would interact with women throughout his life helps the reader
understand him on a different level, and some of the motives
behind his actions.
We also decided to research what women were like during the
time of the Vietnam war. Specifically, those who werent
represented in the book. There are a few great articles, that we
provided in our presentation, that showed some of what it was like
for the women that were in the military at the time. There was also
some research on what it was like for the women who were
civilians and not involved in the fighting of the war. The book is
more focused on female characters that are more reactionary to
the war than actually in it. We also visited the womens
movements that were brought up during that era. We spent a brief
amount of time on the movements.
We did more research on real life examples of psychoanalytic
feminism and have wanted to make sure to draw the distinction
between feminism and psychoanalytic feminism, as they are not
to be confused. Through our research we found that a lot of
feminists do disagree with Freud and his theories but in the
context of this book, looking at it through Freuds perspective is
rather interesting and worth noting throughout the book. Like
psychoanalytic feminism, The Sympathizer challenges regular
conceptions about humans and their sexual behavior and it may
be difficult to see that unless you do take a step back and look at
it through Freuds lenses being that they are equally as against
the grain. Freud uses works like Totem and Taboo to better
explain scenarios similar to the resentment that our spy shows
towards his father and how that ties into the ambiguity he may
feel as a byproduct of the sexual factors playing into his life
because of his mother. Again, we didnt want to mix
psychoanalytic feminism with actual feminism so using real life
experiences will be helpful in our presentation in order to make
everything more relatable for the class. We will show how these
examples tie into the Oedipal Complex, femininity as well as
women's role in civilization to better elaborate on why our spy
feels the way he does about his mother, Ms. Mori and other
women in the book. On the other hand, we will also explain why
some women werent elaborated more on, i.e. the women in
World War 2. Freud, though controversial, lays down some
ground work for the Oedipal narrative. Our job with our research
was to revise that narrative and use it to pick apart the book, just
as psychoanalytic feminism would have us do.
The research that we did was very insightful. It did a great job of
showing who wasnt represented during the time that the book
was focused on. The females in the book arent as well
represented as many people would probably like. They fit into
narrow categories of females. When in reality, women played a
very crucial role on each side of the conflict. The part that the
Vietnamese women played during that time is something that you
dont really hear about in our current time. In fact, that war isnt
talked about very often anyway. The American women played the
roles that would be common for a woman during wars of the past.
During world war II, the roles of women were basically the same.
There isnt much representation for these roles in the
sympathizer. This could be due to the Author forgetting to add this
role into the book. Our group is currently rearranging our
presentation towards our final goal. And so far, this has been
going well. We havent hit any major roadblocks as of yet. Our
powerpoint presentation is on track. We just need to solidify our
organization, as well as our activity for the class to do.