A Sacrifice in the Maledominated Society on the Image of Miss Havisham in Great Expectations精品文.docx

1、A Sacrifice in the Maledominated Society on the Image of Miss Havisham in Great Expectations精品文 A Sacrifice in the Male-dominated Society on the Image of Miss Havisham in Great Expectations : Charles Dickens is one of the greatest critical realistic writers of the Victorian Age. In his Great Expecta

2、tions, many vivid female characters are created, leaving deep impression on readers of all countries. Miss Havisham is one of the most impressive creations, and the description of her tragedy displays the corruption of the society. In this paper, the tragedy of Miss Havisham will be analyzed from th

3、e feminist point of view, aiming at exploring her tragic life and revealing womens fate in the male-dominated society. 1 Introduction Generally regarded as the greatest literary geniuses of his time in Victorian England, Charles Dickens (1812-1870) enjoyed a wider popularity than any previous author

4、 had done during his lifetime “because of the magnitude of his artistic achievement and because of the comprehensiveness of the picture it gives of his age.”1 Dickenss later work Great Expectations(1861), which is considered as his artistic masterpiece, is the most perfectly constructed of all Dicke

5、nss novels. “Surely the characters in Great Expectations are the greatest collection in all of English fiction.”2 as Keith Love asserted in the introduction to Great Expectation, it is no doubt that Dickens skillfully portrays all the characters and makes all of them impressing and vivid. Among them

6、, Miss Havisham is certainly one of the most strange and memorable creations in the story. Her horrible dressing, grotesque life style and mad behavior impressed the readers so much that most people treat her as evil. Actually, she is a tragic female character worthy of sympathy. In this paper, the

7、tragedy of this female character Miss Havisham will be analyzed from the feminist point of view, aiming at exploring her tragic life and revealing womens fate in the male-dominated society. 2 Literature Review of Great Expectations Great Expectations is Dickenss later and mature work. It was for a l

8、ong time classified as a book about the Victorian Age, and Dickens, the spokesperson for the age, attracting many critics and reviewers. In Great Expectations, the distinctive character Miss Havisham attracts critics and researchers attention, the articles at home referred to the analyses on the cha

9、racter and image of Great Expectations are numerous. In a typical study of this type, Li Guangming (2007) suggested that Miss Havisham is a victim of complex forces which from her family and the bourgeois society.3 Whereas some critics feel that Miss Havisham has her own limitations, as Cai Wei (200

10、6) claimed that her insane actions dont start from her abnormal psychology but her double personality.4 “The western critics for a long time focus their comment on the theme and characters of Dickenss novels.”5Most criticisms are traditional criticism, which highlight the factors outside the literar

11、y text, putting Miss Havisham in psychological and sociological circumstances for analysis. Psychoanalytic criticism concentrates on the relationship between the development of Miss Havisham and social circumstances. Great Expectations “attracts the attention of scholars coming from a wide variety o

12、f critical approaches: feminist, new historicist, psychoanalytic, and deconstructionist, as well as from more traditional historical and formalist perspectives.”6 With the development of feminist movement and feminist literary criticism, critics and researchers, nationally and internationally, have

13、paid much attention to studying the women characters in Great Expectations. But the studies on female character Miss Havisham of Great Expectations are still not enough.Thus the paper will analyze the most memorable heroine Miss Havisham from the feminist point of view in Great Expectations. 3 Femin

14、ist Literary Criticism Feminist literary criticism can be traced back to the womens liberation movement during the late 1960s. Generally, it exists to counter, resist, and eventually eliminate the traditions and conventions of patriarchy-the ideology or belief system which sees as “natural” the domi

15、nance and superiority of men over women in both private and public contexts-as it exists in literary, historical, and critical contexts.7 In practice, feminist literary criticism is not limited to texts written and read by women, for its interest is not only in how women have been treated in books,

16、but also in the notion of the patriarchal society to them. Its target may include stereotypes of any of these groups seen as inferior from the point of view of an established patriarchal order, or the exclusion of such groups created by such a point of view (or ideological bias) in literary history.

