The Androgynous Study Of Margaret From Virginia Woolf's Perspective Of Androgyny

Elizabeth Gaskell is an English social novelist in the Victorian age who is known as “one of the outstanding novelists” with writers of the same period such as George Eliot,Thackeray and Dickens.Based on Woolf's androgynous concept,the thesis analyses Margaret,the heroin of the novel North and South.Gaskell depicts various heroines who show both femininity and masculinity.They are different from the traditional “angels in the house” of the Victorian age.From these characters,we can see better Gaskell's expectations on the rise of androgynous new image of women.Her androgynous concept is in accordance with Virginia Woolf's concept of androgyny.Woolf is the first writer who clearly puts forward the concept of androgyny in literature and makes the statement that masculinity and femininity preside in each individual and the two should live in harmony together.This is the tentative solution to females' extrication from the Phallocentricism.Gaskell creatively integrates this view into the creation,setting the background of the industrial revolution,she creates North and South.Through the analysis,the author calls on people to re-examine the relationship between the sexes in order to achieve gender equality.This thesis first introduces Elizabeth Gaskell's life,her novel creation and the researches on her life and works at home and abroad.It puts forward the research object and the significance of this thesis based on previous research results.Based on Virginia Woolf's concept of androgyny the thesis analyzes Gaskell's industrial and social novel North and South.The body part analyzes the androgynous characteristics of Margaret from her personality and appearance.Based on the research of the connotation of the concept of androgyny and Margaret's gradual growth with Higgins and Thornton's final androgynous harmony as supplement,it derives the possibility and necessity of being androgynous and the final positive social impact of androgyny.The final part summarizes the research results of this thesis and reiterates the significance of Virginia Woolf's concept of androgyny in modern society and points out the shortcomings of this research and the significance of this research to the study of Gaskell's works.