Female Fetishization In Anita Brookner’s Hotel Du Lac

As the Booker prize winner in 1984, Anita Brookner has successfully transformed her role as a well-known art historian to one of the most prominent British women novelists and showed her writing talent. Her works explore and express her deep concern on the living condition and fate of contemporary females. The fourth novel, Hotel du Lac(1984), has won not only the Booker McConnell Prize, but also her reputation and influential position in British literature. This thesis analyzes the novel combining version to Baudrillard’s early time thought upon consumption theory by exploring a group of fetishized females in a resort hotel from the aspects of body, sex and individuality, and explores females’ plights and predicaments in contemporary consumer society, which provides a new perspective study to the novel and richens the study of Anita Brookner.First, the thesis centers on fetishized female’s frenzied worship and pursuit of physical beauty. Hotel du Lac is a microcosm of the consumer society. Iris Pusey is one of the typical examples of fetishized women who are crazy for luxurious goods and beautiful clothing which she regards as a sign of status and a weapon to conquer men. Her excessive pursuit of surface perfection is the byproduct of consumer society. The second part focuses on the commodification of sex. Simone de Beauvoir states that women have been objectified by men and molded into the other sex—the second sex(1). In consumer society, sex can be a utilitarian sign for female to gain or exchange whatever they want, which for them is a unique chip and a shortcut to fame and fortune. The third part mainly discusses the fetishizing female’s objectification of the individuality. Females are easy to be misled into the worldly consumption trap and get lost in profusion of temptations, then become the slaves of time and money, hovering between illusion and reality.As the beauty of “fetishized females” can only be vase-like furnishings, which are exhibited to “others”, this kind of vicarious consumption of females pushed by the trend of mass consumption, largely caters to males’ wishes and tastes. So Brookner appeals to society to change females’ conspicuous consumption culture mode, downplay the significance of female appearance and shape, and guide their consumption desire to the development of self autonomy.