17、 8 Thus, it is of great help to use such a theory to analyze the novel Great Expectations, especially the female character Miss Havisham in the novel. 4 A Sacrifice in the Male-Dominated Society-Miss Havisham 4.1 Womens Status in Victorian Era The Victorian age when Hardy lived was an exciting perio

18、d of prosperity for the British people. It was also a period when social, political and religious movements flourished. Maybe the period seems strange to us, the first thing that was very different was the status of women in society. During the period, a traditional attitude of men toward women was

19、given by Tennysons poem The Princess: “Man for the field and woman for the hearth; Man for the sword and for the needle she. Man with the head and woman with the heart: Man to command and woman to obey.” 9 Throughout the period, most women have few opportunities for higher education and political pr

20、ofessions. A perfect woman in the Victorian Age is described as “the angel in the house”, the title which came from Coventry Patmores poem published in 1854. “She was intensely sympathetic. She was immensely charming. She was utterly unselfish.She excelled in the difficult arts of family life. She s

21、acrificed daily. If there was a chicken, she took the leg; if there was a draught she sat in itAbove all, she was pure.”10 It is no surprise that Shirley Stave said “to expect a Victorian male writer to create women characters from a completely nonsexist perspective is to expect the impossible”.11 M

22、iss Havisham is undoubtedly a typical example of it. 4.2 Miss Havisham as A Sacrifice in the Male-Dominated Society Miss Havisham was an eccentric and most impressive woman that Dickens had ever created, who was even regarded as mad by some critics because of her appearance, behaviors and words. How

23、ever, Miss Havishams fate was tragic: her jilting by Compeyson on what was to have been their wedding day. From then on, she lived an eccentric life and aimed to revenge on all men. The direct cause of Miss Havishams mad action is her lost of love, which results from Compeyson. “However, facing such

24、 a situation, not all people choose to revenge so mercilessly.”12 Through the interpretation of Miss Havisham, we can understand that the male-dominated society in which she lives lead her to do so. “Although the Victorian Age meets a material prosperity, the polarization of wealth is widening and t

25、he class contradiction is becoming more serious, and this lead to the corruption of money to humans relationship.”13And the marriage, love, courts, jails etc are based on this. Miss Havisham is just the sacrifice of this society. Lived in the upper class, the simple and proud Miss Havisham fell in l

26、ove with Compeyson madly, but how she could know Compeyson just love her money. So she couldnt face her jilting. And she suffered greatly from the pain of love and her quest for revenge. The Victorian Age is a male-centered society, the idea that women should be subjective to men roots in womens min

27、d. The concept of male dominates for a long time, which causes women accept the stereotype subconsciously. And in order to realize womens virtue and morality to fit for the standard of male-dominated society, women should devote everything even their lives. In such a society, women cannot be indepen

28、dent from men; their fragile souls make them unable to face the lifes suffering staunchly. It was the most tragic thing that Miss Havisham and the Victorian women had to face. Without a husband, without a man, it was difficult and painful for her to live. So she was completely in despair, and chose

29、the extreme way to imprison herself and to get revenge on all men. She didnt know it was not men, but the unfair society made her lose everything and the male-dominated society was her great enemy and the one she should fight against. Just because she lacked of female consciousness, she could not ch

30、ange her miserable life, and the only thing she could do is to receive the arrangement of the patriarchal society to her and bounded herself in a “prison” forever. Thus the tragedy of Miss Havisham is inevitable. She just becomes a sacrifice in the male-dominated society. 5 Conclusion In summary, Mi

31、ss Havisham is a tragic character in Dickenss Great Expectations. In the novel, she tried to get revenge on men because of her painful experience in the past, but her revolt was only a despairing fight, she didnt realize that her tragedy lay in the patriarchal society instead of an individual. Her i

32、mage as a sacrifice indeed reflects the cruel reality and miserable status of women in such a male-dominated society. Bibliography: 1 Blamires, H. The Victorian Age of Literature M. London: Longman York Press, 1988: 23. 2 Dickens C. Great Expectations. (Cover to Cover Classics) M. London: Penguin Classics, 2002: 312李广明, 夏海. 复杂力量下的牺牲品-赫薇香小姐 J. 语文学刊, 2007(15): 60-63. 4江玉琴, 宋庆丽. 自恋, 神经病, 抑或双重人格辨析远大前程中赫维仙小姐性格 J. 江西广播电视大学学报, 2000(2): 35-39. 5李维屏. 英国小说艺术史 M. 上海:上海外语教育出版社, 2003: 144.