Oppression And Resistance Of Female Body:A Study Of Female Body In Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace

Margaret Atwood, known as "the Queen of Canadian Literature", is a brilliant contemporary Canadian writer with international celebrity. Her output is amazing, ranging from novels, poems, short stories and literary criticisms. Although Atwood refuses to be labeled as a feminist, her novels embody her feminist thought to the fullest. Through depicting women’s difficult living condition in patriarchy in her novels, Atwood shows her deep concern for women. Female body is an important theme in Atwood’s works, which is also a key element in Alias Grace. In Alias Grace, female body reveals women’s predicament in patriarchy in the nineteenth-century Canada.The present thesis combines the perspectives of feminist study and body theory to analyze the bodily oppression against women, and women’s strategies through applying body strategically to resist patriarchy and reconstruct their bodies in Atwood’s ninth novel Alias Grace. Canadian women, especially the lower class women in the mid-nineteenth century were deeply oppressed in the man-dominated society. The three major female characters, Grace’s mother, Mary and Nancy, are victims of that period. Grace the protagonist, however, succeeds in her resistance against her difficult situation and her self-reconstruction. In Alias Grace, female body is not merely a site of male oppression, it can be a powerful tool for women to rebel against patriarchy and to reconstruct themselves as well. With female body as the pointcut, this thesis explores the connection between female body and patriarchal oppression in Alias Grace, and looks forward to making some contribution to the existing study on this novel.