Alfred Nobel University Journal of Philology · 2026, 1(31) · pp. 149–170

Comparative Trajectories: A Dialogue of Cultures and Ages

Markers of the Subconscious in Dramatic Text: D.H. Lawrence's The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd and H. Javid's Afet

How the unconscious — repressed desire, fear and trauma — is artistically expressed in early twentieth-century Western European and Azerbaijani drama, read through a synthesis of psychoanalytic and comparative-typological methods.

Javida Mammadova Nizami Ganjavi Institute of Literature, Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences (Azerbaijan)

UDC 82.091 DOI: 10.32342/anuJPh.2026.31.9 ISSN 3041-217X / 3041-2188 Published 04.06.2026

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Keywords the subconsciousdramatic textpsychoanalytic method comparative-typological analysisinternal conflictthe female character traumamodernist drama

Abstract

The dramatic text as a space of the psyche

This article examines the ways in which the subconscious is artistically expressed in the dramatic works of early twentieth-century Western European and Azerbaijani literature. The relevance of this work stems from the sustained interest in contemporary literary studies in interdisciplinary methods of analysing literary texts, as well as the need to broaden the intercultural context of the study of modernist drama. Despite a substantial body of academic research devoted to the psychoanalytic interpretation of literature, the issue of the representation of the unconscious in the drama of different cultural traditions remains under-explored from a comparative perspective. An examination of early twentieth-century Western European and Azerbaijani drama reveals both universal and culturally specific models of artistic representation of the subconscious.

The study found that, in the plays of D.H. Lawrence and H. Javid, the inner conflict of the female protagonists serves as a structuring element of the drama and reflects deep psychological processes. The experience of trauma — whether childhood, emotional or existential — is a key factor in shaping the characters' behavioural strategies and the dynamics of the conflict. Pauses, fragmented speech, emotional outbursts and stage directions, and the fragmented nature of time function as artistic markers of the subconscious, capturing the characters' inner turmoil and identity crisis. In this way, the dramatic form is viewed as a space where the conscious and subconscious levels of the personality interact.

A comparative analysis made it possible to identify universal psychodynamic patterns — ambivalence of feelings, the conflict between duty and passion, feelings of guilt — whilst also identifying culturally determined differences in the ways in which these are expressed artistically. In Lawrence's play, internal conflict tends to unfold through a gradual build-up of psychological tension and the specifics of everyday life, whereas in Azerbaijani drama it takes on a more expressive and symbolically rich character. The findings confirm the effectiveness of combining psychoanalytic and comparative-typological methods and establish the dramatic text as a space for intercultural dialogue.

AimTo identify and compare the ways in which the subconscious is artistically expressed in dramatic texts from two literary traditions, and to determine the role of psychoanalytic mechanisms in the formation of internal conflict and the evolution of female characters.

MethodologyA synthesis of psychoanalytic and comparative-typological approaches, incorporating structural-semantic text analysis.

CorpusD.H. Lawrence, The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd (written 1911, published 1914); Hüseyn Javid, Afet (written 1906–1909, revised & published 1917–1920).

01 · Introduction

The unconscious as a problem of dramatic form

In drama, the subconscious — a realm of repressed desires, fears, traumas and ambivalent feelings — takes on specific forms of expression that reveal a character's underlying psychological logic, which cannot be reduced to direct statements.

The psychoanalytic method in literature has been developed and applied for some time; yet in the context of contemporary humanities scholarship — oriented towards interdisciplinarity and an in-depth understanding of the internal structure of the dramatic text — it takes on particular relevance. At a time of heightened interest in identity, trauma, and gender and cultural conflicts, analysing a dramatic text through the mechanisms by which the subconscious is expressed becomes especially productive.

Drama at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries — both in Western Europe and in the East — developed during a period of intense re-evaluation of conceptions of human nature. The emergence of psychoanalysis, associated with Sigmund Freud, who established the role of unconscious impulses in human behaviour, radically altered perceptions of human nature, the creative process, and the literary process as a whole. Playwrights increasingly turned to portraying the hidden motives behind characters' actions, their inner conflict, and irrational impulses that defy rational explanation yet remain influenced by cultural background.

By focusing on intercultural dialogue, contemporary humanities aim to identify not so much the differences as the points of convergence between the artistic traditions of the West and the East. A comparison of Western European and Azerbaijani drama from the early twentieth century demonstrates that the processes of modernisation, the crisis of traditional values, and the re-evaluation of women's roles in society and marriage took place in parallel across different cultural spheres.

