碩士 / 國立臺東大學 / 兒童文學研究所 / 96 / Daughters of the Ocean:
Gender Transformation in Young Adult Novels
Abstract
Before the 20th century, males always are centered in marine stories and females often play absent or fringe roles. In recent decades, because of the trend of feminism—the effect of sex equality, young adult novels have transformed from the traditional models which always set up the males as the leading roles to letting the female play the main roles in these three novels—The Whale Rider (1987), A True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle (1991), and The Wanderer (2000). This kind of transformation facilitates the appearance of this study.
This study mainly inquires into the relation between females and the ocean, and how the authors writing marine novels used the ways of representing the traditions and breaking through traditions to describe the growth of the young girls. The female leading roles grow up in the “constrained” environments in the three novels above. The ocean is like a class teacher, and it can point out difficult situations which those girls faced; the dead and lonely ambiances at the ocean let young girls overcome adverse circumstances and assure their meaning and values of self-existence; in the environments with unbalancing power between both sexes, female leading roles through finishing ceremonies correct male views to achieve the rebirth of young girls.
Through the three works, it shows that the marine novels have gradually transformed from the single culture (male) to the views of binary (male and female) integration. For young boys and girls in young adult novels, the discipline from the ocean is merely a kind of training process for growing up. The more important thing is that because of the ocean, they complete their rite of passage, and develop attitudes to accept each challenge in their whole lives bravely.
Keywords: female and the ocean gaze rite gender transformation
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TW/095NTTTC638043 |
| Date | January 2007 |
| Creators | JUANG,YA-HUEI, 莊雅惠 |
| Contributors | CHANG,TZU-CHANG, 張子樟 |
| Source Sets | National Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations in Taiwan |
| Language | zh-TW |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | 學位論文 ; thesis |
| Format | 123 |
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