On The Symbolic Art In The Seal Woman

Beverly Farmer (1941-), an well-known female Australian writer, publishes manynovels, short stories and non-fictions, which attract the attention of a number of critics all thetime and receives numerous awards. The bloom period of Farmer’s writing career is thevigorous development period of Western feminism, so her works reflect more or lesswomen’s pursuit of equality and independence in the era, expose women’s conditions asliving in the bottom of society dominated by patriarchy system, and the different reactions ofwomen facing the patriarchal oppressions: active resistance or passive acceptance. Based onpersonal experiences, the themes of Farmer’s novels are essentially the interactions andconflicts between different cultures, loneliness of women, men’s domestic violence, andalienations among people. The heroines in the Farmer’s novels often accept their destinypassively when they face the crisis in life, rather than taking the initiative to change theirdestiny. What’s more, they do not oppose actively to the patriarchal oppression, but retreat“back to the mother, nature, madness and death which are marked as female space.” On thewhole, the passivity of female role is an attractive and controversial characteristic in Farmer’snovels.The Seal Woman was published in1992, which describes how a woman of transnationalmarriage pursues her life-orientation after her husband died, and how she deals with theconflicts and integrations between different cultures in this process. Dagmar, a Danish girl,marries an Australian boy Finn, and she comes to Australian to recall her beloved husbandafter he died in an accident at sea. Farmer uses the legend of the seal woman as a symbol toexplain the life experiences and inner lonely feelings of Dagmar who loses her lover and is indilemma for being caught in a strange culture. The seal woman can not return to the sea forlosing her sealskin, while Dagmar loses her husband, which makes her difficult to integrateinto Australian life. Although Dagmar falls in love with another man, she unavoidably tastesthe loneliness and the pain of alienations in an unfamiliar environment, and finally goes backto her hometown Denmark. The novel is filled with legends, metaphors and varieties ofsymbolic images, which highlight and deepen the theme of the novel.Symbolism is the earliest, longest and most influential literary genre in modernliteratures. It tries to grasp the characteristics of literature and explore the meeting pointbetween subject and object; therefore, Synaesthesia theory has become the cornerstone ofsymbolism. For the subject matter, symbolists prefer to describe heroine’s visions and herinner feelings; in the artistic expressions, they deny the vague rhetoric and blunt preachingand prefer to writing novels by using the methods of symbols, cues, contrasts and associations. This dissertation takes symbolism as its theoretic basis to analyze how Farmer highlights hertheme by artistic techniques and rich symbols.This dissertation introduces firstly the purpose and significance of the study and thesynopsis, and present research state of The Seal Woman. Then, it gives a brief introduction totheoretical basis of the research: the concept of symbolism theory, its origin, and its presentresearch status. It also distinguishes the similarities and differences between symbolism andsymbol. Next, it analyzes the various symbolic images in the novel from three respects.Firstly, the symbolic meanings of the myths and legends: seal woman and Samuel Taylor.Dagmar’s experience is similar to the tragedy of the seal woman, and her losing lover is thesame as Samuel Taylor who lives under the gloomy shadows all day and cannot get free fromthe predicament. Secondly, four symbols of sceneries: the sea, the house, the marsh and thelighthouse. The sea symbolizes the source of life and the love between men and women, thehouse symbolizes the restrictions of women from the patriarchal society, the marshsymbolizes the entangled state of the dilemma, and the lighthouse symbolizes the vague hope.Thirdly, three symbols of animals: the seal, the spider and the cat. The seal symbolizes thehard life of Dagmar, the spider symbolizes that Dagmar can not get out of the gloomy shadowof her husband’s death and the cat highlights Dagmar’s loneliness. Finally, a summary of thedissertation: Farmer uses a plenty of images to build a symbolic world with visions, colorsand vividness, which shows a huge inclusive and ambiguity, and is a bridge to connectphysical world and spiritual world. Through the analysis of symbolic arts in the novel, readerscan appreciate further Farmer’s writing concept, the strict overall narrative structure, themeticulous construction and rich imaginations, in order to understand the inner world of thecharacters in the novel.