A Study On Jewish Female Characters Created By Joyce Carol Oates

As an American female profile writer, Joyce Carol Oates(1938-) created more than 110 works. In recent ten years, the female characters created by Oates have being featured in different appearances and personalities, most of whom suffered from the plight of living and struggled with it. Her feminism has therefore becoming more and more apparent. After knowing her Jewish descent, for the first time Oates chose Jewish female as her writing target and created two representative works in different styles: full-length novel the Gravedigger’s daughter(2007) and Epistolary novel Cousins(2004). In the novels, there are three representative Jewish females: Anna, Rebecca and Freyda, which will be studied more detailly including their depositing and awakening of female consciousness from the perspective of feminism. Combined with the background of cultural identity, this thesis will also analyze their struggle and confusion which brought by identity crisis and explore their tough and endless journey of seeking cultural identity reconstruction.The thesis mainly consists of five chapters.The first chapter gives a brief introduction to Joyce Carol Oates and her two representative Jewish novels and then discusses the current researches on the works in and abroad, and also illustrates the relative concepts of feminism and identity.The second chapter, “Oates’ creation under the care about feminine consciousness”, mainly combs Oates’ recent works about females, and explores Oates’ feminine consciousness as a female writer herself. Meanwhile, it illustrates that one of the reasons for Oates’ marginalization is that the feminine consciousness of her works was not cultivated, or lack of feminine consciousness. This chapter also analyzes texts with the care about the plight of Jewish females and the deconstruction of male’s authority in order to demonstrate the process of Oates’ feminine consciousness which gradually evolved from weak to strong.The third chapter, “The Depositing and Awaking of Jewish Feminine Consciousness”, explores the progress in feminine consciousness of three Jewish females created by Oates’, ranging from numbing, awaking to struggle. It will interpret why and how the feminine consciousness formed in terms of era background, family relationship and Jewish tradition.The fourth chapter, “The Reconstruction of Jewish Females’ Feminine Identity and Cultural Identity”, analyzes the reposition of Feminine Identity and Cultural Identity Oates makes in her works. Through analysis of Female characters, it aims at overturning the traditional Jewish Females’ Feminine Identity, such as Anna ’s “other” identity in the family, which is mainly manifested in the lack of discourse right. And repositioning Jewish females’ feminine identity, such as Rebecca, fully suffering from patriarchal oppression, can still release from the bondage of feminine identity and succeed in breaking through from the family roles. But for the description of the Jewish female’s cultural identity, the novel mostly deals with their struggle and confusion in the face of the cultural identity crisis. Furthermore, no matter what kind of strategies they take, identity crisis has always become a huge barrier of culture shock. Thus, reconstruction process will also be a never-ending process.The fifth Chapter concludes that the Jewish culture is subordinated to American culture. Jewish women were under such kind of background as the divergence of religion and double pressure from racism and Orientalism. The ultimate purpose of the thesis is just seeking harmonious sexual relations through breaking up gender imbalance and dealing with the crisis of cultural identity.