Gender Stereotyping And Beyond:C.S.Lewis's The Chronicles Of Narnia And Gender Performance

As a British writer,critic and scholar,C.S.Lewis published the children's fantasy The Chronicles of Narnia,which is deeply loved by readers of all ages.As a series,The Chronicles of Narnia contains seven books,which are The Lion,the Witch and the Wardrobe,Magician's Nephew,The Horse and His Boy,Prince Caspian,The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,Silver Chair and The Last Battle in its publishing order.The Last Battle had won the Carnegie Medal in Literature,which represents the highest honor of English children's literature.Feminist scholars have studies on Lewis and his works because of the controversial expressions in them.The domestic researches on The Chronicles of Narnia mainly focus on the archetypes and narrative strategies in it.But there is only one work that was done from the perspective of feminism.This thesis tries to interpret the femininity and masculinity performed by both male and female characters in this series with the help of Judith Butler's gender performance theory.Finally,it is concluded that all the main gendered characters in this series express both masculinity and femininity,by which they realize the integrity of their gender.And through this,the characters of this work become fuller and richer in meaning.This thesis is divided into four parts.The first part is a brief introduction to Lewis and The Chronicles of Narnia,a study of previous feminist researches on this work and the theoretical framework.The second part analyzes the performance of gender traits by major human characters;The third part deals with the main supernatural characters' performance of femininity and masculinity;Finally,the conclusion,which summaries the analysis,argues that the de-sexualized body is a way for one to achieve gender freedom.