Inheritance And Breakthrough Of "Gender Essentialism"

As the "founder of American stage", Eugene O'Neill is one of themost outstanding playwrights of America in the twentieth century. Hesucceeds in both endowing American drama with serious themes andexperimenting with various dramatic skills. Meanwhile, his achievementin characterization of females is also noteworthy.This thesis attempts to study some representative female charactersin O'Neill's plays in order to illustrate the dramatist's maturation frombeing seriously influenced by the ideology of gender essentialism totranscending limitations of the age and himself.The thesis is divided into three chapters. Chapter 1 provides a briefintroduction of theories concerning gender essentialism with SigmundFreud's theory and ideas embodied in The Holy Bible in focus. Genderessentialism is so deep-rooted in people's mind that it has influencedquite a lot of writers, including William Shakespeare, August Strindbergand Eugene O'Neill as well. Chapter 2 explores O'Neill's inheritance ofgender essentialism, according to which women are fundamentallyinferior to men. This chapter explores Mrs. Roylston in Servitude, thephysically inferior woman, and Ruth Mayo in Beyond the Horizon, themorally inferior woman, with a thorough analysis of both characters to demonstrate O'Neill's conservatism in female characterization in hisearly writing career. With his maturation in world view, O'Neill laterstrives to cast away his prejudice against women, which results in thecreation of some complex characters with respectable personalities.Chapter 3 deals with O'Neill's breakthrough of gender essentialism. Herethe thesis mainly discusses Anna Christie in Anna Christie and JosieHogan in A Moon for the Misbegotten, two women who can never becalled inferior to men. With a successful portrayal of an ideal woman—Josie Hogan—in his last complete play, O'Neill finally becomes judicialto women, breaking through the influence of gender essentialism.