Why this examination is relevant

↻

Interdisciplinarity

It reflects current trends towards interdisciplinarity and the psychological dimension in literary analysis.

⌖

Inner structure

It allows a fresh interpretation of the internal structure of dramatic conflict, revealing its underlying, not always obvious foundations.

⇄

Cross-cultural

The comparative aspect explores universal and culture-specific features of artistic thinking across different cultural traditions.

♀

Gender & marriage

Its exploration of female characters and marriage as a space of oppression and resistance speaks to contemporary gender and cultural studies.

02 · Literature Review

Psychoanalysis in drama: approaches to research

The Freudian interpretation of drama draws on a wide range of studies that explore the interplay between psychoanalytic theory and theatrical form — from the stage as a space where the unconscious manifests, to the practice of interpreting individual plays.

Theatre & the unconscious

K. Neuringer — "Freud and the Theatre"

Freud's influence extends beyond theme: drama adopts the very logic of the unconscious. The stage becomes an "external space of the psyche," where repressed conflicts are played out in symbolic form, and monologues, breaks in linear time and fragmented structure become devices akin to psychoanalytic interpretation.

Neuringer, 1992, pp. 146–147

Play as symptom

J.-M. Rabaté — dream-structured action

Dramatic action is often structured along the lines of a dream, where associations and symbols are central. The play is conceived as a manifestation of a "symptom"; a Freudian reading seeks the internal logic of desire, guilt and prohibition within the dramatic fabric itself.

Rabaté, 2014, p. 27

Oedipal model

R.H. Armstrong — Freud and the Drama of Oedipal Truth

Drama employs the revelation of a family secret as a mechanism for constructing conflict: the truth about origins, ties and repressed desires becomes the structural principle of the plot, revealed through monologues, flashbacks and stage symbols.

Armstrong, 2012

A classic application

M. Stearns — "Hamlet and Freud"

A classic example of applying psychoanalysis to drama. Freud's greatest contribution to criticism lies in the province of imagery and symbolism, established as the source of unconscious revelations — applied to motivations, flashbacks, visions and symbols.

Stearns, 1949, p. 272

Catharsis re-read

J. Vives — "Catharsis: Psychoanalysis and the Theatre"

Drawing on Freud and Lacan, catharsis is reinterpreted not as a mechanism of discharge linked to abreaction, but as the analytic process itself, during which the Subject is "unveiled" and faced with the enigma of his own desire.

Vives, 2011, p. 1009

Theatrical practice

Campbell & Kear — Psychoanalysis and Performance

Psychoanalytic ideas are applied by directors and actors — working with transference, modelling unconscious states on stage, and interpreting dramatic conflict as a therapeutic process — situating performance and psychoanalysis in a dialogical framework.

Campbell & Kear, 2001; Kear, 2001, p. xiii

Contextual history

D. Sievers — Freud on Broadway

The dramas of the 1920s show the desentimentalisation of the role of the mother; apart from the Oedipus complex, the most prevalent psychoanalytic concept was the theme of sexual repression and frustration, adapted to a mass audience.

Sievers, 1970, pp. 76, 79

Re-reading Hamlet

P.E. Raj — "Hamlet: A Psychoanalytic Point of View"

Hamlet is read not merely as political drama or revenge tragedy but as a "psychopathological" play, shaped by repressed desires, internal conflicts and mechanisms of repression made dramaturgically visible.

Raj, 2016, p. 22

Character & audience

M.G. Turri — character as "emotional field"

Character, actor and audience are connected through the unconscious; the character is an "emotional field" where the viewer's emotions meet the actor's interpretation and travel from the unconscious to the conscious — drama as a socio-cultural phenomenon.

Turri, 2021, p. 17

Ibsen & society

Bashir, Rehman, Ullah & Ahsan — Ibsen

Ibsen's exploration of psychological and emotional themes predates formal psychoanalysis, yet offers rich material for later interpretation — psychoanalysis serving not only inner psychology but also historical and social analysis.

Bashir et al., 2023, p. 63

      The research gap. Carlson, Pavis, Fischer-Lichte and States examine linguistic plurality, the pause, silence and presence — yet from the perspectives of semiotics, theatre studies, linguistics and phenomenology. These aspects are rarely considered as a coherent system of markers of the subconscious as an element of poetics, let alone within a comparative intercultural context juxtaposing Western European modernist drama and Eastern dramatic traditions. No comprehensive model yet combines formal-structural analysis with psychoanalytic interpretation and comparative-typological cross-cultural research. It is precisely this that makes the present article relevant.
    

