On Angela Carter’s Novels From The Perspective Of Feminist Narratology

Angela Carter (1940-1992) is the feminist writer in the20th century with theobvious originality. Carter has a key influence on the contemporary Britain women’swriting. Elaine Shawalter saw her as worship of Britain men of letters. Within herwriting career for over20years, Carter devoted herself to deconstructing thedefinition of women’s nature in patriarchy myth. In her many works, Carteroverturned mechanical female image under traditional patriarchy shackle, shapedfemale images voicing their voice whose discourse power was deprived by malewriters, which helped restore female true and complete visage. In her works, there arefilled with many feminism ideas, so the study on her works is significant andmeaningful.Feminist narratology is just the combination of classic narratology and feminism,which takes re-catalogued narrative voice as entry point, and integrates the theoriesfrom the voice of theory in feminist literature criticism and narrative voice theory inclassic narratology. The ideology that integrates emotional and rational analysis waysprovides a reasonable way to analyze modern feminist works. The thesis, based on thetheory of feminism narratology, in terms of narrative voice and narrative point of view,analyzes the two novels by Angela Carter The Magic Toyshop and The Passion of NewEve, and explores how Carter utilizes the narrative skills to overturn the malediscourse and construct the female narrative authority so as to show her strongfeminism ideas and reflect her sexual politics.The thesis consists of three parts: introduction, main body and conclusion. The first part is introduction as Chapter1. It mainly introduces Angela Carter andher literature achievements, and the current research on her works at home and abroad.Then, the structure of the thesis is stated briefly.The second part is the main body of the thesis, which is composed by threechapters. Chapter2is the brief introduction to feminist naratology. This part mainlyintroduces the birth of feminist narraology, the characteristics of feminist narratologyand the new analysis method in feminist narratology. It re-divides the types ofnarrative voice, including authorial voice, personal voice, and communal voice.Narrative voice is the media in the narrative works between narrator and the story, andis also the sign to show narrator and story existence (Zhang Wei,2005:108). Chapter3and Chapter4respectively analyze the narrative skills in The Magic Toyshop andThe Passion of New Eve, and attach great importance to the relationship betweennarrative voice, narrative point of view and narrative authority. In The Magic Toyshop,Carter utilized the narrative mode with authorial narrative voice which shares strongerauthority and double perspectives (i.e. omniscient point of view and the protagonist’slimited pointed view), and the thesis mainly discusses the return of female voice，thefight for subjectivity and the shaping for new female image. And the destroying of themagic toyshop means the end of patriarchy. In The Passion of New Eve, Carterutilized the narrative mode with personal voice and bisexual narrative perspective.With the recall of Eve, Eve’s female identity was confirmed step by step. Meanwhile,Eve learnt the women’s hard living situation, and saw the failure of the extremefeminist movement and the overthrow of extreme patriarchy. Finally, Eve acceptedher female identity and realized that the revenge for sex was love.The last part of the thesis is conclusion as Chapter5. It concludes the analysisresults of previous parts. It assures that Carter utilizes several narrative skills in termsof narrative voice (including authorial voice and personal voice) and narrative point ofview (combination and shifting of points of view), undermines the male authority andconstructs the female narrative authority, manifests her feminism thoughts and heridea to establish the harmonious bisexual value with super binary opposition.Meanwhile, the thesis points out some limitations and future research suggestions. The author will keep on going and try to make contribution to the development ofChinese literature.