A Study Of The Female Identity In Fingersmith From The Perspective Of Spatial Narrative Theory

Sarah Waters is a well-known contemporary British female writer and is known as one of the most skilled storytellers among female writers in the twentieth century.Most of her works are set in the Victorian period,so she is praised as one of the representative writers of new Victorian novels.Her works have been nominated for the Booker Prize and the Orange Prize many times.Fingersmith is the last novel of her famous Victorian Trilogy.The novel describes the stories of women in Victorian England who realize their self-identification and pursue true love.It presents the social scenes at that time and reflects female quest for love,independence and freedom in difficult circumstances.By now,most scholars at home and abroad analyze Sarah and her novels from the perspectives of theme,narrative strategies,and feminism.The innovation of this thesis is to study the issues of female identity in the novel from the perspective of spatial narrative theory.This thesis is mainly composed of three parts,namely introduction,main part and conclusion.The introduction introduces the life experience of Sarah Waters,the main contents and literary status of Fingersmith,researches at home and abroad,and Gabriel Zoran’s spatial narrative theory,and proposes the innovation of the thesis.The main part is divided into three chapters.The first chapter uses the topographical space in Gabriel Zoran’s spatial narrative theory to study the living space of the characters in the novel.This space has witnessed the loss,crisis and change of identity of the two female characters.It analyzes the Lant Street,which symbolizes the city of London,the Brair Manor and the madhouse.Finally,it summarizes the survival dilemma of the characters in the novel,exploring the survival predicament for the characters in the novel.The space affects the behavior of the characters,and different spaces reflect different social realities.The Lant Street is the epitome of the slums under the background of the Industrial Revolution.The Brair manor witnesses the decline of traditional aristocrats,and the madhouse has become a prison for women.The second chapter uses the chronotopic space in Gabriel Zoran’s spatial narrative theory to analyze the process of the two female characters in the novel to find their identity.Through the synchronic and diachronic levels from the chronotopic space,the different life experiences of Sue and Maud and their quest of self-identity are analyzed.The relative movement of the two characters forms a unique space in the text.At last,it summarizes the common things of Sue and Maud’s quest of self-identity.The third chapter uses the total space in Gabriel Zoran’s spatial narrative theory to explore the connection between spatial narrative and the issues of female identity in the novel.It analyzes the female identity predicament and reconstruction for two female characters as a disadvantaged group in the patriarchal society.And then it summarizes the oppression of women in the patriarchal society in the novel,the identity dilemma of women in the total space as well as the causes,process and results of their identity reconstruction.The conclusion uses Gabriel Zoran’s spatial narrative theory to summarize Fingersmith.Through a comprehensive analysis of the female identity reflected in the spaces at different spatial levels,this study reflects that women have lost their identity due to spiritual,physical,economic and other reasons,but they strive to get away from the shackles of the patriarchal society,find and rebuild their female identity.The three spaces work together to enrich the characters and themes.This thesis also explains the practical significance of this study and the deficiencies of the research.The research results will provide suggestions for women who are also facing identity problems in the modern society.This thesis analyzes Fingersmith from the perspective of spatial narrative theory,which provides a new perspective for the interpretation of this novel,and at the same time broadens the research field of spatial narrative.