The Road Taken:a Feminist Analysis Of Amber’s Tragic Fate In Forever Amber

Kathleen Winsor (1919-2003) is one of important female writers in American contemporary literature. Her representative work Forever Amber as a historical romantic novel vividly reproduces women’s life in Restoration of England with distinctive theme and content, which is regarded as a controversial novel. Since its publication in 1944 it attracts a lot of attention from numerous readers and critics, causing a strong sensation in literature. It was once criticized by some literary critics and had even been banned in Boston but this can not stop readers’ affection for it. In 1947 a film named Forever Amber was adapted from the novel by the Hollywood in the United States and put on the screen, which promoted the novel’s popularity.Forever Amber is studied by many scholars from different perspectives. The foreign scholars pay more attention to its thought origin, writing background and a discussion of theme rather than specific analysis of the text explored by the scholars in our country from the perspectives of feminism, psychology and narration, plus the general introduction of the author and her works. This thesis intends to analyze the main heroine Amber’s tough and tragic fate from existential feminism proposed by Simone de Beauvoir whose representative work The Second Sex is considered as the bible for feminism. In the book Beauvoir points out that "One is not born, but rather becomes, woman."This thesis is composed of five parts. The first part is a brief introduction of the author Kathleen Winsor’s life experience, the main content of the novel Forever Amber, the literature review, the significance and organization of this thesis. The second introduces its theoretical principles, feminism, especially in Simone de Beauvior’s theory of existential feminism. The third part combined with the novel focuses on the analysis of Amber’s tragedy from her marriages, economy, social status and moral standards. The fourth part further explores the causes of Amber’s tragic fate and explains them in detail from two points:external and internal factors. In male-dominated society, women are men’s accessory, namely the Other. Amber gives up everything she has and sails to America because she loves Bruce, but in the end she gets nothing. The last part is the conclusion, helping readers profoundly grasp Amber’s tragic fate that is doomed.