An Ecofeminist Approach To Cold Mountain

Charles Frazier (born November 4,1950) is a contemporary American writer. Cold Mountain is the debut novel in his writing career, which is also the prize-winning novel of the 1997 National Book Award. Since its publication, the novel has received much intense attention from a number of critics and academics. To this day, many scholars have interpreted it from different perspectives. Some scholars focus on the writing techniques and language styles of the novel. Some analyze the protagonist's spiritual life through religious lens. There are also some other scholars who make comparative study between this novel and The Odyssey. All the research contributes to varying degrees to the readers'further understanding of the novel.So far, however, there is no systematical study on the novel with application of ecofeminism, which is a deep thought of Frazier embodied distinctly and evidently in it. In this novel, the author gives a profound description of the relations between human and nature and relations among humans. He displays human's affinity with and respect for nature, acknowledges the role of nature in human's physical and spiritual development and celebrates the equal, cooperative and caring relations among all humans in his book. Meanwhile, in this novel with the Civil War as its setting, the writer exhibits his anti-war attitude through portrayal of war's destructive effect on human's body and soul. Frazier's expression of the ideal relations between human and nature, of the ideal relations among humans and of his anti-war sentiment is in agreement with the viewpoints of ecofeminism. The thesis aims to interpret Cold Mountain through the lens of ecofeminism to explore Frazier's ecofeminist awareness as a male writer.This thesis consists of three chapters in addition to introduction and conclusion, which are as follows: In Introduction, the thesis briefly introduces the ecofeminism theory adopted in the present research and presents a review of the research concerning Cold Mountain at home and abroad.The first chapter adopts ecofeminist thought of relation between human and nature to analyze identification of the two heroines, Ada and Ruby, with nature and land. In addition, the hero Inman's close relation with nature based on egalitarian thought is also analyzed. This chapter on the one hand affirms women's identification with nature argued by ecofeminism and on the other hand points out men can also establish harmonious relations with nature as long as they cast away patriarchal ideology.The second chapter expounds human relations, including relations between men and women, women relations, and also cross-racial relations. This chapter highlights the role of equality thoughts in improving human relations and constructing healthy and harmonic human societies.The third chapter makes an analysis of the destructive effect of war on human's body and soul with the combination of ecofeminist anti-war concepts. This chapter concludes that the writer is opposed to war and weary of war in that it runs counter to the ecofeminist intention of constructing an ecologically harmonious world.Finally, on the basis of the three chapters above, it can be concluded that Frazier's depiction of ideal relations between human and nature, ideal relations among humans and expression of his anti-war attitude exhibit his deep ecological concern for nature and human, demonstrating he is a male writer with ecofeminist consciousness.