摘 要

在过去一个世纪以来，三次女权主义浪潮的的兴起给女性的社会地位和自我意识带来了巨大的改变。《荆棘鸟》是一本成书于1977年，内容跨越1915年到1969年的家世小说，书中对克利里家三代女性进行了细致的刻画，对于女性意识发展的研究有其参考价值所在。本文探讨了女性意识和女性主义文学级理论的相关概念，通过对《荆棘鸟》中三位主要女性人物的分析，探究其中女性意识及性别成长的发展进程和具体体现。本文也尝试藉此作品的分析探究个人经历、成长环境和历史发展对女性个人成长的影响。

关键词：《荆棘鸟》；女性意识；女性主义文学；女性成长

Abstract

The three waves of feminism in the past century have brought great changes to the social status and self-consciousness of women. The Thorn Birds, a family saga, was first published in 1977, depicting the story which happened between 1915 and 1969. The book has a thorough depiction of three Cleary women in three different generations; therefore, it has reference value to the research on the development of female consciousness and growth. Based on the discussion of the conceptions concerning female consciousness, feminist literature and theories, this paper, through analysis of three main female characters in The Thorn Birds, explores the development process as well as concrete embodiment of female consciousness and growth. This paper also attempts to probe into the influence of personal experience, growth environment and historical development on women's personal growth through the analysis of the book.

Key Words: The Thorn Birds; female consciousness; feminist literature; female growth

Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Literature Review 3

3 Major Concepts and Theoretical Framework 5

2.1 Female consciousness 5

2.2 Feminist literature 5

2.3 Feminist theories 7

4 Female Consciousness as Embodied in The Thorn Birds 10

4.1 Fiona 10

4.2 Meggie 11

4.3 Justine 13

5 Influencing Factors on Female Growth 15

5.1 Life experience and growth environment 15

5.2 Historical development 16

6 Conclusion 18

References 19

Acknowledgements 21

Analysis on Female Growth in

the Thorn Birds

1 Introduction

The world has seen great changes over the past century. With the development of science and technology and the changing of social conception, the status of women has altered a lot both in society and at home. However, it’s axiomatic that Rome was not built in a day. Along with their steps of advancing, women, who used to be clinging to men and being the belongings of their husband, must have struggled a lot. The Thorn Birds has been reputed to Gone with the Wind in Australia. It has been warmly welcomed and appreciated by readers all over the world since it was published in 1977. Even nowadays, there are still people attracted by its unique charm. Except for the themes such as forbidden love and religion cause one to think deeply, the descriptions of the three Cleary women are of distinct features which also attract readers a lot. The three women in three generations hold their own opinions about love, family, children and their own occupations. Not only do they inflict influence on each other, but also change their conceptions constantly themselves in the trend of time, out of their own experience and under the effect of broad environment. New ideas of researches on it have been brought forth constantly over the past four decades. Researchers have given an ocean of analysis on the female characters. Also, due to vivid depictions and continuous character developments of the several women in the book, there are considerable researches with focus on female consciousness, however, most of which stay on the isolated analysis of the characters. Some researchers put up with new research fields such as shifts of the writer’s opinion on female consciousness, analyzing problems from the perspective of historical development etc. Nevertheless, topics listed above are often covered within just a few words in most papers rather than forming systematic comparisons, let alone looking at issues from developmental viewpoints. This paper will base on former studies to conduct systematic research of relevant contents of the Thorn Birds and strive to be comprehensive and thorough. This paper will be divided into five chapters. In the first two chapters, an introduction and literature review will be introduced; then in the third chapter, major concepts and theoretical framework will be thoroughly discussed, and definitions of feminist consciousness, feminist literature and feminist theories will be included in this chapter. Chapter four will provide analysis of three critical female characters: Fiona, Meggie and Justine. Nevertheless, the last chapter will deal with influential factors on individual growth including life experience, growth environment and historical development.

2 literature review