Construction Of Female Power:on The Parody Of Hamlet In Nutshell

Contemporary British writer Ian McEwan has been one of the most influential writers active in the British literary world since the 1970s.He is good at sketching out with delicacy and pungency the anxiety and fear of the modern people,and actively explores the issues of violence,death,Eros,and good and evil.His early works focus on themes such as murder and incest while his later works shift from claustrophobic private spaces to broader social and political realms.Nutshell is McEwan’s 17th novel published in 2016.It is a modern version of Hamlet told with unique narrative techniques.The novel unfolds step by step from the perspective of the fetus "I" the plot of his mother Trudy and his uncle Claude’s murder of his father John.The fetus hopes to avenge his father like the Danish prince but cannot do it.McEwan uses his mature writing skills to combine his early and later writing themes,presenting a fascinating and wonderful story for readers.Perhaps because the novel has been published only for a relatively short time,domestic and foreign scholars have not done enough research on it yet.In general,the research on Nutshell abroad is restricted to book reviews and interviews with the author while domestic research has focused on the narrative techniques of the novel and its ethical connotations.It has seldom been interpreted from the perspective of feminism.Therefore,this thesis is to study Nutshell by combining the theories of intertextuality and feminism.The thesis is divided into five chapters.The first chapter is Introduction.It briefly introduces Ian McEwan and his literary achievements,gives a review of the studies of Nutshell at home and abroad,and explains the focus and structure of the thesis.Chapters Two to Four are the body of the thesis.Chapter Two,based on the theory of intertextuality,analyzes the parody of Hamlet by Nutshell embodied in the subversion of characters and the modification of the plot.The third chapter argues that the parody in Nutshell is a strategy to construct female power.In the novel,the female characters have the right to themselves,possess the power to define men and manage to rise in social status,thus gaining power in gender relations.Chapter Four points out the significance of constructing women’s power through parody in Nutshell.On the one hand,it is a challenge to the patriarchy represented by Hamlet;on the other hand,it is also a breakthrough of feminist literature in aesthetics of reception,allowing readers to accept and value feminism again.The last chapter is Conclusion,which summarizes the whole thesis.It emphasizes again that it is through the use of parody that McEwan turns the story of a noble hero into expression of the true female voice in Nutshell,criticizing the patriarchal concept embodied in Hamlet and subverting the long-standing mainstream outlook on women since the Renaissance,and doing great contribution to the development of feminism.