On The Female Alliance In Dessa Rose

As a worldwide famous African-American novelist, Sherley Anne Williams has several titles, such as poet, playwright and literature professor. Her works show extensive genres, which includes short stories, poetry and children’s books, as well as literary critics, drama and so on. Especially, the poem collections of The Peacock Poems and Some One Sweet Angel Child have nominated for the National Book Award, while other works won different awards. Sherley Anne Williams who makes a certain achievement and enjoys a certain prestige exerts significant influence on society and occupied an important place in the field of African American literature.Dessa Ross which was published by Williams in1986is a historical friction about slavery. No matter seen from the perspective of plot, structure or narrative form, this novel will be of great value in literary studies. In addition to the literary achievements, the revelation to social construction by the novel can not be ignored as well. Therefore, the novel, with its own literary, historic and social significance, can be regarded as an excellent one among the African-American literatures. The necessity of the researching on it should be awakened and the research results will further highlight the literary value of the novel, as well as historic and social values.Social harmony is an eternal social proposition. Because only in a harmonious social environment can a nation achieve sustainable development of politics, economics science, technology and culture. However, in such a melting pot of the United States with the historical background of sharp conflict between the blacks and the whites, how to find the right way of national integration out is a confusing issue. In the novel Dessa Rose, Sherley Anne Williams demonstrates a type of feasible mode-the Female Alliance. In addition to the female alliance, the society should effectively promote a full range of alliance with the core values of maternity, humanity, freedom and equality advocated by women, and ultimately achieves the effects of national integration and social harmony.In this thesis, the author aims to conduct systematic research on Sherley Anne Williams’novel Dessa Rose, trying to make a detailed analysis of the female alliance described in it. At the same time, this research will make efforts to explore the origin and the profound significance of the formation of the female alliance. To be specific, the thesis will start from presenting the features of the female alliance in the novel Dessa Rose, so as to make a comprehensive recognition of the characteristics of the female alliance, answering the question of what the female alliance is. And then, the research will analyze the core values which prompted the formation of the female alliance, thereby to answer the question that why they united together. Next, the formation conditions of the alliance will be discussed. At last, this thesis will analyze the significance of the female alliance’s establishment through describing women’s self-salvation in the alliance.In order to resolve the problem of how to comprehensively dig out the characteristics, core values and significance of the female alliance in Dessa Rose deep-seated and essentially, this research will focus on the contents of the novel, rather than interpret the text applying a large quantitative of literary theories, terminologies and jargons. In this case, it can avoid the problem of only staying on the surface demonstration of the female alliance. Therefore, this research will be rooted in the text, tracing back to the works and taking the novel contents as the basis of the research with the guidance of relative literature theories. At present, some existing works and papers have made research on Sherley Anne Williams and her novel Dessa Ross from different angles, which provide a certain amount of research material and references for this thesis. Hence, this thesis will draw on the results of previous studies, study the text in detail and interpret the female alliance in Dessa Rose thoroughly.