On The Body Politics In Angela Carter’s Three Short Stories

Angela Carter is regarded as one of the most original female writers in Britain.She has a profound literary background and reads in many fields.Thus Carter’s works are provided with diversity,different from the traditional British works.She is known as “myth witch” for her rewriting of classic fairy tales.Her classic work,The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories(1979)has won the attention and appreciation of scholars both at home and abroad.Carter has always been concerned about women’s bitter experiences and fates.The female theme runs through almost all her works,especially female body and desire are essential themes in her writing.She has devoted herself to writing for the women’s real liberation.Based on the theory of Michel Foucault’s body politics,the thesis tries to illustrate how to reconstruct female subjectivity and the importance of harmonious bisexual relationship by analyzing the female bodies and male bodies thoroughly in Carter’s three short stories in The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories,“The Bloody Chamber”,“The Tiger’s Bride” and “The Company of Wolves”.Women are subjected to oppression both physically and spiritually in the patriarchal society.However,Carter creates a new type of woman without fear of patriarchy.These new women express their freedom and desire through their bodies’ awakening and resistance.Carter claims that only women learn to get self-liberation can they achieve the real liberation.The body is as important as the soul and it is an indispensable part of individuals.Women write their declaration from writing their own bodies,which explains Carter’s feminist thoughts.And from this way women can actually achieve the goals of resisting the oppression of patriarchal society and striving for the harmonious bisexual relationship.In addition to the introduction and conclusion,the thesis is composed of four chapters in the structure.In the introduction the author of the thesis briefly introduces Angela Carter’s literary status,the thesis’ s arrangement,research purpose and significance.The author also gives a brief introduction of Carter’s three short stories which the thesis will analyze.The first chapter mainly presents Angela Carter’s related researches and the related researches ofbody politics.The second chapter mainly analyzes the male bodies in three short stories to weaken the male body and masculinity,and expounds how to deconstruct the myth of male power.The third chapter mainly analyzes the female bodies in three short stories to strengthen female body and femininity,and states how to construct the female discourse.The second and third chapters are the main emphases of the thesis.The fourth chapter analyzes the metaphors in the short stories to reconstruct the female subjectivity,realize the harmonious development of the gender relationships and further sublimate the theme.The last part is the conclusion of the thesis.It starts from Carter’s devoting herself to the influence on the writing of female body to further reaffirm the importance of body political writing in realizing women’s emancipation and the reconstruction of female subjectivity.