A Study On Fingersmith From The Perspective Of Queer Theory

Sarah Waters is an outstanding British lesbian writer who has got a lot of rewards.Fingersmith, her third novel, was commented as a New York Times Notable Book,and shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in2002, the same year when it waspublished. Waters’ novels are well known for the detailed depiction of the VictorianAge, and the ingenious design of the story structure. This novel is not the exception.Waters uses double-first person narration split between the two mainprotagonists—Maud and Susan. The readers are nearly gnawing the pages and can’thelp turning the pages until the end of the story.This study tries to explain that Waters achieves her goal of creating a new lesbianromance: two irrelevant girls’ lives have an intersection and fall in love with eachother in the Victorian metropolitan city London. Besides, even though Waters was notcreating the story based on queer theory, the novel has the spirit that queer theoryrecommends. This study adopts the main principles of queer theory to point out someof the problems lesbians will encounter with and how they overcome the difficultiesare in accordance with Waters’ idea—there are more than one way to be lesbian.Becoming self dependent and bravely pursuing same sex lover is another option to belesbian. Fight against the obsolete tradition that oppress on human beings and fightagainst heterosexual hegemony are the main idea of queer theory. Therefore, bothqueer theory and Waters provide some precious guidance on homosexuals in theirself-identification and self-realization process.