A Study Of Maud As A Byronic Heroine In Fingersmith

As one of the most significant representatives of the contemporary British female writer Sarah Waters,Fingersmith set in Victorian London unfolds the interlocking fate of the Victorian aristocratic lady Maud and the underworld thief Susan,depicting the heroine Maud’s growth path with a rebellious spirit.The majority of the previous research has focused on the new historicism,narrative strategies and feminist thoughts embodied in the novel while neglecting the relationship between the characterization of Maud and the theme of the novel.Byronic Hero,as the traditional literary image of “anti-hero”,is a concentrated expression of the rebellious spirit.Based on Thoslev’s ground-breaking research of “Byronic Hero”,this thesis aims to interpret the heroine Maud as a Byronic Heroine from various aspects in order to compare the differences between Maud and the traditional Byronic Hero and further explore the relationship between neo-Victorian literature and the 19 th century literature.Apart from the Introduction and Conclusion,this thesis consists of three chapters.Chapter One mainly starts from the moody and elusive character of the Byronic Hero,and then studies Maud’s image as a sentimentalist,and tries to discuss the causes of it from the perspective of culture and ethics.First of all,Maud often feels melancholic because she lost her mother at a young age and is confined to Briar House.At the same time,Maud has ambivalent feelings about love,but she still chooses to obey her inner thoughts and admits her homosexual affection that against the secular tradition.To further dig out her Byronic complex personalities,Chapter Two analyzes Maud as an evildoer against the rigid morality in the Victorian society that stands out including her maltreatment of her servant for psychological satisfaction,her conspiracy against her maid Sue for her liberty by sending the latter to the madhouse,and her revengeful behaviours towards her uncle for a guilty pleasure.Chapter Three focuses on the most striking characteristic of Byronic Hero--rebellion.Based on the research in the first two chapters,this chapter probes into the ways in which Maud as a Neo-Victorian Byronic Heroine rebels against the Victorian patriarchal norms from the gender perspective.Firstly,she rebels against the imprisonment by Mr Lilly in Briar House and Mrs Sucksby in Lant Street respectively by tactful escape.Further,the heroine Maud walks as a flaneuse to overturn the male gaze and works as a female writer,and gains her economic independence,revolting against the androcentric discourse.Meanwhile,she also rebels against the Victorian ideology of women being mothers and wives at the end of the novel to challenge traditional conventions in Victorian society and voices for herself.Through the detailed study,this thesis attempts to arrive at the following conclusions.Fingersmith as a Neo-Victorian novel inherits the characterization of the protagonist as a Byronic hero and the heroine Maud as a Neo-Victorian Byronic Heroine that embodies Sarah Waters’ contemporary concerns about female issues in the modern society.