A Way Out Of Predicament

Elizabeth Gaskell is an important female writer in England during early and middle Victorian period. North and South is her second industrial novel and one of her masterpieces. During the Victorian Age, the accelerating development of industrialization exacerbated environmental problems, and the deep-rooted patriarchal ideology stimulated feminist concept. North and South conveys Mrs. Gaskell’s ecofeminist consciousness, whose emergence is closely related with the peculiar social background as well as her life experience. Ecofeminist criticism, fusing feminism and ecocriticism, is aimed at eliminating all kinds of inequality related to gender, race, class, etc. through overthrowing patriarchal ideology and oppressive dualism. The present thesis purports to make an ecofeminist study of North and South. In so doing, it intends to argue that Mrs. Gaskell is one of the forerunners of ecofeminist literary tradition in the history of English literature.This thesis is composed of five parts, including the introduction, three body chapters and conclusion. The introduction sketches briefly Elizabeth Gaskell and her major works, literature review of Elizabeth Gaskell, a brief review of the theory of ecofeminism together with thesis statement and structural layout of the present thesis.Chapter one mainly exposes the double oppression on nature and women from patriarchy by means of close reading. On the one hand, nature is the object of male exploitation; on the other hand, women are “the Other” in patriarchal society. Chapter two is centered on the protest against anthropocentrism and androcentrism reflected in North and South, the former mainly focusing on the affinity between nature and women and town inhabitants’ longing for nature, while the latter exploring anti-androcentrism respectively from the perspective of female characters and male characters in the novel. Chapter three puts forward the way out of predicament — a reconstructed harmonious relationship between men and women, masters and workers, the North and the South, and nature and humans, which reflects the novelist’s longing and appeal for an ideal world.The conclusion, by making a summary of the thesis, makes an affirmative as well as deficient evaluation about the ecofeminist concept in North and South. Taking Victorian social background and Mrs. Gaskell’s personal life experience into consideration, the thesis concludes that Mrs. Gaskell is one of the forerunners of ecofeminist literary tradition in English literary history.