An Eco-feminist Study Of Women's Self-liberation In Mary Freeman's Short Stories

This thesis tries to analyze the eco-feminist ideas hiding in some of Mary Freeman's short stories,aiming to find out the reasons for why women were oppressed in patriarchal society in the 19 th century.Based on this,the author further analyzes women's self-awareness and self-liberation in Freeman's short stories,in order to provide new clues for Women's Liberation Movement nowadays.This thesis has five parts.The first part introduces some back ground information about Mary Freeman and the theories of eco-feminism.The second part is mainly about the literature review about this topic at home and abroad.The third part systematically introduces the origin,development and main ideas of eco-feminism and eco-feminists literary theory.The fourth part focuses on Freeman's eco-feminist thoughts and ideas hiding in her several short stories: The Parrot,Arethusa,The Monkey,and The Plasma Fur.Moreover,it discusses the relationship among human(especially women),nature and animals;as well as other problems concerned by eco-feminists such as gender,grades and natural protection.In the end,the author concludes that women and nature are discriminated because they are both marginalized in patriarchal society.In the fifth part,the writer analyzes Sarah's self-awareness and image in Freeman's representative work The Revolt of Mother;the writer also finds the reason for her discrimination is phallogocentrism viewpoint in patriarchy society.After that,the writer combines eco-feminist theory and concludes that women's protection to nature is consistent with their revolt to male's oppression.In the sixth part,the writer gives us some inspirations for women's self-liberation after the eco-feminist study of Mary Freeman's short stories,such as replacing traditional anthropocentrism and androcentrism with the idea of equality;creating the social environment that respect differences and value diversities;protecting our natural environment and so on.These inspirations provide us more possibilities for women's self-liberation.