Wandering Between Other And Self

Angela Carter was a contemporary female writer in Britain. She had great skill in narrative and saw herself as a storyteller or a maker of narratives. The thesis aims to make a study on Carter's second novel The Magic Toyshop on the basis of narratology, in the purpose of presenting its unique narrative dimensionality and exploring hidden contradictory female ideology and existing situation: wandering between other and self, drifting between submission and resistance.The thesis is an attempt to elucidate how Angela Carter artfully employs narrative archetypes, narrative point of view and narrative voice to reflect latent tension of contradictory female ideology. The thesis is divided into following five parts. The first chapter intends to make a literary review on Angela Carter and introduces the academic significance of the thesis. The subsequent three chapters are devoted to presenting a detailed analysis of narrative strategies in The Magic Toyshop on the theoretical ground of narratology. It makes an attempt to prove that deployment of these narrative strategies is an effective technique to convey the content of female ideology in three aspects: narrative archetype, narrative point of view and narrative voice. The second chapter illustrates that Carter's "new wine in old bottle" technique can be perceived as applying "Fallen Eve" biblical archetype and "Heroin Journey and Quest" folklore archetype into structure arrangement and character description, which in turn highlights the thematic concern of female contradictory consciousness in patriarchal culture. The third chapter discusses that Carter uses double narrative points of view-combination and shift of the omniscient point of view and character's limited point of view to elaborate the female contradictory situation. In The Magic Toyshop female protagonist's subjectivity can be constructed through her perception and central consciousness. Nevertheless omniscient narrator's objective intervention restricts her perception scope. The fourth chapter combines with the theory of feminist narratology, aiming to analyze how the authorial voice helps the author to construct narrative authority in the novel. On the other hand, the presence and absence of female voice are also reflection of female contradictory consciousness. The last chapter of the thesis concludes that narrative strategies in The Magic Toyshop not only represent Angela Carter's artistic charm in writing, but also reflect its thematic significance of contradictory female ideology in a profound and vivid manner.