Elithbeth Bowen’s Pursuit Of Female Identity Manifested In Her Three Works

Elizabeth Bowen, a renowned Anglo-Irish writer, has been acclaimed in theEuropean literary history of20thcentury with her short stories, fictions, literarytheories and biographical works.Although Bowen is well known in western literary world, she has not won mchcritical attention in China. Therefore, in order to introduce Bowen to more readers,three famous works of hers will be analyzed using literary theories such as feminismand Freud’s psychoanalysis.The introduction of the thesis introduces Bowen’s life, works and the explanationof the themes and writing techniques. Literature review is followed to state the currentresearch situation of Bowen and the analytical perspective of this paper.Chapter one is devoted to the analysis of her famous short story “The DemonLover” from the perspective of women’s pursuing of equal standing with men. Twoaspects—the pursuing of equal rights in love relationship and the right to enjoyfreedom and chasing one’s happiness are analyzed in detail.Chapter two is the illustration of the pursuit of self-growth in her novel TheDeath of the Heart from two aspects namely physical growth and psychologicalgrowth.Chapter three is to analyze The Heat of the Day from the perspective of pursuinga sense of belongingness. Searching for an ideal love relationship and for a “big house”are two representations of the sense of belongingness.In the conclusion part, the paper sums up all the above three chapters to lead tothe conclusion that pursuit of identity is truly an important theme of Bowen’s worksand Bowen herself is living a life of constant pursuit.This thesis is an endeavor to explore the theme of identity in Elizabeth Bowen,which hopefully will contribute to the understanding of20thcentury women writers.