A Symphony Of Rebellion Against Fate: On Female Characters In The Thorn Birds

Based on the special Australian culture, The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough,a famous Australian writer, unfolds love experience and fate of the females of threegenerations in the Creeley family, two of which are the eternal themes in the literature.From feminism perspective, this thesis mainly focuses on the females' fate in thenovel, trying to analyze their spirits of thorn birds, which means that for their dreams,they are courageous to rebel against traditional female fate in different ways. Thenovel also manifests the process that females wake up, gradually grow and know howto pursue their love and accomplish themselves, and their beauty of both spirit andhumanity in that special ages. Furthermore, the thesis will reveal the root of theirfates.In the foreword, the thesis gives us a brief introduction to the novel and thewriter, and explains why I choose the subject. It also includes the basis and meaningof this article, and how to conceive it.In the first chapter, the thesis has a discussion about female characters in thenovel, mainly focusing on their dissatisfaction with traditional female fates, theirreaction against traditional female fates and their interior experience of awaking andgrowing. In the second chapter, beginning with the analysis of male characters, thethesis tries to bring the roots of females' tragedy in the novel to light, chieflypatriarchal Catholicism, mateship and their own limitations. In the third chapter, thethesis expounds symbolism of thorn bird and the females' spirit they show intranscending their misery in the novel.