Breaking The Cocoon Into A Butterfly

Margaret Atwood (1939-) is a world-famous Canadian novelist and poet, named “theQueen of Canadian Literature”. She has received the Booker Prize and Canadian GovernorGeneral’s Award and many other rewards, and she was once nominated for the Nobel Prize inliterature in2003. In Atwood’s works, natural environment and ecology are often her mainconcerns, but most of the novels are focused on women’s fate and living conditions. Cat’s Eyeis Atwood’s seventh novel and it is a representative of the state of women’s problems. Thenovel is seen as Atwood’s most artistically accomplished novel so far. Literary criticsanalyzed the novel from different aspects, for example, existence, postmodernism, children’sgames, and post-colonialism. The thesis tries to interpret the novel from the Female Gothicperspective and mainly focuses on the characteristics and significance of creation as a FemaleGothic novel. The thesis consists of six chapters.Chapter one focuses on the brief introduction to Atwood’s life and her works, hercharacteristics of creation, and Cat’s Eye itself.Chapter two gives an introduction to the literary genre—Gothic, including two sections.Firstly, it is about the theme, development, features and a brief literature review of Gothicnovels. Secondly, the thesis deals with the development process and features of FemaleGothic, and the differences between the Female Gothic and the traditional Gothic novel.Chapter three is the analysis of Cat’s Eye form the Female Gothic perspective, coveringthe theme, setting and image, characterization and supernatural factors—dreams and illusions.The analysis aims at discovering the features of the novel from the Female Gothic perspectiveand differences from the traditional Female Gothic novel. It is characterized inheritance andsubversion of Gothic novel.Chapter four provides a specific analysis of Elaine—the Female Gothic heroine,focusing on two aspects. Firstly, I focus on the analysis on Elaine’s spiritual shackles andphysical hurt, including two aspects----the trauma caused by her girl friends and Elaine’sinsecurity and anxiety caused by Josef and Jon; Secondly, Elaine has gotten mental encouragement, that is, deep love from her mother, father and elder brother and support andunderstanding from Ben.Chapter five is about Elaine’s awakening journey of female consciousness—breakingthe cocoon into a butterfly, including four parts, obedience to misfortune, escape from reality,rebellion against injustice and self-identify.Chapter six summarizes the brief life story of Elaine as the Female Gothic heroine andfrom the angle, Cat’s Eye is Female Gothic novel with the heritance and transcendence of thetraditional ones. Female with confidence and independence can be respected and acceptedand male and female should love and help each other in order to live a harmonious life.