The Study Of Victoria Hislop's War Novels:The Revolt Of Others Under The Patriarchy

Victoria Hislop is a contemporary best-selling female novelist in Britain.She loves Greek civilization so much that she concerns a lot about the wars which were happened inside and outside Greece.She realised that these wars would have hurt ordinary families,so most of her works were committed to describe the vulnerable groups under the background of war,especially the fate of females.This paper apply the patriarchy theory to read the three full-length novels of Hislop intensively,and then analyze the different kinds of female images and others who were marginalized by the mainstream of society in these novels and try to explore the patriarchy frame which was built in her works.Finally,I will interpret the strategies which were supposed to collapse this frame by the author.The paper was divided into five parts.The first part is the introduction which mainly introduces the personal creative experience of Victoria Hislop and the studies of her works from domestic and international scholars.The second chapter describes the patriarchy frame,from family to the race,which was constructed in Hislop's novels.At the aspect of Family,I mainly analyze the charges which was brought against the patriarchy by author through these female images who were killed by the patriarchy,include male members who have no voice in the family.While at the another aspect,I interpret the damage to the harmonious development of society which was caused by the patriarchy through the analysis of the facts that how the weak race which was beaten in the wars would be marginalized.The next chapter introduces many kinds of solutions to deconstruct the patriarchal framework which were proposed in these novels.In Hislop's view,self-salvation is a central strategy for women to fight for equal,in addition,the power of culture and the hope brought by children also cannot be ignored.At the same time,Hislop found a new way to tell the function of wars that she thought wars would be an opportunity to disintegrate thepatriarchy.In following chapter,I criticize the attitude of Hislop about the patriarchy.Of course,Hislop is a female writer with strong sense of responsibility,however,she is not a staunch feminists.In her various strategies which were to break the patriarchy frame,she has often denied their feasibility by herself.And her novels are also inconsistent from the front of the content to the back inevitably.Obviously,she was hesitant to seek freedom and equal status for others.The last part is the epilogue.I untangle the writhing thought of this paper again,and then I point out the significance of the war in Hislop's three novels.Finally,I write down the innovation points and shortcomings of this paper and hope to be improved.As a female author,through her own experience and perception,Hislop showed us many kinds of patriarchal societies which were special and universal.She fought for others through the process that she construct a patriarchal frame first and then trying to break it constantly.Regardless of the scale of wars,all of them would kill those innocent people.These post-war reconstruction strategies which were proposed by Hislop would be verified in the present.And it proves that the horizons of female could be same to male.