An Analysis Of The Main Character ‘Silver’ In Jeanette Winterson’s Lighthousekeeping From Feminism Perspective

Lighthousekeeping is the eighth novel which is produced by the British talented writer, Jeanette Winterson. Lighthousekeeping was awarded “The Annual Best Foreign Novels”, and was nominated “Commonwealth Writers Prize” in, respectively, 2004 and 2005. Jeanette Winterson is considered one of the most talented and controversial British contemporary writers. The characteristics of her writing style can be embodied in the following aspects: skillful narrative strategies, special language narration and profound theme connotations. Jeanette Winterson is a complete feminism writer, and she often expresses her own opinions from feminism perspective in her works. Jeanette Winterson not only uses nonlinear narrative techniques which make her works more vividly, but reveals the gist of a story from feminism perspective as well. Female self-existence and female consciousness in the process of women’s grown-up are considered in order to obtain female discourse rights. Jeanette Winterson uses her special narrative techniques to express female consciousness and gain female narrative discourse. Furthermore, scholars and literature amateurs both home and abroad mainly study and analyse Jeanette Winterson’s narrative strategies, her concise language style and ecologism, etc. There are a few people expounding the heroine, Silver, from feminism perspective. This thesis aims to explore the characters in the novel in a step further, and express the theme of the novel- “love” based on the feminism theory.The thesis mainly focuses on the main character, Silver, to study. Studying and analysing Silver bases on feminism perspective. There are six parts in the thesis. The first part is the introduction which introduces Jeanette Winterson’s growing background and her literature works, especially scholars’ comments on Lighthousekeeping both home and abroad. In addition, it also explains the significance and structure of the thesis. The second part consists of feminism and feminism writing, mainly talks about the development of feminism writing; the influence factors of feminism writing on contemporary literature and the characteristics of feminism writing. The third part analyses the heroine, Silver, based on female consciousness in order to give a clear and vivid image of Silver. The fourth part expounds the relationship between Silver and Pew based on feminism perspective while the fifth part focuses on female self-construction of Silver which includes Silver’s self-loss, Silver’s self-identity and the pursuit of Silver’s love. Furthermore, the enlightenment of Silver on female struggle which includes the enlightenment on among society, women and readers are also analysed in this part. The sixth part is also the conclusion part of the thesis which gives a conclusion. It reveals a vivid female image, Silver, who pursues love; finds love; tries to be herself in her life. All of this gives readers some new enlightenment.