Female's Counter-gaze And Construction Of Subjectivity In The History Of Miss Betsy Thoughtless

Eliza Haywood(1693-1756),as one of the founders of British novels,was a famous female novelist and playwright in the eighteenth century in Britain.Her later masterpiece The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless was published in 1751.By continuously struggling with the social discipline,the heroine Betsy in this novel strategically balances the identity as both the subject and object of desire.There is little Chinese research on this work while the Western research mainly studies it from the perspectives of feminism,didacticism and desire.This thesis will try to analyze Betsy's process of building subjectivity from the perspective of gaze.Among gaze theories,the Foucauldian gaze and the feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey's "male gaze" stand out.Foucault points out that since the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,the capitalist society has become the disciplinary society.In the context of patriarchy,social discipline and gaze on women are particularly prominent,so Laura Mulvey holds that the male gaze on female is a remarkable manifestation of patriarchy.In The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless,Betsy refuses to be the object of male gaze and social discipline passively,and through continuous adjustment of the way of counter-gaze,Betsy consolidates at every step and strategically builds her subjectivity.Chapter One analyzes Betsy's counter-gaze before marriage.Betsy is unwilling to become the object of male gaze and desire.She takes advantage of her charm to play with pursuers and tries to be the master of affection.As for marriage,she emphasizes autonomy and refuses the supervision and interference given by her brothers and guardians.However,defying the social discipline makes her repeatedly fall into narrow rapes.With her reputation to be damaged,she is forced to suppress subjectivity and accept the protection of marriage.Then,Chapter Two analyzes Betsy's compromise with social convention by disguising to be gazed after marriage.After several ventures,Betsy realizes the limitation of women's subjectivity under the severe pressure of social discipline.Therefore,she seemingly accepts the gaze and subjects desire to discipline,trying to rely on men to achieve security and indirectly remain part of subjectivity.But she finds that,in the loveless and even violent marriage,her blindly catering to discipline only leads to the complete loss of self.Chapter Three analyzes Betsy's mature counter-gaze.Her husband's derailment makes Betsy resolve to get rid of the bondage of unhappy marriage.But instead of blatantly opposing social norms,she strategically negotiates with the discipline.After winning the social recognition,she finally gets her wish of marrying her true love Mr.Trueworth,achieving the purpose of counter-gaze.Haywood spares no effort to concern about the lives of British women in the eighteenth century.Especially in her later works,she provides many strategies about how to survive and deal with social relations for her female readers.Betsy's path of counter-gaze tells us that in the patriarchal society,defying social conventions may make a woman suffer from abandonments of both family and society.But if a woman blindly yields to the discipline,she will solely lose herself.Only by observing social rules and utilizing discipline to serve for them can women build subjectivity to the utmost extent.