（英语语言文学专业论文）屈从下的抗争——从莎剧中的父女关系看莎士比亚的女性观.pdf

vi 摘 要 摘 要 莎士比亚是欧洲文艺复兴时期最伟大的剧作家和诗人， 在世界文学史上也享有崇 高的地位。 他一生共创作了 37 部戏剧， 2 首长诗及 154 首十四行诗。 其作品像一面 镜子，真实地再现了那个时代的精神风貌。 在他的作品中， 莎士比亚创造了一系列个性鲜明的人物形象，成功地刻画了 128 位光彩照人的女性形象。 在莎士比亚的作品中，家庭及家庭成员之间的关系， 特别是 父女关系是最重要的主题。 莎翁相当巧妙的处理了这众多复杂而又细腻的父女关系, 给读者留下了深刻的印象。 在其戏剧中， 莎翁生动地刻画了一些在父权统治下被忽视 被压抑， 但却一直努力地抗争着的女儿形象。 她们对男权世界的反叛和颠覆， 体现 了女性为争取自由和爱情而进行反抗的勇气和自主意识。 虽然她们中的一些人在有意 识或无意识的反抗中成为男权世界的牺牲品， 但是她们的斗争却构成了对男权世界进 行抨击不可缺少的一个组成部分。 同时作者也对男权世界中父女之间难以谐和的关系 提出了严肃的思考， 这不仅反映了莎士比亚的女性观， 同时也体现了莎翁为建立男权 制度下父女之间和谐美好的关系而努力的愿望。 近年来， 对莎士比亚及其作品的研究与评论日益激烈。 但研究大都集中在对其悲 剧思想、 复仇、 人类能力、 女性人物、 以及历史观等问题的思考， 对其作品中通 过父女关系而体现出来的女性观， 却很少有人进行系统的探讨。 尽管也有极个别人对 此做出一些评论， 但都基本上认为莎翁是维护“父权法则”的。 基于此点， 本文作 者试图从女性主义批评视角出发， 通过分析其戏剧中的父女关系在其作品中所体现出 来的女性观进行分析研究, 从而揭示当时男权世界下女性真实的生存状态和女儿们身 上所体现出的主体意识， 并对男权社会予以严厉抨击。 由于其 37 部戏剧中有 23 部涉及到了父女关系， 所以本文只选取其悲剧 4 部哈 姆雷特 、 李尔王 、 奥赛罗和罗密欧与朱丽叶 ， 喜剧 3 部威尼斯商人 、 如愿和仲夏夜之梦以及传奇剧 2 部辛白林和暴风雨对其中的父女关系 进行评析。 除了序言和结论， 文章分为三章。 第一章试图从在父权社会中女儿和父亲形成一 种被动的消极的关系进行分析。 从莎士比亚作品中可以看出， 女性是父权制度下任人 vii 宰割的羔羊， 是父权的私有财产， 尽管她们的情况较以前有所好转， 可以接受教育， 但教育的目的却是为父权制度服务。 第二章从女儿通过自己的努力和父亲形成一种主动的积极的关系进行分析。 在这 一章， 女儿们美貌出众、 博学多才、 热情大方、 果敢无畏。 她们是父亲们的反叛 者同时又是父亲们的启蒙者和精神支持者。 第三章从在男权制度下女儿和父亲形成一种不可协调的关系进行分析。 在这一章， 父亲是旧秩序、 男性世界和统治者的代表， 而女儿是新秩序、 女性世界和被统治者 的代表。 莎士比亚同情妇女， 肯定女性的人格与尊严， 歌颂女性的反叛斗争和争取自由和 权利的精神。 在莎剧中， 女儿们不再是没有言语的符号， 她们以各自不同的方式进 行反抗， 在一定程度上沉重地打击了当时的父权制度。 关键词：父女关系 女性主义 父权 屈从 抗争 iv abstract shakespeare was the greatest playwright and poet in renaissance, who enjoys the high reputation in the world literature. he wrote 37 plays, 2 long poems and 154 sonnets in his life. his works are like a mirror which genuinely revives the spirit of the time. in his plays shakespeare produces a series of vivid characters, among whom 128 are women. he favors the family and the family relationship, especially the father-daughter relationship, as the focus. he wittingly deals with these complicated but delicate relationships between the father and the daughter in his 23 of his 37 plays, which impresses the audiences. in the plays shakespeare vividly depicts some brilliant daughters who are oppressed or ignored but struggle their way in the patriarchal society. their rebellious spirit shows womens courage and self-awareness in pursuing love and freedom. though some of them become victims of the patriarchal society in their conscious and unconscious rebellions, their struggle is an indispensable part in defying the male-centered world. at the same time the author ponders the irreconcilable relationship between the father and the daughter profoundly, thus revealing shakespeares views on women as well as demonstrating shakespeares wish to fight his way to establish the harmonious relationship between the father and the daughter in the patriarchal system. in recent years the research and criticism on shakespeares works are increasingly booming. however, most research and criticism focus on the study of his tragic ideas, revenge, human ability, female characters, and historical view while few people have made a systemic study of his view on women reflected in the plays through an analysis of the relationship between the father and the daughter. though a small number of people have made some comments, they consider that shakespeare basically aims to maintain “patriarchal law” in his plays. based on this point, the author attempts to study the shakespeares views on women reflected in his plays through the analysis of father-daughter relationship from the feminist perspective, thus revealing the female characters actual living conditions and self-awareness and denouncing the patriarchal society. since 23 of 37 plays deal with the father-daughter v relationship, the thesis mainly focuses on the study of this relationship reflected in his representative plays as 4 tragedies: hamlet, king lear, othello and romeo and juliet; 3 comedies the merchant of venice, as you like it and a midsummer nights dream; and 2 romances: cymbeline and the tempest. except the introduction and the conclusion, the thesis is made up of three chapters. chapter one concentrates on the passive relationship between the father and the daughter. daughters are sacrificial lambs in the patriarchal society and they are their fathers property though they have more freedom to accept education while the purpose of education is to make them serve the males better. chapter two focuses on the active relationship between the father and the