The Imagination Of Gypsy In British Literature Since The19th Century To The Early 20th Century

The Gypsies are a wandering,scattered minority who came to the British Isles roughly in the early 16 th century.Gypsies living in Britain carry different customs from the Anglo-Saxon tradition and maintain a different lifestyle from the British middle class.As the "other" of British culture,the image of gypsies frequently appeared in British literature from the 19 th century to the early 20 th century,participated in and shaped the "self" of British culture.They reflected the British people's cultural anxiety and desire to seek breakthroughs,which were reflected on three levels:in the writing of vagrants,the imagination of gender temperament and the construction of British national identity.There were two attitudes in Britain towards the vagrant lifestyle of gypsies:hatred and yearning.On the one hand,in such works as Dickens' The Old Curiosity Shop and Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights,the Gypsies beared many nicknames such as stealing and deceiving,disturbing property relations,and being idle,and were regarded as "fallen barbarians" disturbing society order.On the other hand,they were romanticized in other works,such as The Scholar Gypsy,which portrayed them as "noble free men" against bourgeois civilization.In works such as Guy Mannering by Walter Scott and Orlando by Virginia Woolf,gypsies blended masculinity and femininity and became the natural existence of "androgyny",which shaked the rigid binary opposite gender pattern in British mainstream culture.At the same time,gypsies also provided a heterogeneous space for women to escape from traditional femininity.In the female literature of the Victorian period,such as The Mill on the Floss,the "gypsy" heroine images were often the carrier for female writers to express their own impulses.In the long process of historical integration,gypsies were not only the "other" living in Britain,but also experienced Identity hybridity with the British.The above contradictions were also reflected in literary works.In some works,such as Emma and The Spanish Gypsy,gypsies were described as an important factor threatening the United Kingdom's national identity,and they suffered from expulsion andpersecution.In other works,such as Guy Mannering and Orlando,the memory and blood of gypsies were gradually integrated into the British society,and they began to play a role in the mainstream social culture,which was a component of building a more authentic British national identity.In the imagination of British writers,the Gypsies had obsessive contradictions,which were not only the disharmonious factors that disturbed the stable order,but also provided an outlet for expressing individual liberation and national identity.However,real gypsies were also buried in this myth and fiction.The analysis of these images will undoubtedly help us to understand the cultural psychology of the British and the living conditions of the gypsies in the British history.