A Study On The Alienation Of Heriones In The Song Of Everlasting Sorrow And Sister Carrier

Alienation is a common topic in modern and contemporary Chinese and Western literature.In human history,it manifests itself as a binary division of man and nature,history and human relations,sense and sensibility,reality and ideal.Therefore,alienation is an eternal theme in literature.In the 20 th century,due to the historical reality and human cognition,the eternal theme of alienation has been deepened comprehensively in modernist literature.The Song of Everlasting Sorrow is one of the most famous works of Chinese writer Wang Anyi at the end of 20 th century.Sister Carrie is the first work of American naturalist writer Theodore Dreiser in the 20 th century.The heroines Wangqiyao and Carrie in the two novels are the alienated female images in literary works.The two works reflect the common problem of the alienation of the heroines during social transformation.In our society,girls like Wangqiyao and Carrie are not uncommon,so it is of practical significance to analyze these two works from the perspective of alienation.This dissertation adopts the parallel research method in comparative literature to study and analyze the alienation of the heroines Wangqiyao and Carrie in these two novels.And it studies the alienation of social environment,alienation of love and individual’s self-alienation,and then it finds out the differences and similarities between the two heroines in two works,and it explores the cultural root of the differences.The study finds that the difference is manifested in three aspects: In the alienation of social environment,in the heroines of two works long for comfortable and in luxury life.But the influence of the metropolis on their values and view of life is different.In the alienation of love,the two heroines give up love and marriage in pursuit of material and comfortable life,but the ends oftheir fates are different.In the individual and self alienation,the two heroines relied on men to get materialized wealth and comfortable life,but in the face of setbacks,their performance varied.Through the research,the reasons for these differences are: First,under the influence of external factors such as context culture and historical background,the two heroines’ different personalities cause their different endings.Wang Qiyao’s passiveness,submission and impulsiveness in the process of pursuing luxury life contribute to her tragic fate.Carrie’s braveness,confidence and indomitable spirits in the pursuit of her dream are the reasons for her success in the material world.Second,their different endings are also influenced by the two authors’ different world views and ideological tendencies.Then come to the conclusion that although they get different endings,both of them does not get the happiness that they hoped.Either in China or in America during the social transformation,patriarchy shackles and constrains females.While the society develops rapidly,traditional moral concepts still contain people’s ideology.In patriarchal society women,if adhering to the conventional ideology,are usually faced existential dilemma,but they will get rid of social bondage and achieve self-realization with an economic and emotional independence.