Searching For The Voice Of Harmony: An Eco-feminist Reading Of Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres

Jane Smiley (1949-) is considered as one of the most distinguishedcontemporary women writers in America. Her novels are characterized by the vividdescription of American middle-class family life, in particular, by her delicate andpenetrating writing style. Her Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Awardwinning novel A Thousand Acres was published in1991. It is also Smiley’smasterpiece which depicts the agricultural life of American Midwest.In A Thousand Acres, she unites ecological themes with feminist issues: theoppression to the daughters and the exploitation to the land merge into one underLarry’s patriarchal domination; both natural ecology of the thousand acres and mentaland physical health of the Cook women are destroyed. The crisis of nature is verysimilar in concepts and circumstances to women’s plight. In this sense, Smiley has anidentical pursuit to that of ecofeminists.This thesis attempts to interpret A Thousand Acres from an ecofeministperspective. There are four parts. The first is introduction, which makes a briefintroduction to Jane Smiley and her work and Ecofeminism literary criticism. Thesecond and the third are the main bodies. The second part describes the connectionsbetween nature and women and the unharmonious scenes. The third part illustrates theawakening of nature and women and how the two search for final harmony. The forthpart is conclusion. By examining situations of women and nature under the domination bypatriarchy in A Thousand Acres, this thesis hopes to call for human beings to reflectupon the crisis of western industrial civilization and to think about how to balance therelationship between men and women, and how to get along well with nature. Inaddition, the adoption of ecofeminist theory can broaden the investigative perspectiveand help readers to get a more comprehensive understanding of this novel.