A Study Of Women’s Existential Situation In A. S. Byatt’s Possession From The Perspective Of Power Theory

A. S. Byatt is a well-known contemporary British female scholarly novelist and critic. Once published in1990, her magnum opus Possession received wide attention and appraisals from both critics and readers. In the same year it was awarded the Booker Prize, the British top prize for literature and the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, which established her position in the British literary arena.The novel has multiple themes, among which, because of the identity as a female writer, the author’s humanistic concern for women is outstanding. This thesis tries to apply Michel Foucault’s power theory to interpret the oppression upon women and women’s resistance to it. The exploration of women’s existential situation in the novel will be divided into the following three parts:women constrained by disciplinary power; women influenced by power; how women resist to the power in such existential situation.This thesis is composed of three parts:the introduction, the body and the conclusion. The body contains three chapters. The first chapter mainly analyzes women’s existential situation under the constraint of disciplinary power from three perspectives, respectively women under men’s gaze, women confined in the house and academic field, and women under behaviors correcting. The second chapter probes into women’s existential situation under the influence of power. The particular product of power in this novel is patriarchal ideology. Women in Possession are trained to be docile in the environment, and further tamed spiritually. Some women are even being excluded as madness by power because of their dissimilation, so that they cannot fight against it. Blanche Glover, who finally commits suicide, is such a victim in the control of power. The last chapter gives an illustration of women’s various ways of resistance in thus predicament. They articulate female voice through writing diaries and letters, subverting traditional gender stereotypes by rewriting myths, building a new experimental lifestyle to obtain self-independence and constructing female professional identity to deconstruct male’s master role.By applying Foucault’s power theory to analyze the novel, this thesis provides a comparatively new approach to better understanding Byatt’s humanistic concern towards women. The portrayal of women’s existential situation in Byatt’s Possession profoundly reflects Byatt’s anxiety towards women’s existential situation and her aspiration for women’s breaking away from bondage and oppression in such plight as well as obtaining self-emancipation and self-independence.