Gender Study On Sarah Waters’ Writing Purpose Of Fingersmith

Sarah Waters (1966-) is a British contemporary writer famous for writing stories of maverick women in Victoria Age. Her works describe how the women in Victoria Age realize their self-identity and how they search for true love with delicate writing skills and full suspense design. Sarah’s works bring her many awards in literature and great praise from homosexual literary critics and mainstream media. As her representative novel, Fingersmith received widespread concerns because of her faithful description of Victorian Age and her concentrating on the stories of lesbian in marginal position. The studies on Fingersmith abroad and at home focus on Neo-historicism, Narrative style and Feminism. And this thesis attempts to interpret Sarah Waters’ writing purpose of Fingersmith from the perspective of two branches of gender study:Radical Feminism and Queer Theory.This thesis consists of five parts:Introduction, Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three and Conclusion.Introduction touches upon the life story and literary accomplishments of Sarah Waters and the synopsis of Fingersmith. It focuses on the literature review of Fingersmith, the purpose, significance and methods of the research of the thesis. It outlines Radical Feminism and Queer Theory as the theoretical basis of the research of the thesis.Chapter One exposes the female oppression of patriarchal society in the text. It analyzes the objective subordinate status of women in identity from dependent family status, low social status and slighted economic status. It analyzes the subjective subordinate status of women in ideology from educational inequality, stale moral values and unfair religious traditions. It summarizes that Sarah Waters’ purpose of describing the victims of the patriarchal society is to call the modern readers’ attention to female issues.Chapter Two tries to show Sarah Waters’ effort on deconstructing the patriarchy. It lists out some hypocritical, scoundrel and cowardly male images and makes the male authority step down the altar through this kind of uglification. It also gives some examples of insidious, absent and brutal mother’s images and challenges the female role assignment by this kind of subversion. It also redraws the Victorian society of different classes and realizes the deconstruction of patriarchy society.Chapter Three expounds the hypothesis of Sarah Waters to build a new social gender system and this is the innovation of this thesis. It employs Queer Theory to analyze the awakening of female consciousness and proves the importance of sisterhood by realizing self-identity and economic independence. It puts forward Sarah Waters’idea of constructing a new social gender system by analyzing the relationship between Radical Feminism and Queer Theory.Conclusion points out that the deep writing purpose of Sarah Waters, that is, she wants to encourage contemporary women to combine the other marginalized people to strive for equal and complete education. She believes that through the education they can appreciate their own value, ignore racial, gender and other discriminations, respect the differences between individuals and esteem the sexual orientations that differ from mainstream. Finally, through the formation of free choice in psychological gender, gender inequality will be eliminated, the patriarchal society will disappear and a new system of social gender in terms of ideology will come into being gradually.