An Interpretation Of Zo?'s Growth In The Bay Of Angels From The Perspective Of Bildungsroman

Anita Brookner(1928-2016),a famous British contemporary Jewish female writer,won the Booker Prize in 1984,the highest award for fiction in England.Further,she was awarded a Commander of the British Empire for her outstanding literary accomplishments in 1990.She has successfully created several lonely,talented and independent female characters,for instance,Edith Hope in Hotel du Lac and Ruth Wesis in A Start in Life.The struggle between career and marriage as well as the hesitation between family responsibility and personal freedom has always been the melody of Anita Brookner's creation.The Bay of Angels,the twentieth works of Brookner,continues her usual writing style,and vividly depicts another typical Brooknerian character.This novel tells a journey of the protagonist Zo?'s self-growth from innocence to maturity.Hitherto,taking the researches both overseas and in domestic,it is found that scholars mainly concentrate on the postmodern style,the theme of solitude,and feminism,while they ignore the nature of The Bay of Angels as a Bildungsroman.Therefore,it is a new attempt to interpret this novel from the perspective of Bildungsroman.This thesis takes the novel The Bay of Angels as the research object,and intends to employ the theoretical framework of Bildungsroman to interpret the protagonist Zo?'s growth.This thesis consists of three parts including introduction,main body,and conclusion.Introduction briefly introduces Anita Brookner and her novel The Bay of Angels,states the research status of her works at home and abroad,and concisely describes the main content and the innovation of this thesis.The main body of this thesis is composed of four chapters.Chapter One presents the theoretical basis of this thesis,which briefly introduces the origin and development of Bildungsroman,and its three main elements including the classic plot pattern,initiation mentors and epiphany.The next three chapters interpret the protagonist Zo?'s growing process and influential factors based on the above three elements of Bildungsroman.Chapter Two analyzes the process of the protagonist Zo?'s growth.Zo?'s growth can be condensed into threestages: innocence,confusion and maturity.Her innocence is mainly embodied in her faith in fatalism and desire for absolute freedom.Her confusion is basically reflected in her disorientation in love and struggle between family responsibility and personal freedom.Her maturity is primarily manifested in her pursuit of true love and reconciliation with life.Chapter Three elaborates the initiation mentors' external influence on Zo?'s spiritual growth.Negative initiation mentors have a negative effect on Zo?'s growth,but they teach Zo? a lesson and help her become mature.Positive initiation mentors and natural spirits have a positive impact on Zo?'s growth,and they advance Zo?'s maturation.Chapter Four analyzes Zo?'s shocking epiphany and spontaneous epiphany to explore the internal factors of Zo?'s spiritual growth.Conclusion points out the relevance of each chapter in the thesis,in the meantime,elucidates the profound implication of the open ending of this novel,and presents the significance of the thesis.The Bay of Angels,like a refractor carefully polished by Brookner,attempts to make the growers deeply understand the profound mystery of growth.From the perspective of Bildungsroman,this thesis analyzes the process of Zo?'s spiritual growth and explores the root causes of the spiritual growth,aiming to deepen the understanding of the initiation theme of The Bay of Angels and reveal Brookner's deep concern on women's growth.It is hoped that this thesis would provide a reference for further study of Brookner's other works and offer enlightenment and inspiration to the growers who are experiencing confusion.