A Study Of Cosmopolitan Australian Women In Gail Jones' S Fiction

Gail Jones(1955-)is one of the most popular contemporary women writers in Australia.Her wonderful language and writing skills have not only attracted a large readership but also won the recognition from critics.Different from other writers who portray Australians living in their homeland,Jones is inclined to set the background outside her motherland,which makes the transnational communication a major feature of her writing.In the fictions studied in this thesis—Sixty Lights(2004),Dreams of Speaking(2006)and A Guide to Berlin(2015),she depicts three Australian women travelling to other countries.Living in different times,the three women share common characteristics—the possession of cosmopolitan ideas and feminist awareness,which turn them into cosmopolitan Australian women.Through the analysis of the three heroines from the perspective of cosmopolitanism,this thesis attempts to reexamine Gail Jones' s thoughts of cross-cultural exchange and her ideal of a cosmopolitan life.The thesis consists of five chapters.Chapter One gives a brief introduction to Gail Jones and her works,and also provides an overview of Jones studies.It also gives an introduction to the cosmopolitanism put forward by Kwame Anthony Appiah and other critics.Chapter Two examines Alice in Dreams of Speaking who tries every means to be assimilated into French or Japanese culture but finally returns to Australia in desperation.It points out the importance of striking up a conversation between two cultures and keeping cultural independence in the meantime.Chapter Three analyzes Cass in A Guide to Berlin who recovers from her childhood trauma and overcomes the cultural cringe.Jones proves that it is unnecessary for Australians to feel inferior before any other culture.Chapter Four explores Lucy in Sixty Lights,who pursues her selfautonomy in the Victorian Age and eventually becomes a successful photographer.The novel demonstrates the necessity of taking root in Australian culture and offers a valuable model for the transnational conversation.Chapter Five summarizes the previous analysis.It concludes that by giving three different endings,Gail Jones expresses her ideas of cosmopolitanism and what a cosmopolitan Australian woman should be.