On The Reconstruction Of Female Subjectivity In Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber And Other Stories

Angela Olive Carter(1940-1992)is a versatile literary writer whose works are rich in forms,ranging from children's stories and radio plays to poetry and criticisms,and whose works takes in a large number of thoughts,covering magic realism,rococo,Gothicism and deconstructionism.The initial impression shared by the critics is her unabashed style and her inexhaustible efforts to destroy the decayed social rules.Since 1990,the profundity and complexity of her works have been dug out.Angela Carter has been regarded as a confidant by Salman Rushdie and named as "the Fairy godmother" by Margaret Atwood in humor.In 1979,Carter's The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories was published which received the Cheltenham Festival Literary Prize at the same year.The thesis has recourse to postfeminism to discuss the reconstruction of female subjectivity on the basis of close reading the text of The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories.During Carter's twenty-six years' literary career,she has been dedicated to deconstructing the patriarchal definition of the female nature,subverting the female image either good or evil and restoring the female real and complete original feature.In the thesis,five short stories of The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories before readers' eyes are analyzed in details.They are "The Tiger's Bride","The Courtship of Mr Lyon","The Bloody Chamber","The Company of Wolves" and "Wolf-Alice".The reasons why these five stories are selected are that all of them are in relation with the exploration for the female desires,physically or psychologically.Without them,the female thoughts and actions would not be attached importance to and female subjectivity would not be reconstructed.The thesis consists of seven parts.In the first chapter,the thesis introduces the family background and affective experiences of Angela Carter,and a panoramic view of background information as well as main content about The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories.In the second chapter,the previous research on Angela Carter and The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories both at home and abroad is listed.The third chapter describes the theoretical basis of the thesis-postfeminism and the concept of subjectivity.The fourth chapter puts an emphasis on the reasons why female subjectivity is to be reconstructed from the perspective of postfeminism and comes to a conclusion that the female,being regarded as a commodity rather than an independent subject,is materialized as possession or the gift by the patriarchal discourse system.The fifth chapter gives the approaches for women to reconstruct subjectivity.That is to make alliances between female and female as well as between female and nature.In the sixth chapter,the thesis analyzes the locations to reconstruct female subjectivity-female body and female discourse.The last part summarizes that Carter reconstructs female subjectivity by establishing alliances between female and female as well as between female and nature in virtue of female body and female discourse.Although the thesis has done above-mentioned research,it mainly focuses on five most representative and pertinent short stories in The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories due to the limited time.The thesis wishes the influence and significance of Angela Carter's works will be deeply explored from the perspective of postfeminism.