03 · Aim & Methodology

A comprehensive, three-method framework

The aim is to identify and conduct a comparative analysis of the artistic expressions of the subconscious in early twentieth-century Western European and Azerbaijani drama, and to determine the role of psychoanalytic mechanisms in the formation of internal conflict and the characterisation of female characters.

Tasks

Task 01

Internal conflict

To analyse the specific nature of the internal conflict of the central female characters as a manifestation of their subconscious impulses and traumatic experience.

Task 02

Artistic devices

To identify the artistic devices used to represent the subconscious in dramatic texts.

Task 03

Comparison

To compare models of the development of internal conflict in works belonging to different cultural traditions, identifying common psychoanalytic foundations and differences.

Methods

Psychoanalytic method

Interprets literary texts from the perspective of the mechanisms of the subconscious, identifying hidden motivations and reconstructing the underlying psychological causes of inner conflict.

⇄

Comparative-typological analysis

Compares artistic approaches in Western European and Azerbaijani drama, identifying similar psychodynamic patterns — duty versus passion, guilt after an act, the fear of losing one's footing — and culture-specific features of their expression.

⌗

Structural-semantic analysis

Examines elements of stage design that indirectly convey inner states: fragmented speech, ellipsis, intonational pauses and symbolic details reveal how the subconscious is represented at the level of form.

04 · Theoretical Background

Markers of the unconscious in a dramatic text

In the literary drama intended for the reader, the psychoanalytic approach acts as one of the main factors shaping the internal and aesthetic structure of the text. Psychological concepts such as trauma, repressed emotions and desire are expressed not so much in content as in formal structure.

Literature becomes all the more valuable when it can represent, or stage, the psychic opacity of a given person, whether alive or fictional.

— Jean-Michel Rabaté [Rabaté, 2014, p. 28]

Jacques Lacan proposed viewing the unconscious as structured in a manner analogous to language, opening new perspectives for textual analysis: literature becomes a space in which the structure of subjectivity manifests itself, and the literary text a form of the symbolic construction of desire. As Patrick Campbell notes, in making the hidden visible and the latent manifest — laying bare the interior landscape of the mind through signifying practices — psychoanalytic processes are endemic to the performing arts. The structure of classical tragedy can be likened to the analytic unravelling of repressed knowledge, as Oedipus Rex reveals its truth gradually, through delays, hints and symbolic clues.

⧖

Fragmentation of time → trauma

Trauma is no longer depicted through a clear cause-and-effect narrative, but through a rupture or fragmentation of time. The reader does not learn about the trauma through explanation but experiences it through the instability of time, as past and present blur and the present remains unresolved.

↺

Repetition → desire

Desire can be expressed through an algorithm of unconscious repetition — the same situation, phrase or action recurring — revealing the irrational, compulsive nature of the unconscious. As Kear notes, the "logic of repetition serves as an insistent reminder of the event's materiality."

∅

Pauses, silence & gaps → repression

Unfinished dialogues and thoughts, a lack of reaction, and incomprehensible scenes are a poetic expression of repression. Speech becomes a means not for resolving conflict but for concealing it; the very words meant to be expressed are absent from the text.

⟡

Unconventional language

The repetition of clear and obscure words, symbols and metaphors, alongside restraint and pauses, expresses unconscious conflicts. In Eliot's Sweeney Agonistes, speech becomes a stream of free associations beyond conscious control — losing its communicative function, as in Esslin's Theatre of the Absurd.

Stage directions as a "second text"

Following Schwanecke's analysis of Mary Rose, what is para-textual becomes part of a narrative strategy that guides reception. Stage directions constitute an authorial, metadiscursive narrative running parallel to the action: they establish not the chronotope of an event but the chronotope of a state, lending visibility to hidden psychological processes through imagery, spatial transformation and symbolic detail. Schwanecke identifies four functions:

Mood-setting

Detailed, intermedially rich descriptions create an emotional backdrop that shapes perception of the action.

Prognostic

A proleptic function: they foreshadow the action, hinting at key motifs and shaping expectations.

iii

Cognitive-interpretative

They set a "macro-framework" for making sense of being and non-being, life and death, presence and absence.

Representational

They give form to what defies direct expression — loss, uncertainty, liminality, frozen time.

An equally important element is the structure of dialogic and monologic speech. Ellipses, evasions, repetitions and discontinuities point to hidden psychological tensions; dialogue often functions as indirect expression of the unconscious, where lines do not follow logically but shift in meaning through associative links, reminiscent of the associative logic of mental life. Monologue, characterised by fragmentation and associative transitions, becomes a form of expressing the stream of consciousness, where recurring motifs signal repressed experiences that return to consciousness time and again.

