The Pursuit Of Harmony

As a female writer, Angela Carter plays an essential role in English literature. With the influence of her special and typical writing style, Carter and her works appeared into our attention once again in England in2006. Referring to her works, there is a combination of some types, including Magic realism, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Gothic, Feminism and Postmodern categories. And from another aspect, she shows her amazing prolific ability to the world. In her life, she creates nine novels, three collections of short stories, four collections of children’s stories and some collections of journalism and essay. Jeff VanderMeer has once concluded that Angela Carter is definitely the most creative writer in the20th century and few people can keep up with her.Her novel The Passion of New Eve was published in1977, when it drew the public attention and brought a number of pros and cons from the critics. Jeff VanderMeer sorts this novel as a cruel and ugly book, which is flatulent but pedantic, which is indignant but profane. This novel subverts the old Greek mythology and creates the new Eve, which forms Carter’s special writing style "new wine in old bottles". As her works gets into the public’s eyes, more and more critics make use of disparate methods to interpret her works, such as archetypical criticism, intertextuality and feminism. Although scholars in China have researched this novel, but the methods they use are limited to this sense. Therefore, based on these studies, this thesis is prepared to apply Taoism to this novel, and then make people acquire the sense of Taoism in our life.The thesis consists of five chapters. The first chapter introduces Angela Carter’s creative process, collections of her works and some analysis and criticism about this novel from different scholars. Regarding this as the foundation, the paper is to find out the discussing points and then give out the subject and the whole structure of this paper. The second chapter is set as the theoretical framework in this paper, including yin-yang theory, utopia theory, and the major theories of Taoism used in this paper. The third chapter is the application of the first theories to analyze The Passion of New Eve. In this novel, Carter resists the male-centered society situation and fights to get rid of the limit of patriarchy upon female and reconstruct the gender roles and relationship between genders to build a society and a relationship with fairness and humanity. This is in the same way with Taoism, such as the theory "a small state with a minimal population". The fourth chapter makes use of Taoist’s ecological theories to interpret the novel. Through analyzing, the target is to get to make people feel the sense of harmony, which lies in individuality, society and nature. And ultimately, it comes to the last part, that is, conclusion. With the application of Taoism, this thesis attempts to offer the readers a chance to get a better understanding of Taoism and its deep influence nowadays from studying of Angela Carter and the novel The Passion of New Eve and provide another approach to figure out Carter’s pursuit of harmony.