A Feminist Reading Of Kate Grenville's Novel Lillian's Story

As a kind of gender culture, feminism, by its powerful defiance and subversion, has disrupted the rooted way of human beings' thinking about the gender culture and policy existing for thousands of years. This thesis attempts to adopt the feminist theory to read the novel Lillian's Story, written by the contemporary Australian writer Kate Grenville.This novel depicts the life journey of a middle-class Australian girl in the time from the Federation to World War Two. The heroine Lillian is born into a family soaked with craziness, cruelty and sex, yet she focuses on wisdom, love and independence she longs for and cherishes, and is always true to her self with others' respect and awe, hence creating an immortal female image courageous enough to defy the patriarchal world. The awakening of female subjectivity challenges the dominant male discourse in the novel. The powerful male discourse inevitably produces counter power, that is, the female discourse. By her language talent, Lillian creatively uses the female discourse to give vent to the voice of her self, smashing the hegemony of male discourse and deconstructing the patriarchal system.Making a comprehensive survey of the novel, we can conclude that Lillian is a born rebel. She defies the patriarchal domination, resists firmly the traditional women's role, and fights against any form of humiliation, oppression and evil acts. She is close to nature and against the wars, the fiercest form of the violence in the world, and exposes the bottom of the pollution of the natural world and the alienation between human beings. She resists being mediocre and pursues spiritual sublimation and true love. She consistently and courageously upholds her right as an independent character and deliberately chooses a life of her own, hence composing a glorious song for women's liberation.The thesis consists of four parts. Chapter One introduces the upheaval of the post-modern movement, especially feminism, in the 1960s, and their influence on the idea and style of Grenville, the expatriate in Europe and America and her purpose for writing this novel. Chapter Two presents a penetrating analysis of the structure of the engrained patriarchy in the novel and all the confrontations opposed to it. The sensitive subject about...