Trace And Interpret The Image Of "Possession" From The Cultural And Literary Aspect

Margaret Atwood, the renowned Canadian poet, novelist and critic, has a very high prestige in the international literary area. She got the reputation as"the queen of Canadian literature"due to her rich works and prizes. Her works manifest the following three themes: the Feminism which closely concerns the survival condition of women, the Canada national consciousness and the ecologism advocating environmental protection. She has the profound literary attainments. Massive modern art techniques, such as the symbol, the metaphor, the open -ended, the parody etc, can be seen in her eleven published novels. Atwood is very fond of the fairy tales, the myth and the Gothic novels, it reflect in her writings is the utilization of some supernatural factors like monster and ghost.Her ninth novel Alias Grace is a historical novel, it based on a true murder case. The dissertation will analyze the image of"possession"in this works to investigate Atwood's particular writing strategies. It constituted by three chapters :Chapter one: By introduce Atwood's literary accomplishments systematically, we can learn the motifs——"victim"and"survival"——always exist in her writings. Furtherly explore why Atwood prefer Gothic art techneques from the aspect of her early reading and Canada's literary tradition's affect and so on. In Alias Grace, she integrate the factor of Gothic novel and detective novel excellent, borrow the image of"possession"to organize story.Chapter two: It is necessary to trace the image of"possession"from culture aspect."possession"not only can be understood ghost"possession", but also god or spirit"possession". Separate trace from the religion, myth, literary theory aspect, research the phenomenon of"possession"exist's necessity and efficacy. It give the rights of speak and act to those powwows, witchs, poets or victims. While modern pathology make a scientific explain, but the track from ancient to nowadays also demonstrate the process which scientific thought replaced mythic thought, irrational changed into rational. In Alias Grace, the reconstruction of the image of"possession"represent the revert of Atwood's scientific thought, meantime it is her writing strategy of state for the weak.Chapter three: We can regard"possession"as an image of literature and analyze it by Foucault's theory and feminism critic theory. In the text, the mad woman"Grace"subvert the hierarchy between angle\devil, tameness\wickedness. It's the criterion that traditional culture classified women. By the ghost"Whitney", the mad woman can freely charge and revenge to patriarchal society. It is the means that the weak (women) who lose their voice, self and homeland acquires the rights of speak. Furthermore, this novel compare Canada with feminine status, both of them were oppressed and at the margin. Canadian subject consciousness withered because a long time colonization. In order to make Canadian to realize the condition that the whole country fell into inferiority and the lack of independence, Atwood adopt"possession"in her text to illustrate this status.Reconstruct the image of"possession"can be seen as Atwood's writing strategy which make women stop muting to issue their voice. We also consider this as Atwood's mythical thought return, it is the only opportunity that the heroine would jump out of the power mode. it is a kind of metaphor survival condition that belongs to all who lost ego, soul or homeland. By"possession", the theme of feminism and nationalism in which Atwood consistently persists gets fully display. It can also infer the condition of fighting, compromising and confrontation between ego and the other, male and female, local cultural and foreign culture will keep on.