| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立清華大學 === 外國語文學系 === 96 === Abstract
The thesis focuses on a comparative study of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and Michael Cunningham’s The Hours. With the three feminists’ (Woolf, Friedan, and Irigaray) concepts of women, the resonances and the differences in the two novels are underlined in terms of female discourses. The focus aims at women’s changing predicaments in the phallogocentric society and their varied defiance to the dominant ideology during the recent decades.
This research contains three chapters with an introduction and a conclusion. The prelude indicates that the existing comparative studies of Mrs. Dalloway and The Hours underline the intertextuality. Starting from this point, this project analyzes the analogies and discrepancies of the two novels. Chapter One begins with an examination of women’s subjugated role throughout the century. My study shows that Cunningham intends to provide a female genealogy by interconnecting women’s herstories.
In Chapter Two, Luce Irigaray’s concept of female dynamics is applied to the textual interpretation. It demonstrates that the two authors have diverse opinions when the female mobility, multiplicity, sexuality, and language are concerned. Chapter Three encompasses inquiries into women’s domestic position. The argument employs Betty Friedan’s notion of the ‘Suburban Housewife,’ and manifests the analogy of the two novelists’ ultimate keynote. They both advocate woman’s subjectivity after probing into women questions of their time respectively.
In conclusion, Cunningham reexamines the crucial problems of women issues during the century, and he recasts Woolf’s perceptions in an innovative representation. With a textual survey of the feminist issues, the intricate interrelationship between Mrs. Dalloway and The Hours is explored. This research concludes that Woolf and Cunningham insist on being the articulators for the female subject.
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