Female Identity:From Loss To Construction——The Man Who Loved Children And For Love Alone

Christina Stead (1902-1983), is unquestionably an important woman writer in Australian literary field. Although Stead’s creations are filled with genuine originality, uniqueness and power, it seems that she has not gained the recognition she deserved. Among her numerous works displaying various themes, there exists a flow of thinking that can not be ignored—feminist theme. Thus the dissertation, from the perspective of female identity construction, focuses on the exploration of her autobiographic masterpieces The Man Who Loved Children and For Love Alone which are considered Stead’s most excellent works achieving both literary accomplishments and realistic significance. The thesis argues that it is through expressing their own voices and harmonious male-female relationship that women construct their individual identity successfully.Firstly, the writer of the thesis probes into the loss of female identity represented by mother Henny through carrying out a penetrating analysis of the male-female relationship in the first novel The Man Who Loved Children. By paying close attention to the strange sometimes abnormal relations among its family members, husband and wife, parents and children, in particular, the household struggling for power, the analysis reveals that it is the patriarchal domination in the family that causes Henny’s loss of identity, reflecting in her deprived discourse and endless sufferings of breeding. On the basis of his discourse hegemony, Sam as the spokesman for the patriarchy inventing his own system, has reduced his wife Henny to a mere reproduction tool and also demanded from his children unconditional submission. In the end, Henny commits suicide to escape the suffocating family as a result, not only becoming a victim of the system but also failing in her own identity construction.Secondly, the thesis traces the endless endeavors that women make to establish their own identity and independence displayed in Louisa, the heroine in The Man Who Loved Children as well as in Teresa, the heroine of For Love Alone. Louisa, the eldest daughter gives the system the most severe attack in an effort to free herself from the family patriarchy system, which denies female identity in a cruel and foxing way. Louisa retaliates the father’s hegemony with great assaults using her new discourse in forms of unfathomable codes and deconstructs his self-ruling system when she begins to awaken. This also proves that language is a crucial element in building the patriarchy and also an equally powerful means in deconstructing it. As a new woman imbued with self-consciousness, female consciousness and independent spirit, Louisa embarks on an exploration journey to the outside world contrasting sharply with her own family. Her stepping out to the society demonstrates her success in realizing her identity as an independent woman, a significant step leading to successful female identity construction.Teresa, an adult Louisa, accomplishes the task of female identity construction eventually. Different from Louisa, who makes good use of language power, the brave heroine leans upon love influence this time. In the course of pursuing female independence full of trials and tribulations, love is the bright light that leads and constantly encourages those females. In spite of the fact that both are taboos defined by codes of conducts then, the heroine confesses her sexual needs courageously and seeks her true lover in the end inspired by love desire. On the rough and bumpy journey to true love, she finds with disillusion that the men she cherishes are either a male chauvinist or a man who considers women just as an affiliated object to men. Teresa obtains true love in her relationship with Harry ultimately, who offers her generously true equality, freedom, and independence. Women become genuinely free by means of seeking true self in their pursuit of true love, though it may not be the only way. Only when women seek true their selves can they construct their subjectivity and identity successfully.Based on her own experiences. Stead successfully demonstrates the problems women usually have and the possible solutions to them. According to Stead, the way to seek independence is not in the alienation of women from men but in harmonious relationships between men and women. It is through pursuing the true self in seeking miraculous and powerful love that Teresa has acknowledged her desire and constructed female identity fully, which is the case with Stead herself. In the male-dominated society, the power of discourse is an evident male privilege, and the female are usually in the state of silence. The liberty to state one’s own opinions is a sign of one’s independent personality. The female, who are supposed to be subsidiary to the male, have been deprived of their voices, the opportunity to possess and express their independent thoughts. In the distress of "Otherness" status imposed by the phallocentric culture, the female are not in the possession of discourse power, let alone other rights. Stead makes it clear that the first step to seek female identity is to invent their own discourse and make themselves heard in order to transcend the binary male-female opposition.