daughter. in this chapter daughters are beautiful, wise, cultured, bold, loving, courteous, optimistic and faithful. they are rebels, enlighteners and supporters of their fathers. chapter three investigates the irreconcilable relationship between the father and the daughter. the father is the representative of the old feudal order, the male and the ruler while the daughter is that of the new, the female and the ruled. shakespeare shows sympathy to women, confirms womens character traits and dignity as well as sings highly of their rebellious spirit. in shakespeare daughters are no longer living symbols that have no say. they fight their way in their particular way, which is a blow to the patriarchal system of the time to an extent. keywords: father-daughter relationship feminist patriarchy submission struggle iii 学位论文原创性声明 学位论文原创性声明 本人所提交的学位论文 “struggle in submission, - an exploration of shakespeares view on women through an analysis of father-daughter relationship in his plays”，是在导 师的指导下，独立进行研究工作所取得的原创性成果。除文中已经注明引用的内容外， 本论文不包含任何其他个人或集体已经发表或撰写过的研究成果。 对本文的研究做出重 要贡献的个人和集体，均已在文中标明。 本声明的法律后果由本人承担。 论文作者（签名） ：吕改改 指导教师确认（签名） ：宋慧玲 2010 年 4 月 1 日 2010 年 4 月 1 日 学位论文版权使用授权书 学位论文版权使用授权书 本学位论文作者完全了解河北师范大学有权保留并向国家有关部门或机构送交学 位论文的复印件和磁盘，允许论文被查阅和借阅。本人授权河北师范大学可以将学位论 文的全部或部分内容编入有关数据库进行检索，可以采用影印、缩印或其它复制手段保 存、汇编学位论文。 （保密的学位论文在 年解密后适用本授权书） 论文作者（签名） ：吕改改 指导教师（签名） ：宋慧玲 2010 年 4 月 1 日 2010 年 4 月 1 日 1 introduction “he was not of an age, but for all time!”1 this line was given to shakespeare after his death by his friend ben jon son. in fact, the world has never stopped showing great respect to shakespeare. he was so greatly cherished by many great geniuses including milton, stendhal, push kin, and goethe. even karl marx once remarked aeschylus and shakespeare as “the two greatest dramatic geniuses the world has ever known.”2 as the greatest of all english playwrights, he established his reputation in the world literature with his 37 plays, 2 poems and 154 sonnets and his works are a great milestone in the development of world literature. shakespeare lived and wrote his works in the english renaissance period and his plays were greatly cherished by a truly mass audience of various classes in his own life time. it was not because the audiences were aware that they were appreciating the works of a great playwright, but because the plays really touched the audiences and mirrored the life by providing them with a detailed description of characteristics of their friends, their wives, husbands, lovers and even themselves. indeed shakespeare produces a series of distinguished characters in his plays including different walks of life and deals with different relationships, especially family relationships such as father-son, father-daughter, husband-wife relationship, and so on. it seems that shakespeare is especially interested in the topics of the family, love and marriage and most of his plays deal with these themes. shakespeare sees family as the nexus of depicting the social conflicts. as a dramatic medium, family offers the playwright an acceptable forum for questioning even the most disputed issues of their age. as bennett simon comments: “one of the most important continuities between ancient and modern drama is the focus on the family”.3 simon continues that all of lifes issues, including immortality, governance, and love, are bound up in the discourse of the family. critics have long realized this preference of shakespeare. boose, the leading feminist critic who deals with the politics of the family, notes that: “shakespeares dramas consistently explore affective family dynamics with such an intensity that justifies the growing inference among shakespeare scholars that the plays may be primarily about family relations and only secondarily about 2 the macrocosm of the body politic.”4 actually, shakespeare gives a detailed description of these complicated but delicate family relationships in his plays, especially the relationship between the patriarchal father and the rebelling daughter. when visiting england in 1602, the duke of wrttemberg informed that “women have much more liberty than perhaps in any other place”.5 he added that english men had to endure their wives behavior because if they were against their wives will, their wives would put them under control and beat their husbands. to his surprise, platter also found that “in england it is not customary to