On Female Consciousness In Anita Brookner’s Hotel Du Lac

Anita Brookner(1928—) is known for her vivid creation of women intellectuals,and depiction of female experience, which become a distinct feature of her writing.Hotel du Lac is a representative work of her feminist writing series, in which she delicately and exquisitely delineates the experiences of the women intellectuals in love and marriage. Their living predicaments are thus presented by Anita Brookner.This thesis ventures to take feminist theory and narrative theory as the underpinning,to explore the connection between female consciousness and women characters as well as narrative strategies adopted, aiming to disclose Anita Brookner’s female consciousness as a woman writer in writing Hotel du Lac.Chapter one briefly introduces Brookner’s background and Hotel du Lac, the literature review, and the thesis structure. Chapter two focuses on the female protagonist aiming to reveal her female consciousness. Chapter three first explores a typical female world Brookner creates in Hotel du Lac with its symbolic meaning as a patriarchal prison. Then it gives a detailed analysis of the unawakened women living there, in order to present different gender roles those women without female consciousness play in different phases throughout their life under patriarchy. Chapter four probes into the narrative perspective and narrative voice Brookner adopted in the novel, so as to disclose Brookner’s attempts to voice female experience and to construct female narrative authority, and finally testifies the distinct female consciousness in Brookner’s Hotel du Lac. The last part draws a conclusion by demonstrating the female consciousness reflected both in story and discourse, which verifies the noticeable female consciousness of Brookner’s writing and reveals her deep concern for women’s living.