The political influence of the female role in Bring Up the Bodies文献综述

 2022-08-11 15:23:46

As Hillary Mantels masterpiece winning the British Booker prize again. Bring up the bodies plays a connecting role in the 'wolf hall Trilogy', which not only gives a detailed description of the golden age of Cromwells career development. It also focuses on the second marriage of Henry VIII and the efforts of the three queens in the political game. As a popular theory, New Historicism is often discussed. In fact, New Historicism itself is not a clear theoretical definition. According to its initiator, Stephen greenlatt, it is only a practical activity, mainly a method of literary research. It is a way of cultural anthropology to integrate the whole society.Culture is the object of study.Bring up the bodies, as a novel of new historicism, pays attention to the palace secrets beyond the real history, adds personal understanding to the history of Tudor Dynasty from the aspects of power role, family relationship and so on, and dramatizes the history, which originates from history and is higher than history.Western New historicists reflect on the modernity of historical research by reconstructing history. 'Their basic strategy is to rewrite the previous singular and political literary history into plural, lowercase, pluralistic and folk literary history' . Different from historians, novelists can express their cognition of history by making fictions at the level of historical events. Mantel is such an expert. She deeply explored the historical details and created wolf hall in the form of double line and small case, thus subverting the single line and large case narrative style centered on Henry VIII in the official history. In the reconstruction of mantel, history has become a microcosmic picture of anecdotes, which is close and accessible, so that readers are more likely to remember the reconstructed Tudor Dynasty in the novel than this period in the official history. And a new trend in the new historicism is to carefully consider the role of women in history. The author is no longer limited to describing the intrigue of men in court politics. Instead, it attempts to describe the interaction between the two sexes in the text to explain that they have political influence on women in the real and virtual history (in this novel, the influence of palace politics is highlighted in particular).,Although Mantels works have caused a great sensation in Britain, the research of Chinese scholars on bring up the bodies is relatively limited.Many scholars focus on the criticism of the new historicism of Bring Up the Bodies, the study of the unique narrative perspective of the 'Wolf Hall Trilogy' represented by Bring Up the Bodies, or the interpretation of Cromwell, the sycophant, who is reinterpreted in bring up the bodies.Thomas Cromwell, the little man of Shakespeares Henry VIII, the devil of the Tudor Dynasty, the thief and villain of history, has now become a shrewd politician and deep-minded strategist in Mantels works: he works with due diligence, kindness and kindness; he loves his wife and children, is humble and gentle, and treats political enemies with firm will and ruthlessness. The politicians rise as a result of royal marriage, but also because of royal marriage to reach the peak of power.Cromwell became a great minister of Henry VIII and thought of the king everywhere. Despite her respect for Queen Catherine, Cromwell helped Anne Boleyn step by step to the throne, succumbing to the complex political situation and the temptation of interest. When Henry VIII was tired of Anne, Cromwell obeyed his will and was ready to bring down Anne. Cromwell was a loyal subordinate to both Walsh and Henry VIII. 'The purpose of thick drawing is to touch the real life people once had .' Mantels 'thick description' of Cromwell has obviously achieved this goal. Readers can fully feel the real social life at that time through 'Wolf Hall ', and his struggle from rising to fighting small people to court officials has no doubt a certain inspirational role for todays people. But few people pay attention to the interpretation of Henry VIII and Cromwells closely related female characters in Bring Up the Bodies. Of course, some scholars turn their eyes to these influential female characters in this novel and try to interpret them from different perspectives. Fang Hongzhe (2019：159-163) tries to analyze the female characters from the perspective of power discourse. She believes that bring up the bodies shows the survival dilemma of women in the 15th century from the perspective of Discourse: mantel combines the pain of women with the power game, and portrays the three empresses as the victims who struggle hard but are still in the aphasia dilemma. Fang Hongzhe takes Katherine as the main object of study and makes a detailed attribution to the aphasia predicament of women. She believes that the women in Bring Up the Bodies have gone through the whole process from being suppressed to resistance to the final failure of resistance, and finally lost all the right to speak. In the novel, the loss of women s discourse power is due to the internalization of women s reproductive value, but ultimately unable to give birth to a legitimate heir to the throne, and the male characters led by Henry VIII use religious and political weapons to suppress Catherines discourse, and finally make her submissive, towards self termination and destruction. As for Catherines successor, Yan Chunmei（2012：30-31） made a more detailed interpretation. She regarded Anne Boleyn as an important figure who put Cromwell on the throne of the royal family. At the same time, she fully affirmed Anne Boleyns influence in Tudor political history: 'she persuaded Henry to promote religious reform to break away from the jurisdiction of the Holy See. She cruelly persecuted many people who opposed her to ascend the Queens throne, including Archbishop Wolsey, the old master of Cromwell, who also encouraged the king to deprive her daughter Mary of the right of inheritance and torment her mentally. 'But this evaluation was obviously more negative, which further magnified the evil of Anne Boleyn, and even slightly demonized the characters.

