Women's Growth In Colleen McCullough's The Touch

Written by the well-known contemporary Australian woman writer Colleen McCullough, The Touch (2003) is known as the most successful family saga and love legend following The Thorn Birds. This book takes the background of nineteenth century Australia and reveals the good and evil sides of human nature. The author truly exposes the living conditions and psychological movements of women from different social classes as well as the growing processes of women who gradually awaken and eventually construct their subjectivity. Millions of readers are moved by the vivid description of characters and plot arrangement. McCullough reproduces the ignorance and backwardness of the late nineteenth century Australian society through female perspective, denouncing the shackles and ravages of human nature by religious dogma and celebrating the heroines who have the courage to fight strongly against their fate.Among the various lifelike figures, McCullough successfully portrays the submissive, kind and pious Elizabeth Drummond; the smart, beautiful and rebellious Ruby Costevan and the independent and self-reliant modern woman Nell Kinross. The author criticizes the patriarchal society and attacks the gender binary opposition through the portrayal of those three female characters. At the same time she explores and eulogizes enthusiastically the glory generated by the unique emotions and experiences of women.The present thesis will consist of five parts, including the introduction, three primary analysis chapters and a conclusion.The introduction covers the background knowledge on Colleen McCullough, the literature review of the novel under discussion, and touches the research value of the works and the structure of the thesis.The first chapter takes female growth in the dimension of intergenerational ethics as its center and mainly includes the analysis of home environment and parent-child relationship. The novel shows the far-reaching influence of home on the individual growth of women: women experience both joy and bitterness of growth during the process that they deal with parent-child relationship.The second chapter concentrates on the female growth in gender dimension. In women's relation with men, they grow up from passivity to activity. In the relationship between the same sex, women experience the process from hostility to alliance and eventually form female friendship or sisterhood, which shows the strength that women unite to resist oppression from the patriarchal society and the positive significance of women's sharing of life experience and survival strategy.The third chapter mainly discusses women's growth in body dimension. Women have been conceptualized as being ruled by their bodies, which are believed as unstable and weak. As the place for the self construction of individual, body has a pervasive influence on women's formation of self-identity and construction of subjectivity. This chapter on one hand will analyze the effects of unique female body experiences which have long been ignored during their growth; on the other hand it will analyze female body struggle, which includes the resistance to the body confinement as well as revolt with the body.All of these discussions lead to the conclusion that as a master of family saga and love legend, Colleen McCullough succeeds in vivid characterization of women. By reflecting the self growth of women of the nineteenth century Australia, it inspires the readers to ponder the right way to achieve liberation of women.