Another Kind Of Daughters Of Eve

It is not lack of the "madwoman" personage images in the western literature for us, what is lack of is all-round investigations, discussions and system researches on the groups of this unique personage images. A widely known "madwoman"image-Ophelia already appeared in the beginning of 17th century. But not until themiddle of the 20^th century , the book Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason (1965) had been appeared, which commented a little bit on this kind of personage images of "madness". Till 1979, the work The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination which systematically analyzed "madwoman" personage images of 19th century was born. Henceforth, there is no more work discussing about the "madwoman" personage images except Female Malady: Women, madness, and English Culture, 1830-1980, which did research on the relationship of the English culture and female mental diseases. The great majority of groups of "madwoman" personage images were still forgotten by the people in the western literature.Therefore, this thesis chooses some "madwoman" personage images in the classic western literature works from the beginning of 17th century to the 20th century(which covered about 4 centuries), so as to do research on the groups of "madwoman" personage images. The thesis tries to adopt two main methods which are the Thematic Study of Comparative Literature and Feminist Criticism, in order to find out the changes of the groups of "madwoman" personage images and sum up the types of the groups of "madwoman" personage images,and analyze the characters and nature of the groups of "madwoman" personage images in different counties and different times. And in a further step the thesis discusses the influence and control of different societies, different experiences, different writers' attitudes to women which mold the groups of "madwoman" personage images. Meanwhile, the thesis rethinks the complicated culture contained by groups of images. The thesis also tries to probe the alternation, enrichment and innovation of the techniques of expression and artistries which applied in molding the groups of "madwoman" personage images.