An Ecofeminist Approach To The Woman Warrior

The Woman Warrior is one of Maxine Hong Kingston’s representative works. Uptill now, this book has aroused a lot of attention from critics and scholars, whoseresearches study it from the perspectives of cultural identity, stereotype criticism,postcolonial criticism， and so on. In recent years, critics have witnessed thedevelopment of ecofeminism and applied the theory to the literary criticism. However,the ecofeminist significance implicated in The Woman Warrior is seldom mentioned.In order to offer a new angle to interpret this novel, the present thesis attempts toprovide a systematic ecofeminist study on it. The ecofeminist movement, one of themost significant movements emerged in the1970s, constitutes an important branchcombining feminism and ecological criticism with its characteristics probing therelationship between the domination of nature and the imputation of women in thepatriarchal society. The ultimate goal of the ecofeminism is to reconstruct a newharmonious order of the world in which the currently subordinated groups are nottaken as the inferior through revealing and criticizing the aftermath ofpatriarchal-center culture.Focusing on the textual analysis, this thesis is divided into five parts. The firstpart is a brief introduction to Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior, theliterature review on this novel at home and abroad, and the ecofeminist theory.Besides, the symbolic connection of women and nature is analyzed in the second part.The third part continually explores men’s twin dominations over women and nature inthe patriarchal society. In addition to the former analysis which focused on the genderoppression, this thesis is also intended to explore the oppressions of race and class byadopting the Third World ecofeminism to the analysis. And in the patriarchal society,nature suffers a lot from humans’ destruction and over-exploitation. The fourth partmakes the point that the harmonization can be ultimately achieved between womenand men as well as human beings and nature. In conclusion, emphasis on the potentialfor the harmonious coexistence between humans and nature is a possible way to get rid of all oppressions and immoral behaviors from which women and nature suffer alot.