The Common Plight Of Women And Nature:An Ecofeminist Study On A Lost Lady

Willa Cather is a famous woman novelist in American literature in the first half of the 20th century.Her reputation largely rests on her novels about immigrants of the great prairie on Nebraska and the American Southwest.Cather is known as "the defender for the spiritual beauty in the process of material”because of the profound values of the agricultural society and female aesthetics in her works.Since published in 1923,A Lost Lady has aroused large amount of interests on the study from a variety of perspectives.However,studies from the ecofeminist perspective are not thorough enough.Based on the previous researches,this thesis attempts to study on the theme of the common plight of women and nature in Cather’s A Lost Lady from the perspective of ecofeminism.This thesis is made up of six chapters in all.Chapter one not only gives a brief account of The Lost Lady,which is the representative work of the conflict series in Cather’s second writing phase,but also states the significance of the thesis.Chapter two is literature review,which comprehensively analyzes and expounds the researches on Cather and A Lost Lady at home and abroad,which has an important significance for the thesis.Chapter three discusses the theoretical foundation of the thesis-ecofeminism.The author states the development of ecofeminism and Cather’s ecofeminist understanding and change in her different writing phases.Furthermore,based on the text,the author also gives some specific accounts of ecofeminism in A Lost Lady.Chapter four discusses the androcentrism which brings the common plight to women and nature based on the ecofeminism.Discrimination to gender and nature is closely related to the historical background of social politics and economics.Thus,the society dominated by western male-centered culture inevitably results in the plight of women and nature.Chapter five discusses the reasons of their plight from themselves based on the ecofeminism.It is believed that Marian’s weakness in her own personality and her acceptance of the imbalanced status indulge the oppression of women and nature from androcentrism.As a result,women become the accomplice of the androcentrism.What’s more,women’s alienation to nature and excessive pursuit for material life lead to the disappearance of women’s good quality,at the same time Marian ruins her spirit world and great personality,her decision of abandoning the position of nature’s protector also places nature into a plight.The last chapter is the conclusion which summarizes the common plight of women and nature from two aspects of internal and external causes based on the ecofeminist theory,thus,the thesis reveals the root of the plight.On the one hand,the plight ascribes to the androcentric consciousness.Therefore,androcentrism’s oppression to female and its destruction of nature are seriously criticized.On the other hand,the author believes that feminist consciousness is an important way to get rid of the common plight of women and nature.Therefore,women have unshirkable responsibility for the plight.