（英语语言文学专业论文）The+female+images+in+Possession.pdf

the female images in possession iv 中 文 摘 要 中 文 摘 要 a.s.拜厄特（1936）是当今英国最负盛名的女作家之一。小说占有一经 出版，就立刻被评论界一致公认为是拜厄特最为成功的作品，赢得了读者的高度评 价。在此作品中拜厄特通过塑造一系列的女性形象，表达了她对女性生存状况的深 切关注。本文采用女性主义文学批评理论对占有及拜厄特的写作做了女性主义 解读，揭示父权制下女性真实的生活处境和生活经历以及拜厄特在创作中体现出的 女性意识和女权思想。 本文共三章。第一章介绍作家、作品、文献综述、女性主义文学批评理论。第 二章是本文的重点论述部分，重点分析了占有中的女性形象。通过对她们的外 貌，居住环境，以及她们对待爱情，婚姻，孩子的态度及看法来揭示她们在父权制 社会中所遭受的限制与压迫。拜厄特通过对这些女性人物的细致刻画，展示了她的 女性意识与女权思想。第三章是结论部分。通过对前文分析进行综述，指出这些女 性形象的塑造不仅显示了拜厄特对女性生存状况的关心和女性主体意识觉醒的关 注，而且也体现了她独特的女性观。 关键词： 占有 ；女性形象；父权社会；独立；自我意识 abstract v abstract a.s.byatt (1936 ) is one of the most famous contemporary women novelists. when the novel possession was published, it was immediately acknowledged to be byatt s most successful work and won high appraisal from readers. in possession, through portraying a series of images of women, byatt expresses her deep concerns over female existence and their situation. the thesis tries to employ feminist literary criticism to make a feminist reading of possession. the thesis is divided into three chapters. chapter one gives a brief introduction to byatt, the novel possession, the literature review and the feminist theory. chapter two is the main part of the thesis, in which the main female images are analyzed in detail. their appearance, living state, their opinions of love and children are clearly given analysis. by comparison and contrast, byatt skillfully presents that women live in the margin in the patriarchal society and they have to retreat to an enclosed place to protect their independence and autonomy. and it is her belief that love and children prevent women from achieving their success in their career. chapter three is the conclusion. by summarizing the previous chapters, it is pointed out that byatt, through shaping the images of women, shows her deep concerns over womens existential situation and tries to awaken womens self-consciousness. key words: possession; female images; the patriarchal society; independence ; self-consciousness chapter one introduction 1 chapter one introduction 1.1 a brief introduction to a. s. byatt a(ntonia) s(usan) byatt was born in sheffield, lincolnshire, on august 24th, 1936. both of her parents graduated from cambridge university. her father was a writer and judge, and her mother was a teacher in a secondary school who later quit her job to bring up her four children. her parents drank in intellectual achievements and their reading habit had a great effect on their children and paved the way for the success of them. when she was only ten years old, byatt developed her life long reading habit and read plenty of browningan experience that was the basis for her to write perfect pastiches of brownings poetry in possession. at the age of 13, byatt and her sister were sent to mount school and then she first began writing seriously. like their parents, byatt and her siblings all attended cambridge university, and she graduated from cambridge university with a b.a. degree in 1957. the next year, byatt studied at byrn mawr college in pennsylvania, and later went to oxford to study on 17th century literature for a doctors degree. and in 1959 she married ian byatt and then had two children, and at the same time her career as a teacher had to be intermitted temporarily. in 1983, she retired from university college and became a full-time writer. in 1964 her first novel, the shadow of the sun, was published. in this novel anna severell, the leading character, is described as a girl who is intelligent but has to try to fight against the influence of her father in order to find something that she can control on her own. then her second novel the game, which was published in 1968, is about the the female images in possession 2 complicated love relationships and the deep-rooted contradiction between two sisters. in 1978 and 1985 byatt published the virgin in the garden and still life respectively and the latter one helped her win the pen silver pen award. and her most successful book possession, which was published in 1990, won the british booker prize and made her become well known around the world. if byatts novels are scrutinized carefully, an obvious characteristic will be found, that is, women are usually treated to be the leading characters. byatt, as a feminist, is concerned about what most feminists care about. so, in her novels, she makes an attempt to find a possible outlet for women who are faced with dilemmas between family and career. apart from great success in novels, byatt is also an outstanding critic. her main literary critical works include degrees of freedom: the novels of iris murdoch (1965), unruly times: wordsworth and coleridge in their time (1970), iris murdoch (1976), unruly times: wordsworth and coleridge, poetry and life (1989) and imaging characters: six conversations about women writers (1995). kathleen coyne kelly points, “there are many threads to byatts intellectual life, threads she gathers up and weaves into her fiction and non-fiction alike”.1 during her writing career, iris murdoch, marcel proust, and george eliot have greatly influenced her. iris murdoch has always been considered as the person who has the greatest impact on byatts literary creation because of the fact that there are many similarities between the writing styles and theme in their works, that is, both of them are adept at creating realistic fictions, searching for truth and attempting to reflect the complicated interpersonal relations. as for proust, byatt has said, “the novelist i love most is marcel proust” 2 and chapter one introduction 3 in her own writing, she would like “including everything, like proust”.3 when byatt is studied, george eliot should not be neglected, as she is the women writer in the english history from whom a.s. byatt has learned a lot. all in all, a.s. byatt builds up the solid basis for her writing in her later years with the experiences she has been learning from the above-mentioned three writers. 