Of course, there are also some people who think that in Bring Up the Bodies, the female role is always in the position of 'the other'. Zhang Songcun believes that the female characters in bring up the bodies cant escape the tragic ending, which is more prominent in the two Queens: women can only be used by families to expand their political influence and improve their political status, all the training and efforts are not voluntary, and they cant get rid of the evaluation and control of men.（2017:160-161） They have no independent personality, no right to choose. They are just accessories of strong patriarchy. They have been growing up under the guidance of patriarchal consciousness since they were born, and they have been pleasing men all their lives in order to obtain the possibility of survival or better survival. In the end, Zhang Songcun attributes these womens tragedies to the fact that under the powerful patriarchal ideology, the women in wolf hall are generally lack of independent female consciousness, which inevitably leads to the fate of being abandoned.After three vigorous feminist waves, the status of women in modern society has been greatly improved. The concept of marital autonomy is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, and the mainstream values of society are to seek harmonious gender relations, not one side to rule the other. But the Tudor period women did not have this kind of luck, the author Hilary Mantel with his rich imagination and superb writing ability, in the Wolf Hall, the real reproduction of the womens 'other' status, as well as their tragic fate.

The tragedy of Catherine and Alice is an individual encounter and the fate of thousands of aristocratic women in British feudal society. They struggle to live in a strong patriarchal society, discriminated against, derogatory, oppressed, conquered, but never awakened to the consciousness of women, they are shaped into a male-centered society into a kind of obedient, tacit, stereotypical image, their life can only be manipulated by fate. To realize the emancipation of women, the first task is to awaken their own inner female consciousness, oppose discrimination and oppression in patriarchal society, affirm their own value, change their 'other' status, and realize equality, independence and autonomy. But at the same time, Amanda Craig also thinks, 'Mantels Boleyn is no innocent activity (though she is almost certainly not an advice) but one who excelled the Tudor family womans powers role as the town of her male relations.'（2012:43）Some people hold the same opinion with Amanda. They think that the female image in bring up the bodies has the transcendence in self-consciousness awakening that the ordinary women of the same era lack, and that this transcendence can be realized through the perspective of new historicism. He believed that Catherine had already had the independent consciousness at that time, and had begun to learn how to resist the external oppression. 'Even in a helpless situation, she is still a great mother who dares to challenge the authority and tries her best to protect her daughters rights and interests. At the same time, she shows her sadness and anger at her husbands betrayal.' Mantel spent some ink on the divorcee, Queen Catherine, and portrayed a man who was not humble or arrogant in the face of her husbands merciless abandonment as a king of the country, The new female image, which is argued for, is no longer the submissive female who plays the role of victim and obedient in the patriarchal society, but is still the pure and noble Catholic in Shakespeares works, which brings readers some new reading experience and stimulates readers to play their literary imagination to reconstruct history.

Of course, there are also people who interpret Henry VIII from the perspective of spatial narrative and ethical factors. The novel presents three time clues: the first is the present time, which describes walsys dismissal due to his failure in handling the divorce case until he is depressed; the second is the past time, which describes the marriage of king and Catherine in fragments; the third is the mythical time, which describes the myth of the origin of England . The three narrative clues crisscross each other and jointly present the ethical scene of the kings divorce case. In the narration of present time and past time, the kings political intention to marry Catherine is subverted. 'When Henry married her, he was only 18 years old, and he was a young man with no heart.' this implied that Henry would not think too much about this marriage. Therefore, walsy concluded that the kings divorce was due to the issue of children, in order to marry 'any Princess he thought might have a son for him'. Therefore, the kings conscience problem at this time was just an excuse to continue the incense. If it is said that the time narrative reveals the apparent cause of the divorce case - the theory of children, then in the alternate narrative of myth time and present time, the essential cause of the divorce case finally comes to light. Literary Ethics regards human as an ethical existence composed of Sphinx factor, human factor and animal factor.Among them, the 'human factor' is the ethical consciousness, which is mainly reflected by the head. The animal factor is opposite to the human factor.

