A Comparative Study Of The Bloody Chamber And The Yellow Wallpaper As Female Gothic Novels

The publication of Literary Women by Ellen Moers in 1976 started the trend of criticism on Female Gothic novel.This trend combines the study of Gothic novel with feminism,trying to come up with new interpretations of the Gothic novels written by some female writers.In fact,this trend marks a significant breakthrough of studies of Gothic literature in the field of gender study in the 20~thh century.Angela Carter(1940-1992)is a personalized writer in the contemporary British literary world and one of the first British women writers who openly engaged herself in feminist movement and feminist criticism.Amongst her literary works of great variety,The Bloody Chamber published in 1979 attracted the most attention and won the most acclaim.Charlotte Perkins Gilman(1860-1935)is a famous feminist writer during the first wave of the feminist movement in America,represented by her autobiographical short story The Yellow Wallpaper(1892)which also turns out to be women's declaration of independence in the second wave of the feminist movement.Both works were rated by Elaine Showalter(1941-),a well-known feminist critic,as ones which are most characterized by female Gothic tradition.Studies on these two works in China and abroad mainly focus on such topics as the genre of Gothic novel,feminist ideas,the pursuit of female self-identity,and issues related with writing techniques.In spite of many achievements in the studies,they are far from being enough to make a thorough analysis of them from the perspective of the female Gothic novel,let alone a comparative analysis of the two works by two British and American female writers.Based on a close reading of The Bloody Chamber and The Yellow Wallpaper,this thesis tries to make a comparative study of the two works from the perspective of female Gothic novel.In female Gothic novels,Gothic setting is considered as the imprisonment of women in the patriarchal society.The rendering of the Gothic motifs further exposes the devastation of women by patriarchalism.The resistance of female Gothic characters in adversity marks the awakening of their female consciousness.This thesis tries to explore how Carter and Gilman make use of Gothic elements in the two works to construct the genre of female Gothic novel through which their consciousness of feminism is conveyed.Women's awakening and resistance are the standing themes in the history of modern literature.Carter and Gilman break through the outward form of Gothic novel to lay their concern on the miserable destinies of women under patriarchal system.By analyzing the similarities and differences between The Bloody Chamber and The Yellow Wallpaper,this thesis brings to light how women keep themselves away from their subordinate position in the patriarchal society and begin to doubt and even deconstruct the patriarchal centrism,trying to initiate the readers'thinking of how to build a harmonious relationship between men and women.The change from“unsuccessful”resistance by women in Gilman's work to“successful”resistance in Carter's work representsthedevelopmentand the progressof females'self-consciousness.This thesis is of some value and significance for further studies of female Gothic novels,and helps to better understand and study Carter and Gilman and their representative works.