Margin And Subversion

Elizabeth Jolley is a radiant pearl in the 20th century Australian literature.Simultaneously, she holds a position of the world's 135 most famous women writers.Her works, to a certain degree, reflect women's lives of leisure classes, especiallytheir urgent demand for seeking companions of same sexes. Therefore, as far as thecontent is concerned, Jolley's novels are anti-traditional. An important content shedisplays is the love between women, namely, homosexuality. Many heroines in herworks are homosexuals, eager for female's love. These characters belong to themarginal group, no matter in reality or in literature works. However, in Jolley'simaginary world, these characters move from margin to the center, exploring andrecognizing their self-identity, hence subverting the traditional female images. Nearlyall of Jolley's novels reflect women's experiences and lives, especially the friendshipbetween women. This paper will analyze three works of different periods in order toreveal Jolley's distinctive feminist ideas.So far, domestically, the research of Jolley's works is still in the early stage. Thefew papers are illustrated with post-colonialism or narrative methods. Seldom do theyanalyze her works from the perspective of the feminism. So I hope my paper can fillthe blank.In this thesis, I will use feminism to analyze female images and relationshipsbetween women in Jolley's three novels: Palomino, Miss Peabody's Inheritance andThe Well. The aim is to reveal Jolley's distinctive feminist ideas and the process ofwomen's exploration of their own identities. The loss of self-identity is the result fromwomen's suffering from oppression. Patriarchy forces females blindly obey the normsand prevent them from recognizing their own needs. They lose selves and becomeothers. Otherness is the special situation and status that feminism emphasizes. Whatthe root for the loss of women's identity and how to rebuilt their identity are the issuesthat feminists care about. In these three novels, Jolley seems to provide possiblesolutions for women's crisis of the self.Jolley is an author who has betrayed the traditional concepts of values. She completely subverts the traditional female images and the human beings stereotypesabout the order and culture of the two sexes. She holds the belief that female imagesare not unitary and stereotyped but a rich composite. She implies that femalefriendship is a means to realize self-awareness and self-exploration. With thedepicting these female relationships, the author has achieved the goal to subvert thecenter with margin, deny the authority and criticize the rationale. She provideswomen's liberation with new angles.This thesis consists of four chapters. The first chapter will show some briefintroduction of the author and her creativity. At the same time, it will contain somecritics' researches. Chapter two is the part in which the process of three heroines'exploration of self-identity will be analyzed to reveal that patriarchy is root for theiralienation. Chapter three will focus on the female images in these three novels.Through analyzing these images specifically from the perspectives of sexualpreference, angel in the house and female desire and creativity, the author's aim tosubvert the traditional female images and rebuilt new ones is reached. In the lastchapter, a conclusion that Elizabeth Jolley expresses her feminist ideas in these threenovels is drawn.