Abstract

     Possession, the most successful novel of A. S. Byatt, demonstrates to us the author's feminism by telling the story that two modern scholars gradually get to know each other and finally fall in love in the process of together pursuing a secret love between two Victorian poets. This paper aims to make a contrast analysis of the three pairs of female characters' circumstances and destinies, respectively between Christabel La Motte and Maud, Ellen and Val, and Blanche and Leonora Stern, and ends with the conclusion that the ingenious use of contrast analysis in Possession contributes immensely to the manifestation of the theme of the novel—women' s aspirations for freedom, liberation, self-realization and healthy sisterhood, thereby exhibiting A. S. Byatt's feminist thinking.

Key words: Possession, contrast analysis, female characters, feminism

摘 要

《占有》是安东尼娅•苏珊•拜厄特最成功的小说作品，它通过讲述两位当代学者在追寻两位维多利亚诗人间一段隐秘恋情的过程中逐渐相爱的故事，展示了作者的女性主义。本文旨在对比分析《占有》中三对女性人物的境遇和命运，分别为兰蒙特和莫德，艾伦和瓦尔以及布兰奇和斯特恩，从而得出结论：《占有》中对比分析手法的巧妙运用有助于深刻地揭示主题——女性对自由、解放、自我意识和健康姐妹情谊的渴望，从而揭示安东尼亚•苏珊•拜厄特的女性思想。

关键词：《占有》；对比分析；女性人物；女性主义

1. Introduction
     A. S. Byatt is one of the most famous writers in modern England. Born in 1936 in Sheffield, England, she earned a B.A. at Cambridge University in 1957, and was a graduate student at Bryn Mawr College in the Pennsylvania, and spent another year at Oxford. Byatt began teaching in London in the 1960s, becoming a regular faculty member in the English department at University College, London, in 1972, and left there as a senior lecturer in 1983 to pursue a full-time writing career.
     In addition to her six novels and four volumes of short stories, Byatt has published a wide range of essays, criticism, interviews, and other writings. She has contributed prefaces to editions of women writers such as Elizabeth Bowen, Grace Paley, and Willa Cather, and she has also edited several classic Victorian texts, such as George Eliot' s Mill on the Floss and Robert Browning's Dramatic Monologues; the latter--of particular interest, perhaps, for the study of Possession--appeared, not coincidentally, in 1990.