When there is a strong conflict between animal instinct and ethical consciousness, ethical fear becomes apparent. During the Tudor period, England was in the stage of transformation. The ancient Greek Roman culture, which represented the animal factor, and the Hebrew Christian culture, which represented the human factor, collided with each other and brought great impact on peoples life. With the rise of the Renaissance, 'deeply repressed Europeans rejected God and went to seek the' God 'of the world, that is, the other side of the lost human nature.'. This 'other side' actually refers to the animal factor that human beings have been suppressed for a long time. Compared with the human factor, Henry VIIIs divorce appeal of Tudor Dynasty is the inevitable result of the collision of the two factors, and it is also the rationality of human beings pursuit of the 'other side'Sure, The imbalance of Sphinx factor combination made Henrys animal instinct of survival and reproduction burst out, but this led to the loss of life.The confusion of his ethical relationship once made him fall into ethical fear.

What is more serious is that the British peoples hidden nation identity anxiety reappeared because of the kings lust. Henrys attitude towards divorce was directly influenced by the dispute between two factors: he entrusted the case to Walsy and sent his confidants to negotiate with the Pope secretly. This 'ambiguous way of doing things' exposed his inner fear. If he really believes that he is guilty of marrying his widowed sister-in-law Catherine, he should accept the court trial arranged by Walsy instead of seeking a solution from both law and religion.

To sum up, these studies pay attention to the living conditions and importance of the female characters in Bring Up the Bodies, and give affirmation in some aspects. However, it seems that the female characters represented by Catherine and Anne Boleyn are not fully aware of their political influence in this novel.

Their research expresses the same central idea: Although women play a very important role in this novel, the more attention is often paid to the male characters mentioned in the novel, or the tragic experience of women in this novel. They all point out that womens aphasia is not a natural phenomenon, but a social artifact It is a social symptom that women are forced to silence or unable to speak because of the oppression based on gender. Women are labeled as 'docile', 'obedient', 'gentle' and 'dignified', and they are virtually imprisoned and internalized by these standards. According to these requirements, they regulate and weaken their social existence and lose their own uniqueness and discourse power. Although women will rise to revolt because they cant bear the heavy burden, in a male dominated society, men often exert multiple pressures on the material and spiritual levels to discipline women who rise to revolt. The final result is that women who have nothing to rely on are vulnerable. They not only lose their discourse subject, but also become the 'spokesperson' of mens interests. As a result, the social malady of the imbalance of discourse and power between men and women has not been cured. By presenting the symptoms of female aphasia in this period, titang aims to remind people to listen to multiple voices, pay attention to the existence of women, and explore the social good agent of gender equality. 'In temperament and psychology, women are required to be submissive, loyal and filial, weak and lustless, and sacrifice for their families.' Womens inner needs are ignored and suppressed, and womens sense of power is lost. In wolf hall, the women in the court are poor vulnerable groups. They not only deal with the erotic and violent king and the treacherous ministers, but also slander and hurt from the same sex. They become the victims of the court struggle. The tragic fates of Anne Boleyn and Mary Boleyn are the representatives of most women in the feudal society of England. They have no independent personality, no right to choose, but are the appendages of strong male chauvinism. They have been growing up under the guidance of male chauvinism since they were born, and they have been pleasing men all their lives in order to survive or better survive. The only way for these women to get a happy life is to find a decent husband, so the only way Mary Boleyn can think of to improve her life is to find a strong husband, a man who makes the Boleyn family afraid, and her identity of being abandoned makes it almost impossible for her to find a good husband. Anne Boleyns only way to secure her position as Queen of England is to give birth to a male heir to King Henry VIII. However, she only gave birth to a daughter. After two miscarriages, she fell out of favor with Henry VIII and was finally put to the guillotine for the crime of adultery. In the feudal dynasty of 'accompanying a king like a tiger', Anne did not live long and paid the price of her life for her ambition. Thus, according to the male dominated society, women can not get happiness. On the contrary, they often lose themselves in the patriarchal society, and even fall into the abyss. Therefore, women have to use their own advantages to fight. The first task is to awaken their inner female consciousness, oppose the discrimination and oppression of patriarchal society, affirm their own value, change their 'other' status, and realize equality, independence and autonomy

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