Female Spiritual Predicament And Breakthrough In The Female Quixote

Charlotte Lennox(1729-1804) is a distinguished woman writer in eighteenth-century English literary history. As a key member of the Bluestocking Society, she was lauded as one of “the Nine Living Muses of Great Britain”. As her most popular as well as the most influential work, The Female Quixote(1752) is a parody of Cervantes' Don Quixote(1605).Though it also creates a protagonist that is obsessed with ancient romance and regulates the behaviors in terms of the conduct codes in books, The Female Quixote, with a woman as its protagonist, concentrates on female spiritual predicament when faced with intense conflict between ideality and reality, and her resolute revolt against and strong desire to overthrow the patriarchy. Relative studies on this novel in China are quite scarce in number; even among the abundant literature in English-speaking countries that probe into the novel from diversified perspectives, there is not much work that examines the female spiritual predicament.In the novel, the heroine Arabella is caught up in severe spiritual predicament, with her inner idealities in sharp conflict with the outer social realities. This thesis tries to analyze the author's representation of such female spiritual predicament and the possible ways for women to revolt against patriarchy and strive for female power and interests.Chapter One analyzes the spiritual predicament that Arabella is faced with. Arabella desires for a female history that is adventurous and honorable; she desires that women can have paramount power like the formidable Amazons in ancient romantic stories; and she aspires to reform the hegemonic masculinity in the patriarchal system. However, in reality,women are absent in the eighteen-century male-centered history; they are under consistent,absolute and ubiquitous oppression from the patriarchy;men are frivolous, domineering and tyrannical. Faced with such pairs of intense conflicts between her inner idealities and outer realities, she is caught up in spiritual predicaments. She feels nervous and anxious to get out of the predicaments. Chapter Two examines Arabella's mental attempts for a breakthrough of the spiritual predicament. Psychological Defense Mechanism is a core concept in psychoanalysis. When the inner or outer stimulating factors bring forth emotional conflicts, in order for an individual to modulate the relationship between one's inner desire and outer reality and get rid of the anxiety, the defense mechanism starts to work. Under the patriarchaloppression, women are forbidden to make any public revolt against the patriarchal system. By activating fantasy mechanism, displacement mechanism and projection mechanism with a stopgap attempt, Arabella's desires for female power and rights get satisfied. However, though the activation of all these psychological mechanisms have contributed to a certain degree to her breakthrough of the predicament, they are all negative ones featured by their escaping the reality and the effects they achieve are only temporary. Chapter Three analyzes Arabella's successful realistic breakthrough of the spiritual predicament by reconstructing female subjectivity. After her efforts are reduced to failure in reality, Arabella does not stop with the mental attempts; rather, she continues to strengthen her determination to fight for female power and rights. Through her persistent struggle, by virtue of her beauty and intelligence, she has successfully written and rewritten a respectable and valuable female history, asserted women's intellectual capabilities, thus safeguarding female autonomy of mind and marriage,and through reforming major male figures, she has redefined an ideal masculinity which is characterized by being passionate and constant to women and making the greatest compromise to women's wishes. By doing so, she has in real sense broken through the female spiritual predicament.Arabella's efforts and success offer a remarkable reference for women to strive for their realistic power and rights, and promote their social and historical status. Through its depiction of the protagonist Arabella's process of breaking through the female spiritual predicaments,The Female Quixote reflects Charlotte Lennox's deep concern and considerations of the living conditions of English women in the eighteenth century. On one hand, by exposing the fact of women's subjection and no history, this novel incisively criticizes the patriarchal English society at that time; on the other hand, through representing the female spiritual predicament,especially acquiescing to women's struggle, it also hints that women's self-consciousness is wakening up for that they have already recognized and begun to reflect on their social status.They are anxious to change their living condition and try to explore the effective ways to resist or overturn the patriarchy.