A Postmodernist Female Gothic Reading Of Fingersmith

Sarah Waters is well-famous for her works that set in Victorian society andcharacterizing lesbian protagonists. Her novels have won many prizes and placed animportant place in the world. But recently, researches on Sarah Waters’s novel have primarilydealt with the aspects of history and lesbian or queer theory. Many Waters’s novels have somekinds of Gothic coloring. Critics have pointed out the Gothic elements in her novel, but few ofthem have done this in connection with postmodernism. This thesis takes one of her mostrepresentative works Fingersmith as research subject.Chapter2deals with the development of gothic space in postmodern times. The stage ismoved from the largely rural environment to the cities. Waters deals with the classic Gothicspace in two ways: to treat time as a circle and to treat Victorian London itself as a palimpsest.This development closely relates to the postmodern human beings’ anxiety of their ownexistence.Chapter3interprets the theme of Fingersmith from the gender and identity of one of theheroines Maud in the postmodernist context. Through analyzing Maud’s suffering in thepatriarchal society, and under the help of homosexual person-Susan, she gets theindependence and starts a new life. Maud’s gender and identity both are unstable and she is arepresentative of the postmodern people who try to find their own identities. Waters borrowsthe Gothic form to show the concern with identity.Chapter4discusses Fingersmith from the aspects of fiction, history and intertextuality.Fingersmith has the characteristics of history and fiction. It is a fictional story that under thebackground of London in the19th century. The interaction between fiction and history makesup the major poetics of this novel: intertextuality. It adapts and pastiches classic Gothic texts.This technique adds to the author a sort of originality. Meanwhile, she stresses the intertextualrelationship between life and texts, which has never been in the Gothic genre.Waters has an obsession with the Gothic fiction and freely admits its influence on her.She not only pays tribute to the Gothic by imitating and pastiching classic Gothic texts, but argues the problems of human beings’ existence and identities in her gothic context. Also, shediscusses the relationship between life and art. With no doubt, she explores a new area forGothic novels in postmodern times.