Fevvers's Identity Costruction In Nights At The Circus From The Perspective Of Gaze

Nights at the Circus(1984)is the master piece of Angela Carter(1940-1992)who is one of the most creative British female writers in twentieth century,reflecting the marginalized women's living condition against the background of traditional patriarchal society and their struggle to the male-dominated order in the process of subject consciousness awakening.Among them,heroine Fevvers who is a lowborn with congenital malformation suffers from the extremely huge pressure and alienated sights from the wide variety of people.Gender relationship has always been a central theme in Carter's works.She is good at creating unusual female roles to expose their sufferings of being excluded and oppressed,revealing how could they subvert their object position and finding a new outlet for the unequivalent gender relationship.Fevvers in Nights at the Circus not only retrieves her subject identity,but also sets a good example of identity construction to the aphasic subaltern and the population with unique appearance.On account of the unique writing style including the extensive use of multiple narrative voices and intertextual references,the domestic research achievements from those two perspectives are quite fruitful.While the author notices that Fevvers's prostitute family background,occupation as a circus performer and unique appearance of half human and half bird expose her to the public eyes all along,which is fitted into gaze theory.Moreover,there is a lack of systematic study on the problem of Fewers's identity construction from the perspective of visual culture at home.Therefore,based on the intensive reading of the text,this thesis is intended to analyze the gaze and counter-gaze in the novel so as to explore Fevvers's identity construction with gaze theory.This paper consists of three parts:introduction,body and conclusion.In the first part,the author mainly introduces the life of Angela Carter,the main content of the work and its current research status at home and abroad,the development of gaze theory,and the thesis's framework and writing purpose.The body part elaborates Fevvwers's identity construction from the following three aspects.Firstly,the particular predicaments that Fevvers are confronted with would be revealed.She simultaneously bears the gender discrimination,class oppression and unusual glances from the social mass.The absence of a sense of belonging gives rise to her dilemma of identity construction.Next,the root of her identity predicaments would be analyzed,that is,the gaze.Gaze is ubiquitous in the novel.Under the male's erotic gaze and the panoptic gaze of society,Fevvers's body is commodified,and her thought is disciplined to a tamed object by means of the punishment mechanism.Moreover,she is deprived of the discourse right and reduced to a marginalized other.All of those factors result in her loss of subject consciousness.Finally,the thesis discusses her strategy to break the predicaments and construct her subject identity.In the first place,she obstructs male's erotic gaze by means of visual isolation and deviation of traditional femininity to hinder the visual pleasure,so that his voyeuristic purpose would no be satisfied.Then,a positive resistance to the panoptic gaze is made by subverting the position of subject and object in the process of gaze,reseizing female's voice,and freeing from the bondage of thought.The conclusion part points out that the predicaments of Fevvers's identity construction are inextricably linked with the pervasive gaze in that predominantly patriarchal society.The sights containing voyeuristic desire and power projection which come from gender,class and the public make her gradually lose the subjectivity.Only the subversion of gaze position and the regain of initiative could help to break the shackles of identity predicaments.Analyzing the identity construction of the character in Nights at the Circus with gaze theory has some new ideas at present.It provides a new perspective and direction for the studies of Carter's other works.In addition,this thesis also gives some enlightenments to the marginalized population who are pursuing their subjectivity.Therefore,the research has a practical significance.