1．目的及意义

DowntonAbbey, created by Julian Fellowes and co-producedby Carnival Films and Masterpiece, is an extremely popular British TV series inrecent ten years. The story unfolds with the sinking of Titanic in 1912, a timewitnesses a surge of feminism. Traces of the awakening of feminism can be foundin the depiction of the Crawley daughters.

Because of the popularity of the TV series,many works have studied its female characters’ personality. Zhao Hongcheng andJia xiaoyun(2014) have explored the rebellious spirit of Lady Sybil-the thirddaughter of Earl Granthm, through her actions, clothes and attitude towardsdownstairs servants as well as rights of women. Li Xiuyun and Li Lu(2017) haveanalyzed Lady Edith’s character and position in the big family from theperspective of “who can be the invisible leading lady”. And Liu Jingkun(2013)has decomposed the character of Lady Mary who is the eldest daughter of Earl Granthmand heroine of the TV series. Therefore, these works have laid the foundationfor character analysis.

And in the research literature abroad, worksare mainly linked the feminism in DowntonAbbey with its social background. Besides, Li Yinhe, a famous Chinesefeminist and the first Chinese female sociologist who researches genders, hisbook Feminism(2005) has explainedfeminism. Meanwhile, Introduction toFeminism of Zhu Pingyan(2007) introduces the history of feminism and whataspects it involves. With the help of the two books about feminism, the authoris able to understand feminism better. There are some works that haveresearched the social background and the sprout of feminism in Britain. However,their works mainly focus on dominating figures’ behaviors of feminism. Consequentlyother characters who are not leading figures have less chance to be studiedthan those dominating figures. All in all, there is short of study about comprehensiveanalysis of female images’ personalities combined with feminism. This papercenters upon the awakening of feminism through analyzing the images of femalecharacters, including leading ladies as well as non-leading ladies in theseries. Therefore, there is great significanceto study female characters from the perspective of feminism.

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2. 研究的基本内容与方案

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This paper is mainly about the interpretation of female images inthe British TV series Downton Abbey from the perspective of feminism. It introduces sexism, sexual exploitation andsexual oppression, which feminism wants to end. And it discusses the socialstatus of different women in Downton Abbey and interprets their personalities throughtheir words, actions and attitudes towards the world, and also decomposes thefeminism showing in their personality in the special period of that times.

Zhu Yanping’s Introduction to Feminism(2007) explains feminism from sexualdistinction, education, labor and employment, political engagement, marriageand family and etc. Because of these factors, women’s position and rights were suppressed.Yet with the rapid development of industrial revolution and updating conceptsabout women, the feminism is awakening. In order to sufficiently interpret personalitiesof female images, the author will closely take heed of what they say, what theydo and what they want. One of the key questions the author tries to answer isthat how to apply feminism to analyze female images’ personalities. Besides,the author will compare male images’ views on female with those of females tofully illustrate feminism in the TV series DowntonAbbey.3. 参考文献

[1] Delap,Lucy. Feminist and anti-feminist encounters in Edwardian Britain[J]. HistoricalResearch. 2005, 8 (201):377-399.

[2] Gu Lan. Analysisof Female Consciousness in Downton Abbey[J]. Overseas English. 2017, 6:141-142.

[3] Huntley,Dana. DOWNTON ABBEY. (cover story)[J]. British Heritage. 2012, 33 (4)：26-31.

[4] John Lloyd. Ghostsin the Abbey, but none the worse for that[N]. FT.com, 2010.

[5] Lowry, Brian.Downton Abbey[J]. Daily Variety. 2011, 310(4):12.

[6] Meredith Blake.Downton Abbey recap: All the single ladies[J/OL]. Los Angeles Times 2013. http://articles.latimes.com 2017-12-30/