Parody Of Jane Eyre’s Characters In Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber

Angela Carter (1940-1992) is a well-known contemporary British writer, who specializes in the use of parody. Among her short stories, The Bloody Chamber published in1979raises much attention and praise. The story is widely considered rewriting of the "Bluebeard" fairy tale and other works under the similar theme. But this thesis provided a view that the story is somehow a parody of Jane Eyre’s characters, as is rarely involved in the previous studies. Based on the researches by scholars domestic and abroad, using the theory of parody by Canadian scholar Linda Hutcheon, this thesis analyzes how the story parodies Jane Eyre’s characters. On one hand, by restoring the image of women and amending the image of men, Angela Carter’parody of Jane Eyre’s characters in The Bloody Chamber expresses her critical thinking towards the main characters of the parodied work. On the other hand, it reflects her writing strategy of "demythologise", which tries to expose the unnoticed in previous literature works and shows the reality of the relations between different genders.This thesis consists of five parts. The first part introduces previous studies of Angela Carter and The Bloody Chamber, as well as theories of parody. The second part focuses on the female characters in The Bloody Chamber, pointing out that although the heroine and the ex-wives are separately related to Jane Eyre and Bertha Mason, the heroine shows the process of growing and the ex-wives shows women as a semi-aphasiac group compared to aphasiac Bertha, thus the parody reflecting restoration of the image of women in reality. The third part is concerned with male characters, which illustrates that the Marquis and the blind piano tuner are not only separate refiguration of opposite aspects of Rochester’s characteristics, but also intensification of those aspects, as to highlight the correction of the image of men. By studying Carter’s comments on Jane Eyre’s characters and her strategy of "demythologise", the forth part goes back to the intention of Angela Carter’s writing in order to reconsider her parody work. The last part summarizes the characteristics of Carter’s parody in the fiction and evaluates the importance of parody in Angela Carter’s writing.