On The Conflict And Integration Of Religious Concepts Of The Major Characters In The Woman Warrior

The Woman Warrior, with rich imagination and simple and straightforward writing style, shows the readers a classic work of a little girl’s childhood and women’s real lives around her in the Chinese American community in America. The work describes discrimination, repression, poverty from which Chinese Americans suffer and their sense of insecurity. Maxine Hong Kingston mixes the traditional Chinese fairy and ghost stories and the legends of the saint together to depict the heroine story who fights for freedom. From the perspective of a young girl “I”, The Woman Warrior shows the protagonist’s suffering under the bicultural clashes and her great efforts to achieve the final fusion of the two different cultures under the dual effect of Chinese traditional culture and American mainstream culture. Based on the eminent theorist Terry Eagleton’s theory of literary production of ideology, the author of this thesis intends to explore Kingston’s religious view in The Woman Warrior, using the method of comparison. The distinction of Chinese and Western cultures is the result of different basic spirit and concepts of Chinese and Western ideology, especially the distinction of the doctrines of two different religions. The conflicts and the final integration of two different cultural concepts which are closely related to two different religious ideologies are clearly showed in both Maxine Hong Kingston and the main characters. Based on the analysis of the effects of Confucianism and Christianity on Kingston and the main roles in the work, “I” and “I”’s mother, it is quiet clear that two different religious ideologies play a decisive part in conflicts of ideals and the final fusion in the major characters in the work and the writer of The Woman Warrior. Terry Eagleton’s theory of literary production of ideology can help us know the root of cultural clashes and integration in Chinese American works better from the open field of vision, which has a positive meaning for finding a new perspective of studying Chinese American literature.The first chapter of the thesis briefly introduces Maxine Hong Kingston and her work, The Woman Warrior. The second chapter is literature review. The third chapter briefly introduces Terry﹒Eagleton’s theory of Ideology of literary production, especially the definition and relationship of the general ideology, the authorial ideology and the text. In the fourth chapter, the author of the thesis has analyzed the influence of Confucianism and Christianity as the dominant ideology on two generations of Chinese Americans. The fifth chapter analyzes the integration of religious concepts in “I” and mother. The last chapter is the conclusion.