A Study Of Shallows From The Perspective Of Eco-feminism

Tim Winton is a well-known writer of Australia,who begins writing at an early age.Shallows is the first novel which wins Miles Franklin Award for him,the most significant award of literature in Australia.The number of researches on this novel is limited.As a result,this thesis tries to study Shallows from a new perspective:eco-feminism.Under the guidance of this theory,this thesis mainly does following work:As eco-feminism puts,compared with males,females bear a closer relationship with nature.So this thesis first searches for the similarities between females and nature that make the two intimate.The result is that,females love nature,including plants,animals,water and air of it,all of which make females feel relaxed and confident;females’ fate connects to the alternation of seasons in nature: spring means free childhood full of hopes in females’ life;summer stands for romantic love and happy marriage life of females;autumn represents the sufferings and pains that females go through;and finally,winter,is the darkest and loneliest period of females’ life.What’s more,this thesis finds out another important similarity between females and nature,that is,both the two are forced to a marginal position of human culture.Females are prejudiced and oppressed by males,while nature is exploited and destroyed by human beings.Then how females and nature become the victim is also explored by this thesis.Under the guidance of eco-feminism,this thesis discovers that both nature and females fight against the sufferings in their own ways,and females should and have the capability to fight against the oppression and prejudices not just for themselves,but also for nature.In the end,this thesis draws the conclusion which is in coincidence with the aim of eco-feminism: only by subverting the notion of male supremacy and human supremacy,and reconstructing the relationship between two genders and that between human beings and nature,can females and nature be liberated completely;so that males,females and nature can get along harmoniously and create a better future.