Crossing The Boundaries: A Feminist Construction Of Vampire In Fledgling

Octavia Butler is an internationally acclaimed African-American science fiction writer whose works explore such themes as race, gender, and sexuality. In her latest work Fledgling, Butler introduces vampire, a Gothic element, into her science fiction, rewrites the previously male-dominant vampire world from the feminist perspective, and revives the vampire lore with science fiction know-how. In contrast to the scholarly attention given to Butler’s previous works, Fledgling has not received its due attention and the study on the novel is still in its embryonic stage, which leaves room for further exploration.The purpose of this thesis is to provide a critical construction of feminist readability on the basis of the utopian and dystopian features of the novel as well as the relationship between them. The thesis aims to prove that the novel is a transformation from an apparent utopia into a complex critical utopia through the revelation of the dystopian features. It compares the novel with such classic vampires as Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Anne Rice’s Louis so as to reveal the utopian blueprint of the alternative Ina, and it also makes a comparison between Fledgling and Butler’s short story "Bloodchild", exploring the differences so that we might perceive the evolution of her feminist ideas.