| A. J. Greimas, French linguist and semiotician, was one of the representatives of structuralist narratology. He propounds his theoretical models in the fields of semiotics, semantics and narratology. Greimas proposes the semiotic theory that can be applied to both literary narrative texts and social narrative texts. Greimas divides the texts analysis into two levels, i.e. deep structure and surface structure. The dichotomy is established in order to give a distinction, among semiotic structures, between two levels of depth: the fundamental (deep) grammar and the narrative (surface) grammar.The Introduction gives a brief account of Greimas'semiotic theory and introduces the conflict between women's pursuit of love and the patriarchal ideology, preparing for the analysis of this conflict with Greimas'narrative structure.Chapter I scrutinizes Greimassian deep structure and surface structure. From Greimas'point of view, the deep structure has a close relationship with the theme while the surface structure has connection with characters and plot. In deep structure research, Greimas proposes Semiotic Square and applies Semiotic Square to the explanations of literary text. In surface structure research, Greimas establishes six Actants and Actants' mode to form the Narrative Grammar.Chapter II concentrates on the analysis of female tragedy with the deep structure. After presenting the Semiotic Square in the cases of Desdemona, Emilia and Bianca, the theme is revealed– women's pursuit of true love with great effort in the face of traditional male authority.Chapter III analyzes the female tragedy with the surface structure. From the analysis of the six Actants, Actants'Mode, the absence of Helper and the dislocation of lover's role, the theme is reflected again.The Conclusion, by recapitulating the main points of the thesis, indicates that the love story in Othello is doomed to be a tragedy. This is the tragic fate of women. And the inequality in love and marriage is the root of their tragedy.
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