1．目的及意义

The world has seen great changes over the past century. With thedevelopment 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 theirhusband, must have struggled a lot. TheThorn Birds has been reputed to Gonewith the Wind in Australia. It has been warmly welcomed and appreciated byreaders all over the world since it was published in 1977. Even nowadays, thereare still people attracted by its unique charm. Except for the themes such asforbidden love and religion cause one to think deeply, the descriptions of thethree Cleary women are of distinct features which also attract readers a lot.The three women between three generations own their own opinion about love,family, children and their own occupations. Not only do they inflict influenceon each other, but also change their concepts constantly themselves in thetrend of time, out of their own experience and under the effect of broadenvironment. This paper aims at the analysis of the three main femalecharacters in the Thorn Birds and theinfluence of self experience, growth environment and historical development hason female individual. This paper will discuss the definition of femaleconsciousness, focusing on processes of its development and embodiments in thebook.

the Thorn Birds has drawn extensive attention since its first publication in 1977, new ideas ofresearches on it have been brought forth constantly over four decades. The researchershave given an ocean of analysis on the female characters. Also, due to vivid depictionsand continuous character developments of the several women in the book, thereare considerable researches focus on female consciousness, however, most ofwhich stay on the isolate analysis of the characters, writers often listed anindependent paragraphs about one character, with words from the book combinedwith concrete analysis, former researchers often compile the concrete embodimentof female consciousness, meaning of the study on feminist literature with analysisof individuals. Some researchers put up with new research fields such as shiftsof the writer’s opinion on female consciousness, analyzing problems from theperspective of historical development etc. Nevertheless, topics listed aboveare covered within just a few words in most papers rather than formingsystematic comparisons, let alone looking at issues from developmentalviewpoints. This paper will base on former studies to conduct systematicresearch of relevant contents of the ThornBirds and strive to be comprehensive and thorough. Furthermore, this paperwill analyze the common ground of this masterpiece wrote decades ago with feminism during the modern time,systematically studying the influence of feminist literature research on theawakening of female consciousness and other aspects.{title}

2. 研究的基本内容与方案

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The contents of the paper includethe following points:

1. About Female Consciousness: Definitionof Female Consciousness; Historical development of Female Consciousness; Femaleconsciousness and feminist literature.

2. Introduction of the writerand composition background: Lifeexperience of the writer; Composition background of the work.

3. Analysis of three criticalfemale characters: Fiona ; Meggie; Justine.

4. Influential Factors onIndividual Growth: Life experience of individual; Growth Environment; Historicaldevelopment

5. Embodiment of the awakeningand development of female consciousness: Attitude towards marriage ; Choice ofclothes ; Selection of the occupation

6. Meanings of FeministLiterature studying: For self-improvement of female individual; For theconstruction of harmonious family; For social advancement.

Aims：Finishing the writing if paper according to the schedule targets,achieving further innovation on the existing researches, making sure thecontents will be more systematic and complete.

Technical methods and measures tobe adopted: text analysis, acquiring material in demand through careful readingof the original work and Chinese version of theThorn Birds; method of comparative analysis, comparing the characters inthe book and also with characters in other books or in history when it is necessary.