On New Grub Street – Persona: The Existential Genesis Sid Ali Kercenna College

The character’s aspects presented by an individual in order to be perceived by others are known to form his persona. Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung identified this as a psychological component of the individual himself, “a kind of mask, designated on the one hand to make a definite impression upon others, and on the other to conceal [his] true nature”. But is this really the sole function of the persona? Could it have no other role than to shield one’s true nature from the knowledge of others and paint a public face for oneself? It is hard -not to say impossible- to formulate a definite answer to such questions, yet different notions about the topic creep unperceived into consciousness when one is reading George Gissing’s New Grub Street. This novel, published in 1891, is by no means the only literary work pointing in this direction, but it is one that provides the reader with a good deal of material to question the inherent attributes of the persona and dwell upon its psychological function.

It goes without saying that the task in hand might occupy an indefinite span of time and cover an abundance of research in different fields including literature, psychology, and philosophy unless we set it first upon a particular finite...