Heading Towards Harmonious Male-female Relationship

Mrs. Dalloway is one of the representative works written by Woolf. Since the firstpublication of the novel in1925, it has attracted the extensive attention of numerousscholars. Their studies on this work are mainly centered on feminism, socialpsychological context and writing techniques and so on. However, there are insufficientstudies exploring the novel from the perspective of power and discourse.Based on the key points of Foucault’s power and discourse theory——power,discourse, discipline and resistance, this thesis analyzes the power relations betweenmale and female characters reflected in discourse in Mrs. Dalloway and explores theharmony between them achieved through discipline and resistance.The thesis is composed of five chapters. Chapter One makes a brief introduction toMrs. Dalloway, the power and discourse theory of Foucault and literature review.Chapter Two analyzes power and discourse existing between the two sexes at parties.The first section mainly interprets the power relation and its reflection in discourse; thesecond section discusses harmony obtained through disciplinary power. Chapter Threeinterprets the power and discourse between man and woman in love and analyzes theharmony achieved by woman’s resistance. Chapter Four explores power and discoursebetween husbands and wives in families. The first part centers on the power relationbetween Clarissa and her husband Richard, the features of their discourse, and harmonyrealized through the successful discipline on Clarissa; the second part focuses on thepower and discourse between irrational Septimus and rational Lucrezia and the eternalharmony between them brought by Septimus’s resistance to death. A conclusion is drawnin Chapter Five. The conclusion is that men and women in unbalanced power relationswill not be in struggle all the time, and they will head towards harmony in some way.Reading Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway from the perspective of power and discourse canhelp readers understand better the relationship between power and discourse and theoperating mechanism of power. Moreover, the thesis also reveals that men and womenare not in the opposing sides, and harmonious relationship will eventually be established.