A Historical Reconstruction Of Female Identity In Doctorow's The March

As one of the most outstanding American novelists of 20 thcentury,Edgar Lawrence(E.L.)Doctorow is famous for historical fictions with unique writing style and serious themes.He always uses different postmodern writing styles to put both fictional and real historical figures in specific historical contexts.The way to mix history with imagination injects fresh vitality into contemporary western literature.It is much easier for readers to identify the reality in a fictional world and re-understand the history as well.The March was published in 2005 which won the National Book Critics Circle Award(2005)and PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction(2006).It tells a story setting in the magnificent American Civil War that the real historical figure General William Tecumseh Sherman with his troops marches through the heart of the South to emancipate slaves.In The March,Doctorow creates various different types of characters who are the social epitome of war time that reflects human nature completely and provokes readers to think of social problems such as war,death,race and identity.In addition to the important male characters who are the majority leading the war,there are many vivid and impressive female characters whose lives are put to different tracks by the Civil War such as the mixture Pearl,the Justice's daughter Emily Thompson,the mistress of Plantation Mattie and Emily's slave girl Wilma.Although suffering from the cruelty of war,the confusion to future and the frustration of love,they have to face with the overwhelming changes of life brought by the war and strongly struggle with all difficulties to survive.In the light of related feminist theories mainly on Simone De Beauvoir's The Second Sex and close reading of the text,this thesis explores the process of reconstruction of female identity in the war and analyzes their different fates.Apart from introduction and conclusion,this paper includes three chapters.In Chapter 1,it mainly focuses on the female figures as the silenced southern othersneglected by people and explores the internal and external reasons for their marginalization.Through the four female characters' life in South mentioned above,it illustrates that women's images are shaped by traditional social values and their own unawareness.Then Chapter 2 examines how the four typical female figures reconstruct their identity,from voiceless condition to awakening of self-recognition.The war has totally changed their track of life and made them experience the loss of relatives,the dilemma of spirit and the failure of love.In these predicaments,they make different choices to reconstruct their awareness and identities.Chapter 3presents the different fates of the female figures to reflect Doctorow's concern on woman's survival predicament in a male-dominated environment.Pearl and Wilma choose to seek for their free and independent life while Emily and Mattie become victims of patriarchy.In conclusion,according to their different fates and Doctorow's restoration of the Civil War,this thesis manages to reveal his humanistic concern on the marginalized group and their anxiety of identities.By recreating women's images,Doctorow hopes women can find out a way to quest for their real liberation and to establish a harmonious relation with men.