| Elizabeth Jolley（1923-2007）is one of Australia’s most iconic contemporary women writers,following in the footsteps of Patrick White（1912-1990）.Most of Jolley’s work,a mixture of postmodernism and humanism,is written in an eccentric style and often ends with an open ending.The Well,one of Jolley’s masterpieces,won the Miles Franklin Award,Australia’s highest literary prize,in 1986.The novel has a strong literary quality,both in its chilling and bizarre plotting and in its leapfrog narrative approach,which reflects Jolley’s distinctive style of writing.This essay will start from the four female characters portrayed in The Well and applies theories of psychoanalysis and feminist criticism to analyze the mental state and social status of the characters in the patriarchal social environment.Chapter one,it provides a brief introduction to Elizabeth Jolley’s representative work,The Well,and an overview of domestic and international research on The Well for understanding the latest developments of research on the novel,both domestically and internationally.The chapter also provides an outlook on the prospects and significance of the study and discusses the theoretical foundations required for this thesis.Chapter two,this chapter mainly interprets the splitter images of the female characters in the novel.Relying on the structuralist dichotomy of criticism,it focuses on dissecting the conflicts and contradictions between selfishness and selflessness;optimism and gloom;meanness and kindness within the female characters in the novel.Chapter three,it interprets the Otherness of three female characters in The Well.Hester is an alien discriminated against by the heterosexual hegemony,the “other” who wanders on the edge of the heterosexual world;Katherine is an orphan abandoned by patriarchal capitalism,the “other” who wanders on the edge of the patriarchal capitalist world;Mrs.Borden is an enslaved and dependent woman by the patriarchy,a woman who is excluded from the patriarchal world.Chapter four,it analyzes the novel’s portrayal of Hester,Katherine,and Joanna as rebels.Hester,a challenger to heterosexual hegemony;Katherine,the mocker of the objectified world;and Joanna,the rebellion of an unjust fate.Chapter five,as the summary it concludes The Well reveals that women have always been in an oppressed position in a patriarchal society and that the four female characters in the novel are kept under male domination because of their inherent biological sex.After experiencing both the psychological and social pressure,the women finally struggle against it,deconstructing and rewriting the object position that women have been in. |