invite a man without his wife”.6 it seems to indicate that elizabethan women indeed had some considerable amount of rights, independence and self-awareness. for instance, elizabethan women could go to the theatre or the tavern without their husbands. the comments of wrttemberg and platter offer us a glance of the life of the elizabethan age, including elizabethan women. of course shakespeare didnt live and write in a social vacuum. he also becomes aware of the phenomenon and reflected it in his plays. among his plays what impress the audience most are the brilliant images of women in the plays who possess equal courage, intelligence and strength as their male counterparts do, and sometimes even surpass their male counterparts and eventually play a predominant role in the plays. these brilliant women images in shakespeares plays are the reflections of the rising position of women in elizabethan time. thus, shakespeares plays mirror the life of the time. in the plays shakespeare creates a life-world of the modern, rationalized variety, which provokes debate on a wealth of subjects from womens issues to problems of “how to live and what is to be human”7. his plays are first criticized by his contemporaries from the perspective of feminism. over the years he has been criticized by mary beth rose, sally ledger, lawrence stone, showalter, michael holroyd and peter gay. these critics place an emphasis on “strong patriarchal systems dominating official state and family life, the family as an analogue for the state, nascent feminist rebellions and the blurring of gender lines”8. afterwards, the twentieth century witnesses an enormous proliferation of studies on shakespeare. a. c. bradleys shakespearean tragedy, published in 1904, is considered one of the best classical works in the history of shakespearean criticism, which puts the final seal on romantic shakespearean criticism. in the book bradley puts forward his profound opinions on the motif and conflicts of shakespeares tragedies through a comprehensive study of the 3 personages character, action, and destiny, etc. feminist criticism is another important shakespearean literary genre, which is distinguished from romantic shakespearean criticism of the age. feminist criticism mainly focuses on the study of the female characters and the extent to which it can represent a sufficiently large proportion of women, not only the images created based on the male discourse. another branch of the feminist shakespearean criticism puts an emphasis on the study of female roles in shakespeare from the perspective of freuds psychoanalytical theory. moreover, it pays more attention to the relations between the male and the female, in which the absent mother, together with the relations between the father and the daughter resulting from the absence of the mother, catch the readers eyes most. the significant works were juliet dusinberres shakespeare and the nature of women in 1975, angela pitts shakespeares women in 1981, l. jadines still harping on daughters in 1983, c. kahns paper the absent mother in king lear in 1986 and j. adelmans suffocating mothers in 1992, which is an important work for the study of the absent mother in shakespeare. recently more and more scholars show a keen interest in studying the female characters in shakespeare from the perspective of feminism. in shakespeare, feminism and gender edited by kate chedgzoy in 2001, kathleen mcluskie mentions that women in shakespeare are independent and they never doubt who they are and they not only fight against men but also the society. in addition, kate chedgzoy thinks of desdemonas elopement as a protest against the patriarchal society, which is guilty though. in a feminist companion to shakespeare edited by dympana callaghan in 2000, jyotsna g. singh puts forward that the female characters in the merchant of venice undermine the patriarchal hierarchy. the year 2001 saw lagretta tallent lenker fathers and daughters in shakespeare and shaw. the book is a classic work for the study of the relationships between fathers and daughters while it is studied from the new historicist perspective. shakespeare was first introduced into china in 1856, and many chinese scholars also have made distinguished contributions to the study of shakespeare and shakespearean criticism has been booming both in quantity and quality in recent years. a large number of essays