A Study On The Woman Warrior By Maxine Hong Kingston From The Perspective Of Feminism

The Woman Warrior written by Maxine Hong Kingston was greatly welcomed by the readers from the mainstream society in America. Its popularity was so unprecedented in American history of Chinese-American literature that Maxine Hong Kingston became a well-known woman writer in American literature since1976the year when The Woman Warrio was published. In this thesis several different images of Chinese women created by Kingston in The Woman Warrior were studied and analyzed from the feminist perspective to show the awakening of feminist consciousness of Chinese-American women, their strong desire to get out of the patriarchal society and Kingston’s aspiration for equality between men and women. This means the Chinese-American women under the double suppression of race and gender even should have more feminist consciousness of self-esteem, self-reliance and self-improvement.Introduction is generally about Maxine Hong Kingston and her representative masterpiece The Woman Warrior. Literature review and research design are also to be explained in detail.Chapter One is to explore the intention of Kingston’s writing The Woman Warrior from the following three aspects:being influenced by feminist movements, stimulation by Kingston’s own experience as a Chinese-American woman and enlightenment by Kingston’s mother’s hard-working experience. It is all of these factors that had given Kingston a huge inspiration to create such a book The Woman Warrior which has an influential position in Chinese-American literature.In the second chapter the feminist consciousness in The Woman Warrior is to be analyzed from three aspects:awakening of feminist consciousness:self-rescue and defiance; cultural consciousness—from silence to fusion. This indicates that the author Kingston earnestly hopes that these women should have more feminist consciousness of independence and self-reliance.Chapter Three is dividing the female characters in The Woman Warrior into two categories—feminist appendants and feminist self-independent women. The former refers to the women who chose to exist as subsidiaries to men represented by the nameless woman and Moon Orchid. The later refers to the women who chose to pursue feminist consciousness of independence whose typical representatives are Brave Orchid and American-style Fa Mu Lan. These two types of female characters’ different fate and different outcomes of life are to be explored—whether they are men or women, they all should be soberly aware that women are not subsidiaries to men. Women should have complete feminist consciousness of independence. They should have the right to enjoy all the same rights entirely equal to men.Conclusion is the summary of this thesis. Through the above study we conclude that The Woman Warrior is a typical feminist masterpiece in which Kingston created such female characters—the nameless woman, Moon Orchid, Brave Orchid as well as American Fa Mu Lan—to express the awakening of feminist consciousness of the repressed female, to analyze the existential situation of women who were under the dual pressures of patriarchy and racism. Maxine Hong Kingston took the belonging and construction of Chinese-American women’s cultural identity into consideration. She deeply knew Chinese-American women had been doubly marginalized by American mainstream society centering on male and the white. To resist against the repression from the American white society, Maxine Hong Kingston rewrote the Chinese myth to subvert the stereotyped images of Chinese-American women in American mainstream culture and reconstructed a new image of Chinese-American women in The Woman Warrior. She made the breakthrough out of men’s suppression on women from the cultural integration. In all, the theme and the practical significance in The Woman Warrior are both explored.