The Paradox of Identity: Creation, Conformity, and Collapse in Modernist Fiction

Abstract

Modernist literature captures a deep unease with what it means to exist as an individual within the demands of a changing society. While questions of identity have long shaped literary thought, the early twentieth century, marked by psychological theories of Freud, the existential search for meaning, and post-war disillusionment, offered writers new ways to interrogate the self. This study examines how Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway reconfigure identity as a socially mediated process rather than a stable essence. Through comparative close textual analysis informed by psychoanalytic, existential, and sociological theories, the paper explores how characters such as Gregor Samsa, Septimus Smith, and Clarissa Dalloway embody the tension between inward consciousness and outward performance. The analysis demonstrates that the erosion or withdrawal of social recognition destabilizes the self, revealing identity as an ongoing negotiation between autonomy and belonging. Drawing on the frameworks of Judith Butler and Erving Goffman, the study concludes that modernist writing anticipates contemporary anxieties about visibility, conformity, and fragmentation by redefining selfhood as relational, fragile, and continually constructed within social expectations. The paradox of identity that modernism exposes thus remains central to our understanding of human experience, reminding us that every act of belonging is also an act of negotiation.
Keywords: authenticity, conformity, identity, negotiation, selfhood