05 · The Two Heroines

Two women, one shattered marriage

Written at roughly the same time and drawn from real life, both plays address the tragic fate of women who occupied a subordinate position in marriage and were subjected to humiliation and cruelty — a fate caused by a profound incompatibility between female nature and the existing model of marriage.

D.H. Lawrence · England

Mrs. Holroyd

The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd — a psychological drama

Age32 years old

OriginOrphaned at six; married the first man who turned up to escape male harassment and social insecurity.

WorldA cramped miner's cottage in industrial England — grounded, mundane, oppressed by the factory world.

ResistanceA victim whose hatred turns into a torment of conscience — the psychology of the repressed personality.

TraumaChildhood loss of her father shapes every decision.

"It's my fault… I've killed him, that is all… But we've killed him."

Hüseyn Javid · Azerbaijan

Afet

Afet — a philosophical tragedy with symbolic undertones

Age33 years old

OriginFrom a refined, Westernised family ruined by catastrophe; given in marriage to Ozdemir when her father fell into poverty.

WorldA romantic-symbolist context — "a graceful, enchanting woman" whose beauty is read as a cosmic force, a fire that burns.

ResistanceA femme fatale who transforms passion into a deliberate crime — the psychology of destructive beauty.

TraumaMoral trauma; wounded pride and the trauma of deception.

"Çünki zəhri içirdim" — "Because I made him drink the poison."

A comparison of the conflict

	Lawrence · Mrs. Holroyd	Javid · Afet
Genre	Psychological drama of industrial England.	Philosophical, symbolist tragedy of passion.
Nature of conflict	A deeply intimate, moral and psychological breakdown; guilt and suppressed hatred lead to tragic self-realisation.	A passionate conflict between love and honour, desire and duty, leading to a conscious crime.
The husband's death	He dies; she does not commit the murder, yet feels moral complicity — freed physically but not spiritually.	Afet is the direct cause: she poisons Ozdemir by her own deliberate intervention.
Determinants	Social — the living conditions of a working-class family.	Passionate, almost symbolist — the cult of passion and destructive will.
Tone of the ending	Quiet, psychological, imbued with inner turmoil; an open ending.	Theatrical and dramatic — murder and suicide almost in the same instant; the immediacy of death heightens fatality.
Form of resistance	Victim → torment of conscience.	Femme fatale → deliberate crime.

A shared past of forced marriage

Mrs. Holroyd on her past

"I was left an orphan when I was six… And I felt I'd nowhere to go, I belonged to nowhere, and nobody cared about me, and men came after me, and I hated it. So to get out of it, I married the first man that turned up."

Lawrence, 2002, p. 58

Afet's past, as recounted

"Eşitdiyimə görə pək kibar və alafranqa bir ailəyə mənsub imiş. Fəqət böyük bir fəlakət birdən-birə evlərini söndürmüş… babası fəqir düşüncə qızını Özdəmirə vermiş…"

"From what I have heard, she belonged to a very refined and Westernised aristocratic family. However, a great catastrophe suddenly ruined their home… When her father fell into poverty, he gave his daughter in marriage to Ozdemir…"

Javid, 2005, p. 110

The latent conflict of Mrs. Holroyd

Her conflict takes a latent form from the very beginning. The psychological conflict deepens in the scenes with Blackmore, where a hidden need for warmth is revealed; desire is expressed indirectly, through the observation of hands, and the subconscious surfaces in the detail where the gesture precedes the word. Several conflicting impulses are at play — a longing for intimacy, a fear of moral transgression, a fear of losing security, and a subconscious attachment to her husband — rooted in childhood trauma and projected onto her children.

BlackmoreWhy not? If wishing of mine would kill him, he'd soon be out of the way.
Mrs. HolroydBut the children!
BlackmoreI'm fond of them…
Mrs. HolroydBut he's their father.

Lawrence, 2002, p. 56

The vengeful resolve of Afet

At first glance Afet seems devoid of fear — for love of Karatay she kills her husband without hesitation — yet she is just as much in need of protection, sensing she can only find security in the arms of her beloved. The one thing she fears is betrayal, and that fear compels her to threaten him:

"Bən bütün bənliyimi, bütün həyat və səadətimi yoluna fəda etməyə hazırım. Hətta sənin uğrunda cinayətdən belə çəkinməm. Ancaq şu qadar var ki, aldadılmaq istəməm, aldandığımı duysam məhv olurum…"

"I am ready to sacrifice my entire being, my whole life and my happiness for your sake. I would not even hesitate to commit a crime for your sake. But I do not want to be betrayed; if I realise I have been betrayed, I will be destroyed… Those who insult me will be cast into the arms of the Angel of Death."

