Sarah Waters’ World Of Transgression: An Analysis Of Affinity And Fingersmtih

Based on the philosophical concept of “transgression” explored by Foucault andinspired by other researchers including Peter Stallybrass, Allon White, and TimCresswell who already applied the concept of “transgression” to the studies inclass-related culture and cultural geography, this thesis tries to analyze two of SarahWaters’ Neo-Victorian novels—Affinity and Fingersmith by demonstrating how thenovels’ theme and content coincide with the concept of “transgression” and moreessentially, how the concept of “transgression” highlight the political significance ofthese novels. This way of analysis is used to provide a new approach for theunderstanding of Sarah Waters’ novels which had been mostly reviewed from theperspectives of feminism and Neo-Victorian writing. Different from the alreadyexisted reviews on these two novels, this thesis focuses on the excavation of themechanism of “transgression” in these two novels which involves the dialecticrelationship between “transgression” itself and the “boundaries/limits” unsettled by“transgression”. With the demonstration of how this kind of “transgression”mechanism is operated in relation to gender, sexuality and space in these novels, thisthesis manages to expose the unreasonable “boundaries/limits/rules/norms” in theVictorian society which therefore leads to the discovery of the novels’ political agendanot only in sexuality and gender but also in social culture and social class.