Parody Of "Cinderella" In A Fair Maiden:A Tale Of Dark Suspense

The famous American writer Joyce Carol Oates published A Fair Maiden:A Tale of Dark Suspense in 2010.This novel keeps Oates's artistic preference of Gothic elements,violence,the erotic writing and intertextuality with the fairy tales.As a matter of fact,it is a postmodern parody of the fairy tale "Cinderella".This thesis explores the parody in A Fair Maiden from the perspectives of the postmodern feminism and intertextuality.This dissertation includes six chapters in all.The first chapter makes a brief introduction about Joyce Carol Oates and A Fair Maiden.In this chapter,the artistic features of her works and especially the close relationship between her works and the literary tradition are introduced.Besides,a brief look of the studies on intertextuality in her work at home and abroad is also given.Finally,the framework and the theories are mentioned here.The second chapter deals with the parody of "Cinderella" in A Fair Maiden from two aspects:the imitation and the rewriting.On the one hand,it imitates the setting of the characters and the romantic paradigm of "Cinderella".On the other hand,it rewrites the story from the four points:the changes of personalities of "Cinderella" and "the Prince",the subversion of the traditional salvation pattern,the original happily-ever-after ending and the specifying of background information like time and space.The third chapter explores one of intentions of the parody:the deconstruction of the patriarchal narrative.Firstly,it explains the patriarchal narrative represented in the parody from three aspects:women as projection of male desires,female voicelessness and the attribute of commodity of women.And then it explains the ways of deconstructing the patriarchal narrative and discourse.By ironic imitation,the irrationality and ridiculousness of the patriarchal narrative are exposed.Then it is deconstructed by the transformation of narrative perspective and narrative language and the interruption of the linear order in the imitation.The fourth chapter probes into another intention of the parody:the construction of the female discourse.This thesis believes that the female discourse is established by making the feminist rewriting.The feminine rewriting is also analyzed from three aspects:the writing of female body and sexual desire,the implicit conveyance of female voice and the pursuit of female identity.It is the construction of the female discourse that makes the novel become a multi-vocal and non-hierarchical text.The fifth chapter analyzes the feminist idea in A Fair Maiden behind its parody.As a feminist novel,A Fair Maiden shatters the utopian dream made up by the patriarchal fairy tale "Cinderella".Misled by illusory happiness created by Cinder-stories,women from the lower class voluntarily walk into the trap of patriarchy and suffer from male oppression and exploitation.Besides,this novel also puts emphasis on the importance of the spiritual maturity of women in their rebellion against patriarchal authority and the establishment of their own subjectivity.The conclusion part summarizes the main idea of the thesis and restates that parody is a strategy to construct female discourse and to rebel the authority of patriarchal discourse.This novel can be seen as an experiment of Joyce Carol Oates on the feminist writing.And the feminist awareness of Oates behind the parody of "Cinderella" in this novel makes a response to the misunderstanding of the writer and proves her identity as a feminist writer.