Javid, 2005, pp. 108–109

Afet's conflict spirals outward — four phases

The internal conflict in Javid's play is more multilayered than in Lawrence's. At first, the decision to kill her husband seems to be the heroine's own free choice; she later realises she was pushed and guided. This realisation becomes the trauma of deception, and the conflict spirals outward.

Humiliation & thirst for self-respect

Beautiful and desirable, yet bound to a man who humiliates her; the conflict arises as a struggle between self-respect and enforced submission.

Passion & readiness to commit a crime

Aware of her passion for another, she chooses passion over moral law — resolving first to kill her husband, then, if necessary, to take her own life.

The realisation of manipulation

She sees that her passion was mediated by another's will; the doctor, under the guise of sympathy, manipulated her — a new trauma of deception, a struggle between illusion and truth.

Revenge & ultimate self-destruction

Betrayed and rejected, she kills the manipulator to restore her shattered self; the second act of violence does not resolve the conflict but intensifies it into complete inner isolation.

06 · Markers in the Plays

How the subconscious surfaces on stage

Both authors employ similar dramatic devices — repetitive formulas, fragmentary lines, stage directions for pauses, gestures and physical reactions, the symbolisation of interior space, the subjective fragmentation of time, and symbolic images. Yet the aesthetic outcomes differ: Lawrence presents a psychological tragedy of guilt; Javid, a symbolist tragedy of passion.

Written at roughly the same time

Composition and publication of both plays, 1906–1920 (years from the article).

The narrative time of Afet

The intervals separating the three acts — a single month, then a whole year.

A month endowed with symbolic significance

30 days

Longer than thirty years · Shorter than thirty minutes

"Bir ay otuz yıldan daha uzun, otuz dəqiqədən daha qısadır" — for those who wish to die it is far too long; for those who wish to love and live, far too short. Repetition here concentrates the temporal fragment, heightens the tension, and signals that Afet is reflecting on death.

The artistic markers, side by side

⧗

Subjective fragmentation of time

The past is actualised in the present through fragments of memory.

LawrenceTime "breaks down," moving in fits and starts as psychological flashes; the mourning scene fuses past conflict with present death.

JavidRapidly shifting moods; Ozdemir is the abandoned past, Qaratay the branding present — both eliminated, rendering self-destruction inevitable.

⌂

Symbolisation of space (interior)

The depicted space becomes a stage for unconscious and repressed emotions.

LawrenceA cramped, sooty miner's room — the confinement of the space corresponds to Mrs. Holroyd's inner constriction.

JavidA gaily-furnished salon, a moonlit spring night and a plaintive violin — beauty that clashes with the mood and turns into a space of death.

❖

Symbolic images & motifs

Objects take on a symbolic function, bringing the repressed to life.

LawrenceThe rat — a mirror of the unconscious world: suppressed fears, aggression and the inner decay of family life erupting into the domestic scene.

JavidFire and a withering flower — a consuming, destructive flame and a "faded rose" foreshadowing the tragic conclusion.

✎

Stage directions

An authorial "psychological commentary" beneath the dialogue.

Lawrence"They stand still… Suddenly she starts up and draws her hand away" — the impulse precedes the word, then is suppressed.

JavidA "second text": "weeps like a child," "with a bitter laugh," abrupt breaks in contact — the body says what speech masks.

↺

Repetition & pauses

Lawrence emphasises pauses and repetitions in the characters' speech.

Lawrence"I've tried, I've tried for years" — an obsessive verbalisation of trauma; "you—you" falters with the fear of exposure; the long pause after "And do you love me?"

≀

Subtext

Javid focuses on the discrepancy between what is said and what is felt.

JavidBeneath melodrama about love and "taintedness" runs a darker logic — a struggle for control over identity and an unconscious drive toward self-destruction; her accusation of a "treacherous heart" is self-incrimination.

The rat — the unconscious erupting into the home

In Lawrence the symbolic imagery is not particularly poetic; the rat embodies the characters' repressed psychological impulses. Appearing in the kitchen — the heart of the domestic world — it becomes the material embodiment of what is already in the depths of the characters' psyche, intruding upon the stage like animal instinct breaking through the rational.

