英语论文网

aken more care and given more attention to Frank than any of her other children. Frank runs away and goes boxing.
With Frank gone, Meggie clings into Ralph. As a child she is like a daughter to him but as the years pass Meggie grows into a beautiful woman. Meggie is passionately in love with him by the age of seventeen, and his emotions toward her are not entirely priestly. Mary Carson is old, eccentric, and more than a little lustful of the handsome priest. A widow without children, there are only two options for her estate. To leave it to her estranged brother Paddy and his family, who are impoverished, or to grant Ralph what he desires. Mary observes the entanglement between Meggie and Ralph and decides to make the best of it. She vows to steal the priest’s soul at the cost of her own, and leaves him to make a terrible choice between power and love, happiness and misery, chance and fate. From beyond the grave she continues to haunt him as he follows the workings of her will and inevitably faces devastation. Mary dies, and she leaves all the money in the control of Ralph due to a kind of love she had for him. Ralph gains the attention of the Church, and is sent away to Sydney.
Before he leaves, Meggie confesses of her love for him. Ralph refuses her because of his position as a priest and he entreats Meggie to marry someone and find a beau. Then he leaves her. Meggie also uses every opportunity to rail at the creator, blaming Him for “taking away everything she has ever loved.”
Meggie then courts Luke who looks remarkably like Ralph, and takes a liking into him. He marries her, and takes her away. He works as a sugar cutter, and he leaves Meggie in a poor place to work as a maid. Meggie is lonely and distraught. After giving birth to a child, Justine, Meggie is getting weaker and weaker, and the family she is staying with pities her greatly. They send her to a quiet summer resort for rest. Ralph comes back on a holiday to find Meggie. He joins Meggie, and then a revelation comes over him. He loved Meggie more than God, and he was indeed only a Man, no matter how Godlike he had tried to become. They spend a few days together, and he was on his way again. Knowing being pregnant with Ralph’s baby, Meggie divorces Luke.
She names the child Dane. As Dane grows up he wants to be a priest, while Justine wants to be an actress and leaves Australia and seeks her dream. Dane goes to Ralph, but Ralph does not know that Dane is his own child. Because of their resemblance, people mistake them as uncle and nephew.
Dane drowns in Greece, whilst a civil war is going on. Before Meggie tells Ralph the truth, he refuses to help Meggie bring back Dane’s body. Soon after Dane’s death, Ralph passes away.
The book ends with her living happily with Rainer who loved her from the beginning and respects her remarkable character.

Thorn Bird refers to a kind of bird that searches for thorn trees from the day it is born. Until it finds one, it pierces it into its own heart, and sings the most beautiful song ever heard on earth. Pain is the price to pay for the very best.

2 The Background Conditions for Western Women’s Self-Awareness
The western women’s self-awareness is different from that of eastern women. There are several background conditions.
2.1 Western Cultured Background
The old Greece culture has nurtured open-minded, and free-expr