权力和生存-论《使女的故事》中的女性形象

Power and Survival—On the Female Images in The Handmaid’s Tale

摘  要： 玛格丽特·阿特伍德是家喻户晓的加拿大作家，她的经典著作《使女的故事》主要聚焦于女性主题。这部小说以虚构的原教旨主义神权社会—基列共和国为背景，该国的男性对女性拥有绝对控制权。因为其反乌托邦的背景设置，所以也被称为女性主义版《1984》。这部小说以独特的视角，详细描绘了女性的身心状态，探讨了处于男权社会这一特殊境遇的女性如何改变自身的命运，并探索了女性主义未来的发展。此文旨在借助西蒙·德·波伏娃的他者理论分析《使女的故事》中的典型女性形象，揭露女性在男权社会中作为他者的处境。此论文包含五个部分：引言，文献综述，理论基础，女性形象分析和结论。第三部分会对波伏娃的他者理论进行一个总体的介绍，第四部分将具体结合小说内容，分析其中的女性形象。此论文将讨论男权社会中的女性困境以及女性如何在这种社会中进行抗争。

关键词：《使女的故事》；他者；女性形象；权力；抵抗

Abstract: Margaret Atwood is a household name in Canadian literature. The Handmaid’s Tale, which is her classical work, mainly focuses on the female themes. This novel is set in a fictitious fundamentalist theocratic society—the Republic of Gilead. In such a country, a man has absolute power over a woman. For its dystopian background, this novel is also called feminist 1984. This novel makes a detailed description of women’s life and their psychological state in a unique angle of view. It discusses how women in a patriarchal society can change their destiny and explores the future development of feminism. This thesis will analyze the typical female characters in The Handmaid’s Tale by resorting to the theory “the other” which is developed by Simone de Beauvoir, so as to reveal females’ images as the other in a male-dominated society. This thesis includes five parts: introduction, literature review, theoretical bases, the analyses of female images and the conclusion. In the third part, Beauvoir’s theory “the other” will be given a general introduction, and in the fourth part, it will be connected with the novel concretely. The meaning of this thesis is to discuss the female dilemma in a male-dominated society and to learn how to resist in such a society. 

Key Words: The Handmaid’s Tale; the other; female images; power; resistance