| “Body” is not only a material entity but also an important concept in the western culture and literary works.By absorbing and employing the related ideas on body,contemporary female writers propose corporeal writing to unravel the suppressed living conditions of women in a patriarchal society from a new narrative perspective.Atwood is one of the writers who utilizes this theme to reveal and reflect the predicament of modern women.This dissertation analyzes one of her primary works from the perspective of body and explores the path of oppression,struggle and awakening of women in a male-dominated background,which is not only meaningful in deepening the study of Atwood’s work from a relatively new perspective,but also making some practical contributions to providing textual space for reflecting the essence of female predicament and the way of self-redemption.The thesis lays emphasis on the body politics and holds that body is the critical theme of The Handmaid’s Tale.Based on the theories of body proposed by Fouca ult and related feminist ideas of Irigaray,Beauvoir and so on,chapter one firstly probes into the various forms of corporeal oppressions to analyze the process of turning female body into a docile tool that works for the interests of patriarchal culture with discipline and punish.As is know that oppression and resistance is a pair of elements that coexist in dynamics,chapter two is devoted to exploring the multiple corporeal oppositional forms holding that body is also a critical intermediary for women to carry out resistance and to reconstruct subjectivity.Based on the aforementioned discussions,chapter three goes on to explore how the reflections of mother-daughter relation,heterosexual relation and women’s relation contributes to the awakening and transformation of female protagonist’s consciousness during the process of oppression and resistance centered on the representation of body.In summary,the thesis holds that The Handmaid’s Tale not only shows the victimized images of women in the patriarchal society but also gives an insight into female’s pursuit of self-redemption.In the novel,though women’s rights and desires have to submit to and give in to the general interest of society,the strengths hidden in the women’s body enable them to resist.By picturing the path of the female protagonist’s awakening,Atwood calls on women to rediscover their own body,to seek the ways of pursuing self-redemption and to transcend their own predicament. |