1.2 a brief introduction to possession possession, which was published in 1990, is regarded as byatts most successful novel. byatt says that possession is the first book she wrote without being interrupted. just as the writer predicts, soon after its publication, it has been drawing a lot of attention from literary critics home and overseas. and by december 1995, the novel had been translated into sixteen languages. in a word, this novel is warmly welcomed and highly welcomed by the readers around the world. this novel is considered as a detective story as well as a romance. and most scholars agree that the novel is a perfect postmodern practice that properly combines a contemporary story of academic discoveries together with a hidden secret, a love story with a tragic ending that happened in 19th century. this story begins with an accidental discovery made by one contemporary academic, roland michell. while he is doing his routine research on the works of randolph henry ash, he finds by accident two letters that ash wrote to an unidentified woman, which makes him “profoundly shocked by these writings, and then, in his scholarly capacity, thrilled” (possession 9). then he takes them away without permission. motivated by his the female images in possession 4 curiosity, roland decides to reveal the mystery and then he determines that the unidentified woman is most liable to be christabel lamotte, who is a 19th century victorian poet. in the process of pursuit, he knows the other modern academic, maud bailey, who is an expert at the study of christabel lamotte. later on, they find the letters between ash and roland and a romantic love story that nobody else knows is finally shown before the readers. randolph henry ash is a 19th century outstanding victorian poet. he has no religious belief, has a strong affection for science and wants to explore the origin of life. he leaves the public the image that after marriage, he lives a quiet and happy life and is regarded as a good husband. as a feminist poet, christabel lamotte has her own dream and she is the author of the famous epic poem the fairy melusina. she keeps a lesbian relationship with blanche glover. ash makes an acquaintance with lamotte at a dinner party, where ash is deeply fascinated by lamottes insight and intelligence. so after the party he voluntarily writes letters to her in which they exchange ideas about life and poetry creation. as they get to know each other, they fall in love. so they travel together to yorkshire, in which they spend a secret “honeymoon”, fulfilling the unity of body and soul. after the holiday, ash returns home, and at the same time lamotte leaves for brittany after discovering that she is pregnant. two kinds of scholars studying either the works of ash or of lamotte, like the sinister american collector mortimer cropper, the ruthless british professor james blackadder and the arrogant and aggressive professor leonora stern, both keep a close chapter one introduction 5 eye on the research on the revealment of the secret of the letters. in spite of the different motives of the scholars, all of them want to know what happens between ash and lamotte after lamotte finds herself pregnant. does ash know about her pregnancy? and what happens to the child? at the end of this novel, when maud reads lamottes last letter to ash aloud, all their questions are answered. lamotte gave birth to a daughter, maia, but did not bring her up, who was later adopted by lamottes sister sophie and never knew the truth that ash and lamotte were her real parents. and in the postscript, in order not to disappoint the readers, the author supplements the scene ash meets his own daughter. by this time maud and roland admit that they have unconsciously fallen in love with each other, which completes the happy ending of the story. 1.3 a brief introduction to feminist theory it is generally believed that in the history there are two waves of feminism along with the development of feminist movements. the first wave is often positioned in the period from the 1860s to 1920s, while the second wave is positioned in the late 1960s and extends to the present. when the first-wave feminism is talked about, two figures, virginia woolf and simone de beauvoir, have to be mentioned. virginia woolf produces two texts that play a key role in the development of feminist theory, a room of ones own (1929) and three guineas (1938). like other first-wave feminists, woolf is principally concerned with womens material disadvantages compared to men. in her first text, she concentrates on the female images in possession 6 the history and social context of womens literary production. in her second text, her focus is mainly on the relations between male power and professions (law, education, medicine, etc.). in both books, woolf promotes a wide-ranging slate of feminist projects, from a demand for mothers allowances and divorce-law reform to proposals for a womens college and a womens newspaper. in a room of ones own, she also argues that womens writing should explore female experience in its own right and not form a comparative assessment of womens experience in relation to mens. in addition, woolf appropriates the bloomsbury sexual ethic of“androgyny” and she hopes to achieve a balance between a “male” self- realization and “female” self-annihilation. the hugely influential book of simone de beauvoir is the second sex (1949) in which beauvoir establishes with great clarity the fundamental questions of modern feminism by arguing that man defines the human, not woman. de beauvoirs work carefully distinguishes between sex and gender, and sees an interaction between social and natural functions:“one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature.”4 