On Body Politics In Atwood’s Alias Grace

Margaret Atwood（1929-）is the one of the most influential writers in the Canadian literary arena today,her novels often contain the dual themes of Feminism and Canadian national consciousness.Alias Grace is her ninth novel,which narrates the various tribulations of a female murder and shows the tough living conditions of the female group in the patriarchal society.Based on Michel Foucault’s Body Politics Theory and the Feminist Theory of Beauvoir and other scholars.This thesis explores how female bodies suffer body politics in Alias Grace and the various methods used by the patriarchal society to tame the female,which in order to appeal to the female for realizing they still in the inequality position.Firstly,this thesis focuses on the survival dilemma of different female characters in the novel.As the object of power discipline,most female bodies are not governed by their own subjective consciousness but become objects under the control of patriarchy.Some of them are abandoned,some are subjected to domestic violence,and some are detained.They are tragic figures who can not release their desires under the oppression of patriarchy.Secondly,from the perspective of the social,family and prison to explore the social and cultural factors which cause the female body politics and emphasize the social critical consciousness of Atwood in Alias Grace.The patriarchal ideology constructs the social system of male civilization through gender difference,and women can only survive in the form of vassal,and women’s sexual desires are derogated and they become the sexual object of men.Family is the most basic unit for the exercise of male power.The authority of the father and the institution of marriage control a woman’s whole life.As the most direct and effective discipline institution,prison tames human flesh through hierarchical observation,normalizing judgement and the examination.Lastly,this thesis proposes that the female body should not only be seen as a victim of male domination,but also as an instrument of female resistance to body politics.Women should resist the discipline of power.In Alias Grace,Women struggle against the control of male hegemony by challenging the authoritative ideology of male supremacy,extramarital affairs and madness,deconstructing the control of male hegemony mechanism on them,and longing for freedom and reclaiming the autonomy of the body.In conclusion,through analyzing the female body politics and resistance in Alias Grace,this thesis proposes that the female body is not the negative object of male discipline,but the weapon and battlefield of female resistance.It calls on women to always be alert to the restrictions of the patriarchal ideology on the female body,actively resist the domination of male hegemony,and strive to build a harmonious relationship between two sexes in the new era.