Female Images In European And American Cultural Collison

As a famous novelist, critic of literature, playwright and prose writer, Henry James occupies an important place in Britain and American history of literature. Carrying forward the realistic tradition of the 19^th century, he gradually shifts his novel's focus to the consciousness of characters and the techniques of expression, which makes him one of the pioneers in western consciousness novels. The majority of Henry James's whole-life novel creation is based on international subject matters and runs through three periods of his literature creation. From his early period of exploring European and American cultural collision to his late period of seeking their harmony, Henry James creates many female images to the life with the medium of novel text. In such two different cultural collision, the female characters still hold to their own spiritual morals and conscience and pursue freedom and happiness. This paper takes those female images in Henry James's novels as the point of tangency, analyzing groups of female images and revealing their choices, confusions and pursuits in the European and American cultural collision, and some deep hiden implicature. And in the meantime it probes into the origin and significance of European and American cultural theme about international subjects, and unique angles of view women.The whole paper is divided into three parts as the following:Part One introduces groups of the female images in Henry James's novels. They fall into American cultural images, European cultural ones, and Europeanized American ones according to cultural regions, and innocent images, elegant ones and hypocritical ones according to their characteristics.Part Two discusses the background of European and American cultural collision in Henry James's novel creation which is that it is the exorable trend for the cultural development from meeting to collision. The females' inclination in the European and American collision consists of cultural one, moral and value one.Part Three explains the origin and significance of European and American cultural theme, and unique angles of view women. By analyzing the international subject matters of novel creation and groups of female images in Henry James's novels, this part probes into Henry James's views to cultures and women and the significance of his exploring cultural harmony and angles of view to women.