A Study Of Feminism In The Bloody Chamber From The Perspective Of Imagery Study

Since the 1980 s,a group of neo-realistic writers with innovative mind appeared in the English literary world.As one of the neo-realistic representatives,Angela Carter both inherited and transcended the traditional realism.This kind of inheritance and transcendence can be seen from Carter's collection of short stories named The Bloody Chamber.In The Bloody Chamber,Carter used the old bottle for new wines by audaciously adapting the traditional fairy tales and subverting the traditional timid image of woman.This rebuilding of female image changed fairy tales from children's book into women's book.Although Carter herself denied that she was a feminist writer,critics studied the feminist thought in this book from the perspectives like parody,intertextuality and gothic culture.This thesis aims at proving that Angela Carter subconsciously endowed her work with feminist thought by analyzing and studying the variation of the symbolic meaning of the three imageries,namely,“house”,“color” and “light”.This thesis mainly analyzes the three imageries.The first imagery is “House”.In each story,House's symbolic meaning changes from “Women's Cage”,“Women's Battlefield” to “Women's Paradise”.It is the transformative process for women from being repressed by patriarchy,seeking self-identity to the victory of defiance.The second imagery is “color”.Carter allocated the “color” description in this book with the mental strategy.“White”,which symbolizes purity and innocence,is mainly used to describe woman.On the contrary,“black” and “gold”,which build up a sense of oppression,are for man.“Red”,which represents violence,appeared at the end of the stories.From Carter's allocation of the colors,it can be seen that women changed from the innocent “the other”,who is repressed and exploited by man,to the dominator,who seeks self-consciousness and gets out of man's chain.Thirdly,this thesis studies the “light” imagery.“Light” plays a significant role in the plot development.At first,woman lives under the “dark” and stifling environment.With the development of plot,“twilight” appears along with the plot of woman's exploration of man's world and the exploration of self-awareness.In the end,when women win victory and freedom,there are many descriptions of “bright” scenes.From “dark”,“twilight” to “brightness”,it is actually the process of woman's being ignored and marginalized,woman's self-exploration,to the subversion of Phallogocentrism after being enlightened.The author studies Carter's representative work The Bloody Chamber from the perspective of imagery study.The analysis of the imagery in the novel makes the reader further understand Carter's feminist thought.