The Female Identity's Self-construction Of Being Subjects In Tennyson's Poems

Alfred Lord Tennyson was one of the best exponents of the tumultuous Victorian Period, which witnessed great changes in science, industry and ideology. But his charm mainly resulted from his musical and colourful verbiage, and the critics didn't classify him as one of the mighty cosmopolitan forces of literature, because they considered that much of his verse has but little bearing on humanity at large, and summarized him just as a sweet singer of the past, melancholy and medieval legend, and in essence an escapist.In this dissertation, the author will provide a defence for Tennyson and attempt to return him the honour of being a sensitive and responsible great poet who also kept eyes on that era's social important event-women problem. In the Introduction part, the author will briefly introduce some distinctive features of the poet's works, the women's status quo in that period, literature review and provide a hint of this dissertation's main purpose. From Chapter Two to Chapter Four, the author will detailedly analyze the heroines' efforts to change their passive status or identities in love seeking, to escape the chains of being a queen and angel-like female defined by the male-culture, to betray the standard of Victorian women, and to construct their identities of being subjects.In Chapter Two, the author will employ Jaques Lacan's theory of gazing to illustrate the Lady of Shalott's efforts to be a gazer in her love seeking, of not being gazed. The Lady of Shalott inhabitated in a many-towered and isolate island, where she was gazed by different persons, mainly male, including Lancelot. In the end of the poem, the Lady of Shalott, she determined to crack the magic mirror through which she could see the outside world or contact with it, to boat courageously in a tempest to...