by making systematic distinction between being female and being constructed as a woman, de beauvoir comes to the conclusion that if women will only break out of their objectification, patriarchy will be destructed. her recognition of the vast difference between the interests of the two sexes and assault on mens biological and psychological, as well as economic, discrimination against women lead to the second wave. the publication of betty friedans the feminine mystique in 1963 identifies the beginnings of the second wave, which reveals the frustrations of white, heterosexual, chapter one introduction 7 middle-class american women who are careerless and trapped in domesticity. in this book, friedan attacks the widely accepted perfect female image created by the media, that is, the one who can deal well with the household affairs. in addition, friedan appeals to women to get higher education to escape from the image. kate milletts sexual politics was published in 1969, which marks the moment when second-wave feminism becomes a highly visible, self-aware and activist movement. ranging over history, literature, psychoanalysis, sociology and other areas, millett argues that ideological indoctrination as much as economic equality is the cause of womens oppression. the argument opens up second-wave thinking about reproduction, sexuality and representation. milletts title, sexual politics, declares her viewpoint of patriarchy, which she regards as pervasive and which she demands a systematic overview as a political institution. patriarchy subordinates the female to the male or treats the female as an inferior male, and this power is exerted directly or indirectly, in civil and domestic life to constrain women. millett borrows from social science the important distinction between sex and gender, where sex is determined biologically but gender is a psychological concept which refers to culturally acquired sexual identity. then patricia meyer spackss the female imagination was published in 1975, in which the author focuses on the writings whose main characters are females and which are written by female writers such as kate millet rather than male works. this change can also be found in ellen moerss literary women (1976), elaine showalters a literature of their own (1977), and sandra gilbert and susan gubars the madwoman in the attic (1979). these works mark the feminism development has reached another more mature the female images in possession 8 stage. elaine showalter divides the development of women literary into three phases: the feminine phase, the feminist phase and the female phase. in the feminine phase (1840-1880), women writers simply imitated the dominant tradition. when it came to the second phase (1880-1920), they began to protest and advocate minority rights. during the third phase (1920-present), women writers began a rediscovery of womens texts and women instead of imitation and protest. all in all, there has been a general shift from a negative attack on male writing about women towards positive delineation of womens redefinition of their identity in their own writing. so with the help of the feminist literary theory, main female images in possession will be analyzed from every possible angle in this thesis, in which byatts feminist views will also be revealed. 1.4 literature review on possession since the publication of possession, it has achieved great success and correspondingly attracted many critics attention home and abroad. in western academic field, the novel gains great popularity. and the author of the novel, byatt, is praised as the most intelligent writer since george eliot. many graduates in western universities choose possession in their mla theses. lorena love russell tries to explain why some readings will interpret some women in this novel as lesbian while other readings will not. and he himself does not care whether they are or not. he believes it is an important point in the novel although it is a fact that possession is not “a gay-friendly” text. he comes to a conclusion that “byatt is essentially chapter one introduction 9 challenging readers to expand their views to allow for new, hitherto unseen narrative possibilities.”5 some graduates focus their attention on the narrative skills used in the novel. kimberley connor, by comparing the language in byatts two novels, still life and possession, states that “in possession, byatt takes another step forward in sharpening her style and technique to serve her narrative ends.” 6 and he thinks that the art in this novel is the various written art forms which decorate its narrative. there are also some critics who classify this novel into a postmodernist one. kathleen coyne kelly, by comparing possession with the works of david lodge, john fowles and umberto eco, who are typically identified as postmodern writers, determines that possession is “a remarkable and compelling example of historical metafiction”.7 other critics besides kelly, for example, thomas develyn and bo lunden conclude that possession has the features of metafiction. in china, there are also many critics who focus their attention on the novel. jiang xianwen writes two essays, “on a. s. byatts feminist thought” and “on a. s. byatts possession”. in his essay “on a. s. byatts possession”, he gives a brief introduction to the novel and makes an analysis of the writing techniques. at the end of the essay he explains the meaning of the title “possession”. in the other essay “on a. s. byatts feminist thought”, mr. jiang indicates that a. s. byatts three feminist ideas add something new to feminism. the first idea is that the male-dominated world of is destined to be drowned for its sins and women will take charge of the world; the second one, the women in a. s. byatts works can fulfill their own dreams without mens support,