本文是一篇英语论文，本文采取文本细读的研究方法，分析了女性哥特元素在《强盗新娘》中的具体体现。探讨女性哥特元素在文本中是如何反映三位主角内心的恐惧和挣扎；造成她们恐惧的真正原因是什么；以及Zenia在小说中扮演了什么角色将成为本文的主要研究目的。
Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Margret Atwood and The Robber Bride
Margaret Atwood(1939-),born in Ottawa,Ontario on November 18th,1939,isconsidered one of the most famous Canadian novelists and poets in the world.Since1961,she has published many books of poetry,novels and collections of short fictions.Atwood has also won numerous awards and honors for her writing,including theBooker Prize(twice)which is known as a high-profile literary award in British culture,Governor General’s Award,the National Book Critics and so on.Atwood’s worksencompass a variety of themes including gender and identity,religion and myth,climate change,and“power politics”.Atwood’s works have been of interest tofeminist literary critics,despite Atwood’s unwillingness to apply the label feminist toher works.Starting with the publication of her first novel,The Edible Woman,Atwoodasserted,“I don’t consider it feminism;I just consider it social realism.”(Kaminski,1990:27)Her major novels include The Edible Woman(1969),Surfacing(1972),LifeBefore Man(1979),The Handmaid’s Tale(1985),Cat’s Eye(1988),The Robber Bride(1993),Alias Grace(1996),The Blind Assassin(2000),Oryx and Crake(2003),ThePenelopaid(2005),The Year of the Flood(2009),The Treatment(2019)and so on.
英语论文怎么写
Canadian literature has been introduced by Chinese scholars for nearly thirtyyears.With the Margaret Atwood’s growing worldwide influence in literature,especially when her won numerous international awards,more and more readers andresearchers started to pay attention to her works.Earlier these years,Atwood’s workwas mentioned in World Culture,no.4,1994.It introduced Atwood’s new book TheRobber Bride of the time.Then Chinese version of her books continued to bepublished in some literary magazines.For instance,The Handmaid’s Tale translatedby Luo Minggao was published in Contemporary Foreign Literature,no.4,1998.Nowadays,there are more than 20 Chinese versions of all her novels in China.
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1.2 Research Purposes and Significance
According to the analysis of female Gothic elements in The Robber Bride,it issupposed to achieve three main purposes.The first one is to point out female Gothicelements in The Robber Bride in order to show how these elements work in a piece ofliterary work.The second purpose is to conduct an analysis of the function of femaleGothic elements which Margret Atwood used in the novel and contribute to leavingreaders a deep impression.This purpose concerns the effects created by theemployment of Gothic elements and how female Gothic elements contribute to thesuccess and popularity of the novel.The last purpose focuses on exploring what rolesdoes Zenia play in this novel and revealing the causes of fear and anxiety aboutgender identity.
Through adopting text-based reading,the thesis will explore the inner struggleand fears of the three heroines in The Robber Bride with Female Gothic elements.Thestudy attempts to reveal that female Gothic elements in the novel reflect the threecharacters Tony,Charis and Roz,their self denial and fear of loss.Margaret Atwood’sThe Robber Bride is known for detailed description which formed her uniquenarrative style.This novel has not only aesthetic value but also abundant connotations.After the introduction of Atwood’s The Robber Bride in China,there are numerousstudies on her works these years.However,most domestic scholars analyze TheRobber Bride from feminism and narrative perspective.Few researchers discussedand systematically analyzed this novel form female Gothic perspective.Therefore,thethesis contributes to helping readers to understand the novel further and offering anew perspective for studying Atwood in the future.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Studies on Margaret Atwood and The Robber Bride Abroad
Margaret Atwood has aroused a lot of repercussions abroad since she publishedher first novel The Edible Woman in 1969.It has been nearly 50 years since foreignscholars have carried out research on her and her works.In earlier period,foreignresearchers used her poetry as the main research object.After the 1990s,they turnedto the study of novels.Now they are gradually turning their attention to her shortstories,essays,novels etc.,and the research enthusiasm has been rising all the way.
From the perspective of theoretical methods,in the initial period,foreign studieson Margaret Atwood focused on feminist criticism,and later gradually developed intonationalist ideology,ecologicalism,postmodernism,dystopia,and mythologicaladaptation.In any case,the research on Margaret Atwood’s feminist thoughts alwaysruns through her research perspective.
Since Margaret Atwood published her first novel The Edible Woman,foreignresearchers have focused on the feminist ideas embodied in her works.The researcharound the 1970s basically revolved around this critical perspective.Later,somescholars started from her life to explore the development and change of her feministthought,such as Rosemary Sullivan’s The Red Shoes:Margaret Atwood Starting Out,which mainly describes Atwood’s difficulties as a female writer.It shows that she hasmade a successful journey step by step in a writing environment that was not free andfriendly at the time.Nathalie Cooke has made great achievements in the research ofMargaret Atwood’s works.
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2.2 Studies on Margaret Atwood and The Robber Bride at Home
Domestic research on Margaret Atwood started relatively late,and began to showa trend of increase in 2005.Similar to foreign research,domestic research alsofocuses on feminism,eco-feminism,thematic research,psychoanalysis,and narrativestrategy perspectives and so on.
