Female Characterization in the Stage Adaptation of Green Snake through Freudian Structural Theory

Abstract

Tian Qinxin's 2013 stage adaptation of Green Snake places bodily desire, intimate commitments, and Buddhist belief within the contrasting experiences of two female serpent spirits. This article examines its characterization through Freud's structural model, drawing on the Hong Kong Arts Festival programme, production accounts, and dialogue and staging descriptions reproduced in published scholarship. A review of studies on subjectivity, embodied performance, and religious narrative establishes the debate over the relationship between female agency and spiritual resolution. The analysis traces continuing interactions among the id, ego, and superego across the characters' choices and relationships. White Snake's aspiration to become human combines emotional gratification with ideals of wifehood and motherhood; Green Snake's desires acquire expectations of reciprocity through imitation, rejection, and perseverance. Stage juxtaposition, bodily training, repeated vows, and changes of performed identity turn psychic conflict into a problem of relationships and recognition. The pagoda, prolonged waiting, and rebirth reorganize these relationships without removing the authority that constrains them. Drawing selectively on gender performativity, religious agency, and mutual recognition, the article distinguishes the capacity to act from emancipation and spiritual meaning from psychic maturity. The production gives women opportunities to articulate and reconsider their wishes, while making recognition conditional on domestic responsibility or religious cultivation. Female characterization emerges through this continuing tension between desire, chosen commitments, and the norms that determine whose choices receive a response.