Rebellion Against The Patriarchal Society Trough The Reconstruction Of Identities In Fingersmith

Sarah Waters is an accomplished British female writer. Fingersmith is one of herVictorian trilogy. It tells a story about two girls, Maud who is the female heiress inBriar and Sue who is a thief in Lant Street. These two girls try to defraud each otherbut gradually fall in love with each other. During their interaction they manage torebel against the patriarchal society.The thesis will probe into the patriarchal power in the novel from radicalfeminist perspective. Mother-daughter relationship, lesbian feminism and femaleliterary tradition are employed in the thesis.Apart from the introduction and the conclusion, the main body of the thesis canbe divided into three parts. Chapter Two explores the social background of theVictorian Age and the dominant male roles and their female accomplice in the novel.Chapter Three analyzes how Mrs. Sucksby and Marianne Lily, the mothers of Maudand Sue, fight against patriarchal society and how the result influences the daughters’identities. Chapter Four, the thesis deals with how the girls struggle to reconstructtheir identities by accepting their lesbian identities and forming a female literarytradition.