“Imagined Community” In Penelope Fitzgerald's Offshore

As one of the most preeminent English novelists in the late twentieth century, Penelope Fitzgerald(1916-2000) has received highly acclaimed prestige in the literary circles of both Britain and the USA. Many of her works wrote about the construction of the shared national imagination and identification, which is of great significance to the construction of the British national community. And Offshore(1979) is one of them. Based on what happened to the residents of houseboats in Battersea in 1961, the novel reflects many problems in the British society after World War II, as well as the marginalized people's helplessness in the process of constructing their community in modern urban society.Through discussing the two distinct groups between the offshore community and the onshore society in Offshore, this thesis attempts to explore the barge owners' failure of constructing an “imagined community” in the alienated London city and their reconstruction of a new community. First, this thesis examines the offshore community. Through the analysis of “offshore” as a marginalized and nonhierarchical community, this thesis argues that it presents the barge owners' yearning for an ideal living space and the British's nostalgia for a traditional rural community. Furthermore, the onshore society is another important concern of the thesis. By analyzing “onshore” as a mercenary and indifferent society, this thesis aims to represent the absence of family love, the lack of collective consciousness and the death of community in urban society. Finally, this thesis explores the disbandment and reconstruction of community. On the one hand, with the disbandment of the offshore community, people should have a reflection on social reality. On the other hand, the barge owners have no choice but to return to the onshore society and reconstruct their community by blood. This thesis argues that the transition from the traditional rural community to the modern commercial society is an inevitable result in the process of urbanization and it shows expectations to build a new community in the city.According to Raymond Williams, there had been an imagined country in English literary tradition, which is the reflection on modernization. Penelope Fitzgerald retrospects the British rural community and strives to establish a new community in the modern city, which in a way helps constructing the “imagined” British community and collective memory.