Females,Trap,Salvation:An Interpretation Of Breakfast At Tiffany’s From The Perspective Of Consumerism

Truman Capote is an outstanding American writer,who once won“National Institute of Creative Arts Award for Literature”in 1959,and“O.Henry Prize”for three times.His works show the fates of characters against the complex social background from the end of 19^thcentury to the post war period.His life experience was rich,and his footprints covered from the small towns in the south of America to the big cities,including New Orleans,New York and so on.Such a rich experience provided abundant materials for his novel creating,and some of them are famous for the feature of“non-fiction”until today,such as In Cold Blood and The Muses Are Heard:An Account.His works are vividly characterized by the times.Breakfast at Tiffany’s is one of his representative works,and has been selected as one of TIME 100 Best English-language Novels.The novel depicted a vivid picture of New York city,with a woman’s dream chasing and dream broken as the main line,showing the American consumer society from the 1940s to the 1950s,reflecting the complex relationship between females and consumer society.Since the emergence of consumer society,females have played an important role in it.Some of them have not only promoted the development of it,but enjoyed the various benefits it brought.However,they have also become its“commodities”intentionally or unintentionally.The heroine in the novel is one of them.Therefore,this thesis applies French sociologist Jean Baudrillard’s theory of consumerism,combining the historical background at that time,to analyze her experience,trying to explore the balanced way between females and consumer society.This thesis is composed of three parts.The first part includes an introduction to Truman Capote and his work Breakfast at Tiffany’s,studies from abroad and at home,and an introduction to consumerism-related terms involved in this thesis.The second part is the main discussion of the thesis.The first chapter focuses on the analysis of the formation of American consumerism and the specific manifestations of consumerism in the novel.Due to the rapid development of economy and technology,as well as the progress of mass media,consumerism has sprouted and developed in America society since the 19^thcentury.However,the negative effects of industrialization,the secularization of religion,and the materialization of life have resulted in people’s spiritual emptiness.Consumerism makes up for such an emptiness,so it has penetrated into every corner of American society easily.In Breakfast at Tiffany’s,it is embodied in the diversification of leisure styles,various magazine advertisements and gossip news targeting females.The second chapter explores the relationship between females and consumer society by applying the three concepts of mass media culture,the symbolic value of objects,and body consumption proposed by Baudrillard.This chapter starts with the interpretation of the connotation of Tiffany and the design of its shop-window,aiming to discuss how the consumer society constructs dreams for females,how to help them construct their identities,and finally how to turn their bodies into“the finest object”.In view of this,this thesis comes to the point that females are not completely in a passive position in the consumer society,but form an interactive relationship with it.Females procure benefits brought by consumer society;in turn,they are consumed by it.The third chapter discusses the strategies of how females achieve balance in the consumer society.On the one hand,mass media should advocate correct aesthetic pursuit,encourage diversified aesthetics,and guide females to appreciate and accept their inner selves.On the other hand,females must maintain an independent personality in the consumer society,which is also an important reason why the heroine in the novel can get out of her mental dilemma.The third part is the conclusion,which reviews the main points of previous discussion,reiterates the arguments,and summarizes the thesis.By analyzing consumerism in the novel and the relationship between females and consumer society,this thesis reveals Capote’s view on the survival dilemma and survival strategies of females in consumer society.