A Study Of The Female Gothic In The Handmaid’s Tale From The Perspective Of Foucault’s Power Theory

Margaret Atwood(1939-),the Canadian novelist,poet and prose writer,has won numerous awards in contemporary literary world.Atwood’s works give authentic delineations of social reality and deep penetration of social issues.The existential predicaments are her constant concerns.In addition to the unfavorable conditions of women,she also shows worries about environmental problems and national identity.Notably,Atwood’s novels contain Female Gothic characteristics.With her unique writing of the fate of women and her magical style,she has become an extraordinary presence in world literature.Atwood has written many works with characteristics of Female Gothic,and The Handmaid’s Tale is Atwood’s most iconic novel.Set in a verisimilar country of Gilead,The Handmaid’s Tale is a dystopian tale of women of marrying age who are captured and assigned to the homes of men in power and forced to bear children for them.The combination of feminism and gothic styles presents scenes of men in power violently disempowering women and keeping them under the surveillance and control of power in a surreal world.Facing both physical and spiritual suppression,women struggle to get freedom and get initiation from submission to silence and resistance.The thesis is divided into three parts: introduction,body part and conclusion.Introduction discusses the themes and styles of Atwood’s literary creation by combing the general tendency and outstanding performance together with Atwood’s unique female consciousness.At the same time,the introduction summarizes relevant studies at home and abroad,and introduces the characteristics of the Female Gothic and Foucault’s theory of power,pointing out the feasibility of studying the novel from the perspective of power.The body part is divided into three chapters.Each of the three chapters focuses on three aspects of Female Gothic: theme,characters,and writing techniques.The first chapter discusses the Female Gothic themes of The Handmaid’s Tale,which is to say,how women suffer from the control and oppression of male hegemony bodily and spiritually.Women are deprived of their basic power losing the right to physical freedom and the right to freedom of marriage.Women’s spiritual worlds are also tightly regulated,and women are deprived of the right to study and work and have to rely on men.The second chapter discusses the Female Gothic characters in the novel.It explores how they react to control and oppression,and how women resist the threats and struggle for power in order to escape from the small and dark space.Because their lives and dignity are threatened and suppressed,the female characters with different personalities and experiences adopt different ways to protest against manipulation and hegemony in order to resist power discipline in marriage,life and reproduction and to pursue freedom.The third chapter focuses on the novel’s Female Gothic writing techniques.The two main sections are devoted to the unique narrative devices and symbols of the Female Gothic characteristics.The use of Female Gothic writing techniques is different from that of traditional male Gothic works,thus revealing the uniqueness of Female Gothic and reflecting its profound realistic significance.The sharp contrasts in the narrative,as well as the events of execution and the symbols of imprisonment,show the terrors of oppression under power discipline.By summarizing the viewpoints and discoveries of this thesis,the conclusion points out the unique concern for the fate of contemporary women in Atwood’s outstanding creation,and unfolds the enlightenment of women’s independence and self-help in different social and historical contexts.Female Gothic not only opens up a new way to study Atwood’s works,but also provides a realistic approach for analyzing female problems inside and outside the text.In summary,through the analysis of The Handmaid’s Tale,this thesis sums up the Female Gothic characteristics in her creation.The characteristics of Female Gothic are embodied in her works,which makes her works exhibit distinct idiosyncratic characteristics and rich practical significance.