On The Theme Of Transgression In Sarah Waters’ The Night Watch

Sarah Waters(1966--) is one of the most recommended female writers in Britain.She is especially noted for her novels set on Victorian Age. Her early novels such as Tipping the Velvet, Affinity and Fingersmith are known as “Victorian trilogy”. In her fourth novel The Night Watch, which was published in 2006, Waters shifts her attention to postwar Britain in 1940 s, and delineates a group of Londoners. The Night Watch is considered as a turning point in Waters’ writing career. In this novel, Waters does not confine herself in delivering gay propaganda. She turns to manifest the theme of transgression through displaying the phenomenon of alienation during wartime. This thesis aims to demonstrate unreasonable social norms in Western society brought by war, ranging from reverse chronology, alienated personality to displacement of gender role, by exploring the temporal, spatial and social transgression reflected in The Night Watch.This thesis consists of three parts: introduction, body and conclusion. The introduction contains a brief account of Sarah Waters the novelist and her published novel The Night Watch. It also analyzes the concept of transgression discussed in all Waters’ novels. The body of this thesis covers three chapters. Chapter One focuses on the reverse chronology of the story, which indicates temporal transgression by disrupting narrative linearity. Chapter Two explores the spatial transgression in The Night Watch. The ruined and crumbling physical space of London invites the transgressive acts of protagonists with political agenda. Furthermore, the gender role stereotype is subverted in terms of domestic and public spaces. Chapter Three conducts an analysis of social transgression embodied in social relationships in this disrupting time and space. All protagonists struggle to maintain disoriented relationships in varying degrees. The conclusion part makes a summary of this thesis,revealing Waters’ profound concerns for the phenomenon of transgression in human society resulting from war, by conducting a thorough research of temporal, spatial and social transgression in this novel.