【Abstract】By close reading of the texts from the short stories in Friend of My Youth and careful studies on those vivid female characters， this thesis intends to interpret the work from the perspective of Michel Foucault’s theory of body and Helene Cixous theory of feminine writing， to recognize and analyze the emergence and significance of the feminine writing in Munro’s Friend of My Youth， her consciousness in revealing female plight and initiation through their bodily experiences and her effort to encourage women to establish their wholeness as a self.
【Key words】Female body； Friend of My Youth； Resistance； Wholeness
Although female body is the very site for oppression， it turns out that in Munro’s stories there are still several women who strives to break away from the body-cage， to fulfills their body as an entity own by themselves and to explore what’s deep inside their bodies and hear the voice from their own body instead of getting to know their own body from man. They resist to a body caged and trapped by either man or their own. Only when women have control of their own body can they truly gain freedom physically and mentally.
“Feminist readings of Alice Munro are rewarding because of the mere fact that her stories offer distinctive female perspectives and portray women in different historical， reginal， and social contexts.” （Staines， 2016： 75） In Friend of My Youth， by presenting the female bodies as both language and materiality， Munro creates a great vision of women’s life experiences. Through the textual exposure of female body， Munro reveals the fact that female body has long been caged and oppressed while on the other hand， it has also great potential to resist， provoke and subvert in the patriarchal society. This thesis aims to explore how Munro’s textual representation of female body light a fire for female identity and how she conduct the feminine writing appealing to concerns on women’s life predicament and initiation.
Michael Foucault， as one of the most influential philosophers， has greatly promotes the development of the body theory. He suggests， in an essay “Nietzsche， genealogy and power” （Sara Mills， 2004：83 ） that the body should be seen as ‘the inscribed surface of events’， it is a “historically and culturally specific entity”. In his eyes，， human body is both an independent entity and a kind of social text. Additionally， Foucault draws attention to the body as one which is viewed， treated and indeed experienced differently depending on the social context and the historical period， thus he holds that bodies in a sense are always “subjected to change and can never be regarded as natural， but rather are always experienced as mediated through different social constructions of the body.” （Mills， 2004： 83）
