Construction Of Flora’s Gender Identity In Indian Ink

Tom Stoppard(1937-)is a famous contemporary British playwright.He has won the Tony Award four times and many other awards.Stoppard’s play Indian Ink,premiered in 1995,and won unanimous praise from the critics and the audiences.The play adopts the dramatic structure of juxtaposition of time and space,and intertwines the travel life of a British poetess Flora Crewe in India in 1930s with the investigation of her life in India by the others in 1980s.This thesis mainly discusses how the heroine the poetess Flora Crewe’s gender identity is constructed by herself and by the others.The thesis consists of five chapters.The first chapter is the introduction,which summarizes the overall creation of Stoppard’s plays,introduces the play Indian Ink,sorts the research results of the play at home and abroad,and defines the theoretical basis for the research.This paper mainly uses the construction theory of social and gender identity proposed by the British critic Vivien Burr in her monograph An Introduction to Social Constructionism to deeply interpret the play.Vivien Burr points out that individual identity is not innate and fixed forever.On the contrary,it will change with the changes of society,and has always been in the state of construction and being constructed.Each individual will construct his or her expected identity intentionally or unintentionally,but his or her identity will also be shaped by the others.Identity is the result of the joint construction of oneself and the others.Gender identity is especially affected by social culture and power.In the process of the construction of gender identity,discourse plays a vital role.Chapter two to chapter four is the main part of the thesis.The second chapter mainly discusses how Flora actively constructs her own gender identity through discourse.The avant-garde Flora constructs herself as an excellent woman with a high social status and strong subject consciousness through the unique linguistic forms of poetry writing and letters writing.At the same time,she constructs herself as a woman with strong political awareness.She constructs herself as a supporter of Indian national independence and a woman who is opposed to the total colonization of Indian culture through the conversations with the others.Chapter three mainly expounds how Flora’s gender identity is constructed by the others.In her sister Mrs Swan’s narration of the past,Flora is constructed as a poor but independent woman.In the disparaging comments of two male artists,Flora is constructed as a nude model and an inanimate object for men to enjoy.In the biographer Pike’s purposefully distorted account of Flora’s life,she is constructed as a dissolute and male dependent woman.The fourth chapter mainly analyses Flora’s complex attitude towards the others’ construction of her gender identity.During Flora’s lifetime,when the identity constructed by herself conflicts with the identity constructed by the others,sometimes she fights actively against male others for their discrimination and physical violence,sometimes she has to choose to be tolerant and compromising.Sometimes in order to achieve certain purpose,she even actively constructs herself as a seducer.After the death of Flora,what kind of woman she is can only be constructed by the others at will.In the conclusion part,this thesis points out that although Flora actively constructs her identity as an open,avant-garde,knowledgeable and talented female intellectual,she fails to achieve her goal because of the poverty,her low social status and most importantly because of the patriarchal society.Whether in India in the 1930s or in Britain and the United States in the 1980s,women face enormous difficulties in the process of self-liberation.If women today want to gain real independence and freedom,there is still a long way to go,because they must gain sufficient economic and social security.