A Study Of Lighthousekeeping From The Perspective Of Archetypal Criticism

As one of the most outstanding representative of contemporary British novelists,Jeanette Winterson wins a widespread acclaim for her language talents, innovativewriting styles and concepts from the outside world. As the eighth novel she has beenpublished, Lighthousekeeping was named as “Annual Best foreign novels of the21stcentury” in the year of2004and also won the candidate nomination of “CommonwealthWriters’ Prize” in the next year. Lots of Scholars and literature lovers at home andabroad have been researched on the novel from different perspectives, includingnonlinear narrative techniques, concise and poetic language, multidimensionalinterweaved themes, feminism and ecologism, etc. Until now, nobody has beenresearched on the work basing on the archetypal theory. However, the medievalromances and biblical stories are the indispensable materials in most of Winteron’sworks, which are closely connected with the influence of her Pentecostal adoptiveparents. This article aims to explore the archetype of characters, images, structure of thework with the view of Fry’s archetypal criticism theory, analyzing how does the authorprovide intertexual context with works using these archetypes and how does theybenefit in highlighting the themes.The thesis can be divided into five chapters. Firstly, we give a brief introductionabout the author Jeannette Winterson and her masterpiece Lighthousekeeping. Then, itanalyzes related comments of critics both at home and aboard and summarizes thepaper’s framework and innovative points of the research.Chapter One is the theoretical basis and briefly gives a survey to archetypalcriticism’s emergence and development as a common critical method, especially Fry’smain view points. It is the theoretical bases for later analysis.Chapter Two focuses on some main characters in the novel, including Babel Darkand Molly o’ Rourke in Pew’s nested story, whose archetype can be Adam and Eve.Then we discuss the protagonists Silver and Pew who are separately corresponding toorphan archetype, and sage archetype. By taking the overall literature view, we try tofind common characteristics of these characters, in order to make the readers understandthe character image more clearly and thoroughly, and then grasp the relationship between different characters. Understanding these characters and their archetypes, it hasthe irreplaceable role for understanding the connotation of work’s theme.Chapter Three discusses some images including darkness, light, lighthouse andseahorse from the view of archetypal criticism. Based on comparing these images withits archetypes in the Bible, the ancient Greek myth and other western literature works,this chapter reveals the important functions of these images in interpreting the work andhelping readers better understand the cultural core they want to carry.Chapter Four is devoted to archetypal structure. In the narration of Babel Dark’slove story, the author skillfully employs the four season’s circular structure of Bible, andthe narrative pattern of Silver’s story is similar to the U-shaped narrative structure in theBible which makes the work full of up and downs, confirming human being’s rule ofdevelopment. Through the description of the process from people’s degenerate tosalvation (search and regression), the struggle between good and evil of human nature,the work perfectly conveys and reveals the works’ theme.Chapter Five analyzes two main themes in the work, one is love and the other isSearch for identity and spiritual homecoming. By analyzing the frequent appearedmotifs in archetypal criticism which is reflected in the work, we make readers betterunderstand the contents of works.Finally, we further conclude the significance of using archetypal criticism todecode Lighthousekeeping. The practice of the work successfully borrowing mythical,Biblical and other literature archetypes in characterization, image, narrative structureand theme representation strongly proves: in vanity and noisy modern society, peoplecan only return back human ideal spiritual home by means of regaining love ability andsearching for good human nature.