On The Feminine Consciousness In The Blind Assassin

The Blind Assassin is Margaret Atwood’s tenth novel. Because of the uniquedesign, it won the highest award of contemporary English novel—Booker Prizein2000. Both domestic and foreign scholars have studied the novel in depth fromvarious angles, but most of them focus on the structure and narrative skills due to theuniqueness of them while the study on feminine consciousness in the text is not much.Also, the studies on feminine consciousness mainly focus on Iris and Laura,neglecting other female characters. Therefore, this thesis analyzes various femalecharacters and their feminine consciousness from the feminist perspective, combinedwith historical, social, and cultural factors to reveal the relationship among feminineconsciousness, women’s status and the oppression of women.This thesis mainly consists of five parts. The introduction part briefly introducesMargaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin and the previous studies on it. At the same timethis part reviews the history of mankind and women’s status in it and women’s imagereflected in literature. Based on the summary of the images, this thesis defines thefeminine consciousness and divides it into three types, namely: the patriarchalconsciousness, self-consciousness and feminism consciousness. The first chapteranalyzes the constraint of women caused by patriarchal consciousness andgrandmother Adelia and Iris in early stage who are under the control of thisconsciousness, pointing out that the patriarchal consciousness is the spiritual root ofwomen’s oppression and limitation. The second chapter analyzes the female self-consciousness and Liliana and Iris in medium stage, pointing out that compared withpatriarchal consciousness, self-consciousness is much more progressive, but it stillfails to give women freedom, independence and equality. The third chapter analyzesthe role of feminism consciousness in the liberation of women and the resistance ofLaura and Iris in later stage, pointing out that the feminism consciousness is thespiritual weapon for women to achieve independence, freedom and equality. The finalconclusion summarizes that in The Blind Assassin, Atwood shapes Iris’s family andmany other distinctive and vivid images of women to show the history of Canadianwomen and points out a road to the self-liberation for the women in plight.