Women Tragedy In Patriarchal Society

Charles Dickens is a great novelist in Victorian England. Great Expectations is his later work, which shows his mature conceptions towards the society.Recently, the researches on Great Expectations at home and abroad have transformed from emphasizing the analyses on the contents to comprehensive studies, and have formed multi-existence pattern. In addition, the researches break through the phase of unitary development, that is the humanism in his novel, his criticism on the social injustice, the compassionate to the oppressed as well as his intense sense of humor and integrated researches are on a large scale. With the development of social science and theory of Literature and Art, his novels attract the attention of scholars from a wide variety of critical approaches: feminist, new historicist, psychoanalytic, deconstructionist as well as from more traditional historical and formalist perspectives. But the studies on female characters of his work are still not enough. Although Dickens did not pay much attention to describing the female characters in Great Expectations, with the development of feminist literary criticism, it is necessary to analyze the female characters in his works, and it is of great help to reinterpret the women figures in Great Expectations so as to have a clear understanding of the women status in Victorian Age. And thus we will have a deeper research on the novel.This thesis is divided into six parts. Part One is a brief introduction to the author and his work Great Expectations as well as literature review and current research status on Great Expectations, and an introduction to feminist literary criticism; Part Two is an interpretation of the patriarchal tradition and the traditional women images in Victorian Age. Part Three emphasizes on the concrete manifestations of women tragedy in Victorian Age in Great Expectations through Victorian women's living tragedy and the lack of female consciousness. Victorian women's living tragedy mainly reflects in the high value of the society to domestic angels, the deficiency in education, the limitations in occupations as well as the inequality in marriage. And the author of the thesis pays more attention to analyze several main women images in Great Expectations: Miss Havisham, Estella, Biddy and Mrs. Joe from the points of view of the"escape"consciousness, the"prison"consciousness, the loss of voice and the loss of self and points out that in Victorian society, under the control of patriarchal tradition, women tragedy is inevitable; Part Four pays more attention to analyze the causes of women tragedy in Victorian society, mainly Victorian social background and women's individual limitations. And women's individual limitations include women's limitations in ideology and their dependency in economy. Then the author of the thesis makes an evaluation of the novelist Charles Dickens as well as his work Great Expectations and points out that the deep-rooted patriarchal conceptions are the main reasons of women tragedy. Part Five refers to the enlightenment of Victorian women tragedy to modern women. The author of the thesis points out that women should enhance their female consciousness and improve their capabilities in every aspect through the influences of feminist movement and feminist literary criticism so as to realize the true equality between men and women. Part Six gets the conclusion. The author of the thesis indicates that in Victorian Age, women tragedy was inevitable because of the bondage of the patriarchal tradition. So in modern times, women should break away from the restrictions of traditional conceptions and make strenuous efforts to realize their self-awareness so as to gain the respect of the society to women.