on shakespeares plays have been published and studied from the feminist perspective. in 2001 cao xiaoqing praises shakespeares female characters for their virtue, wisdom, and 4 courage in their pursuit of love, freedom, equality and self-respect. in 2003 ju rui concentrates on shakespeares feminist ideas reflected in his comedy “the taming of the shrew” through the analysis of the female characters. in 2007 wang shalie, while confirming shakespeares progressive view on women in depicting female characters as warriors who boldly pursue their independence, equality, and self-respect, points to the limitation of his view in revealing patriarchal consciousness. in retrospect, however, the feminist study on relationship between shakespeares fathers and daughters is relatively limited. moreover, some critics such as kathleen mcluskie and ellen gainor and some modern scholars think that shakespeare not only fails to liberate their female characters from the limitation of the male-centered world but also basically gives voice to patriarchal consciousness in his plays. however, why does shakespeare give a thorough description of fathers and daughters in 23 of his 37 plays? the theme has particular significance when one thinks of boose and flowers words, “the daughter is the most absent member within the discourse of the family institution.”9 thus, to make an all-round and systematic analysis on it, the author intends to make an exploration on this intricate relationship between the daughters and their patriarchal fathers from the feminist perspective based on the criteria of shakespeares age instead of those of the 21st century so as to explore shakespeares view on women. the thesis consists of two points. one is the subject. shakespeare, often considered a social conservative by critics, in fact ceaselessly undermines patriarchal society in the portrayal of revolting daughters as juliet, cordelia, desdemona, rosalind, portia, hermia, imogene, miranda and so on. shakespeare endows his female characters with incomparable features; however, these women still live in the male-centered world. shakespeare is aware of the phenomenon and gives a vivid description of his heroines, especially the rebelling daughters together with their patriarchal fathers. yet, in the male-dominated patriarchal society the wishes of daughters are usually contained in the wishes of fathers. it is impossible for the father and the daughter to have any practical and meaningful change under such mode due to the imbalance of power between the two opposites concerned. in accordance with the patriarchal society, the father must be obedient to and serves the basic structure of the society, both by way of the state in public and the family in private. yet, the father does not always do 5 the right thing. when his self-ego is satisfied before the familys needs are met, the situation may frequently turns miserable. some daughters rebel and succeed in achieving their purposes while other daughters fail and become the victims. the other is the critical approach used for the study, that is, feminist criticism. by studying father-daughter relationship in shakespeare from a feminist perspective, one can see the playwrights view on women. the early feminist challenge is actually put across by shakespeare in the early modern times. in the plays shakespeare focuses on the marginalized position of women, particularly that of daughters, and tries to change the issues of marginalization from a “problem” to an “opportunity” so as to characterize the father or the patriarchal power and the rebelling daughters. it is clear that shakespeare makes great effort to liberate his heroines from the confines of their male-dominated world since he is clearly aware that women are at the bottom of the oppressed in the feudal system. so the budding self-awareness of women and their pursuit of equality with men are both reflected in his plays. shakespeare successfully depicts the actual and submissive situation of women of the time through father-daughter relationship and makes use of the relationship for the sake of “education, redemption and even subversion”10. therefore, daughters basically have the responsibility of challenging the contemporary society, which in return strengthens the role of the playwright as a pioneer for womens right, not conservative. “nobody can be better than shakespeare, though an