Mrs. Holroyd…this place is fairly alive with rats… you can hear them at night overhead like a regiment of soldiers tramping. Really, you know, I hate them.

BlackmoreWell — a rat is a nasty thing!

"There is a smash of pots, and a rat careers out of the scullery." — Lawrence, 2002, pp. 13, 19

The repressed-desire scene

In the scene where Mrs. Holroyd and Blackmore speak of love for the first time, the syndrome of repressed desire is most strongly evident, conveyed through the pauses the author marks in the stage directions. Blackmore's subconscious desire — "this wanting you" — outstrips his ability to comprehend it; the scene's climactic pause arrives at the question of love.

Mrs. HolroydBut I couldn't — you don't love me —

BlackmoreI don't know what you mean by I don't love you.

Mrs. HolroydI can feel it.

BlackmoreAnd do you love me?

(A pause)

Mrs. HolroydI don't know. Everything is so — so —

(There is a long pause)

Lawrence, 2002, p. 53

She did not commit physical murder, but her hatred and her mental desire for liberation turn into a sense of guilt. The confession "I've killed him" is the culmination of a subconscious process; the projection "He would have come up with the rest… if he hadn't felt me murdering him" attributes physical action to her inner coldness.

07 · Synthesis

Universal mechanisms, culture-specific poetics

Universal psychological mechanisms — repression, ambivalence, displacement — are expressed in different cultural contexts through various poetic strategies. The plays share a psychodynamic core while diverging in how that core is artistically articulated.

Shared psychodynamic patterns

Ambivalence of feelings
Conflict between duty and passion
Feelings of guilt
Fear of losing one's footing

◐ Lawrence

Western European · psychological realism

Internal energy dissolved within the structure of the dialogue.
A gradual build-up of psychological tension and everyday concreteness.
Breaks in communication; physical and sensory detail.
The interior as a mirror of the unconscious; the grounded, mundane rat.
A quiet, psychological, open ending.

◑ Javid

Azerbaijani · symbolist-expressionist

Conflict concentrated in the heroine's character and extreme states of mind.
A more expressive, symbolically rich character.
Subtext and a contradicting "second text" of stage directions.
Cosmic passion; fire, flame and the withering flower.
A theatrical ending of murder and suicide.

The duality of Javid's Afet

A comparative reading reveals that Javid's aesthetic bears many similarities to early twentieth-century European modernist theatre — particularly its Symbolist-Expressionist strand — while maintaining a clear connection with the national literary tradition. It is this duality that defines the play's artistic character.

Modernist psychological depth

Psychological depth and the foregrounding of internal conflict
The conventionality of stage space and its symbolic function
Expressionist hyperbolisation of speech and emotion
Deconstruction of classical dialogue; intensified fragmentation
Symbolisation of objects and the characters' actions

Cultural & national roots

The rhetorical style of Eastern speech
A wealth of metaphor
The poeticisation of nature
Imagery of honour, fate, and family and social hierarchies

08 · Conclusions

The subconscious as a structuring principle

A comparative analysis of the plays by D.H. Lawrence and H. Javid suggests that the subconscious functions within the dramatic text as a structuring principle for the organisation of conflict — manifesting implicitly in speech fragmentation, pauses, stage directions, repetitions, shifts in motivation and breaches of dialogue logic.

Disharmony as movement

In The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd, the psychological dynamics are built through a gradual escalation of verbal and physical disharmony; the characters seem not to coincide in the moment of communication, and it is precisely this lack of coincidence that becomes the source of the play's internal movement.

Concentrated in the heroine

In Javid's work the conflict is more articulated and socially defined, yet beneath its outward certainty lies a layer of internal tension irreducible to social issues — concentrated in the heroine's character and her extreme states of mind.

Sustained by the unspoken

In both plays the heroines' inner conflict revolves around repressed desire and ambivalence; in Lawrence it is signalled through dialogue tension and sensory detail, in Javid through a traumatic core beneath an explicit conflict. In both cases, the narrative is sustained by what remains unspoken.

A method confirmed

The synthesis of psychoanalytic and comparative-typological methods reconstructs the characters' inner psychodynamics and gauges the universality of the mechanisms identified — situating the dramatic text within a broader cultural system and rethinking the role of "peripheral" literatures in world drama.

The dynamics of the invisible

An analysis of markers of the subconscious allows for a new interpretation of dramatic conflict as the dynamics of the invisible — that which is not spoken of directly, but which organises the action on stage.

09 · References

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