Due to the lack of materials at the beginning of the research,most of the papersfocused on her poems and interpreted her works in an introductory way to the outsideworld.In 1995,there were two research papers on the subject of Margaret Atwood,which were based on feminist criticism:“The Growing Female Consciousness:TheBasic Motif of Margaret Atwood’s Novel Creation”(1995)and“A MasterpieceCalling for Feminism”(1995).Then scholars have been devoted to her novels,and thecriticism method is not limited to feminism.Zhang Wen’s(2011)article“ImprisonedBody and Escaping Spirit:Margaret’s novels”is from the perspective of feminism,discussing the conflict between female imprisonment and escape.She renders thatAtwood’s novels are full of ambivalence and paradoxes between imprisonment andescape,body and spirit.Facing the dark side of oneself,seeing clearly your situation,no longer choosing to“escape”,explaining and returning to your“imprisoned body”are the effective actions to gain true“spiritual freedom”for the female characters.Dr.Zhang Chuanxia(2014)points out in“A study on the Survival Theme and theStrategy of Canon Reconstruction in Margaret Atwood’s Works”that her works arefull of Greek mythology,western fairy tales,Bible stories,literary classics,andsuccessfully expressed the theme of“survival”with the strategy of canonreconstruction.
英语论文参考
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Chapter Three Theoretical Framework............................113.1 Gothic and Gothic Novel.................................11
3.2 Female Gothic...................................14
Chapter Four Female Gothic Environmental Elements in The Robber Bride..........................19
4.1 Confinement of Spaces..............................19
4.1.1 Home as a Prison.....................................20
4.1.2 Cellar and Bedroom as the Crime Scene....................21
Chapter Five Gothic Characters in The Robber Bride................................26
5.1 Tyrannical Male Figures and Female Victims.................................26
5.1.1 Tony’s Father:the Confinement to Tony.......................................27
5.1.2 Karen’s Uncle:the Sexual Assault to Karen...................................28
Chapter Six Significance of the Female Gothic Elements
6.1 To Interpret The Roles Zenia Play
6.1.1 The Dark Side of the Protagonists
In The Robber Bride,Zenia is depicted as a transgressive female villain whichreturns from dead.As Freud mentions in“The Uncanny”,“many people experiencethe(uncanny)feeling in the highest degree in relation to...the return of the dead”.Freud also states that the uncanny is a consequence of“something which ought tohave remained hidden but has come to light”.(Freud,2007:526)“The uncanny”is animportant concept in Gothic novels.According to Freud,the uncanny can be shown tobe something repressed which recurs,for this uncanny is in reality nothing new oralien,but something which is familiar and old-established in the mind and which hasbecome alienated from it only through the process of repression.The juxtaposition ofthe familiar and the unfamiliar constitutes the uncanny in the sense of psychologicalanalysis.(Tong,2011:106)In this uncanny atmosphere,people will feel strange andfearful about the things which they considered familiar.For example,a castle thatlooks stately by day casts a grim outline by night;an ordinary village house may exista lot of corpses and bones deep in the cellar.Even people will find that they arestranger of themselves,and that is echoing a recurring motif,the split self.In femaleGothic,the dark side of the personality,such as the repressive desire,is waiting tobreak through the shackles of civilization and emerge at any time.Julia Kristevadevelops Freud’s theory.She points out in Strangers to Ourselves that the curiosityand rejection of“the other”is actually a recurrence of“our”own hidden fear.(Ibid.:115)In other words,repressed fears and desires found within the self are externalizedand experienced as something“other”.
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Chapter Seven Conclusion
Just as Margaret Atwood has once said“a novel isn’t simply a vehicle for privateexpression,but that it also exists for social examination.”(Atwood,1972:38),sheemploys the female Gothic elements to expose the the oppression of patriarchalsociety.
In The Robber Bride,Margaret Atwood combines the Gothic genre withwomen’s real life and reveals women’s traumatic experience to condemn thepatriarchy fiercely.Under the patriarchal system,women are deprived of everything,even the right to exist as inpiduals.Like the heroines in traditional female Gothicnovels,Atwood’s heroines are victims who are imprisoned in the patriarchal systemand troubled by demonic split selves and tragic history.For instance,the threeprotagonists are confined by their father or uncle and experience self splitting.In thefact that they are regarded as the Other and subordinated by the males.Tony can’tgain her father’s acknowledgement because of her female body;she is blamed by herfather that she is the catastrophe in his life.Charis lost her mother when she was child,since then she is adopted by her uncle and aunt.However,that is the beginning of hernightmare.She is raped by the uncle for many years.Even though she has told heraunt that she was suffering the sexually abuse,the aunt chose to succumbed to theuncle who symbolized the male-dominated authority.As for Roz,she is suppressedunder the domination of her father.Intervening her marriage partner,confining her athome and controlling her to accept Jewish culture are the concrete manifestations.Inaddition,she is traumatized by her husband’s betrayal.
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