Women’s Tragedy:An Eco-feministic Approach To The Gravedigger’s Daughter

Joyce Carol Oates is one of the most distinguished and prolific American writers.Her fictions,pregnant with profound meanings,cover diversified styles and reveal different themes.Since publication in 2007,her masterpiece The Gravedigger’s Daughter has received increasing attention from critics both at home and abroad.Current scholars mostly pay attention to themes such as the Jewish identity,gender,violence,initiation from various perspectives like feminism,trauma theory,Bildungsroman,space theory,mimicry theory,psychological analysis,alienation theory.Based on the theoretical framework of eco-feminism,this thesis attempts to explore this novel from a new perspective to investigate women’s tragedy and their awakening of Eco-feminist awareness from the tragedy.The thesis consists of the following three parts:The“Introduction”firstly introduces the life and works of Joyce Carol Oates,including The Gravedigger ’s Daughter.And then literature review of this novel both at home and abroad is clearly manifested.At last,the background and development of eco-feministic theory are orderly explained,behind which the feasibility of this thesis is presented.The the main body of the thesis is composed of four chapters,each devoted to different angles to the theme.Chapter One casts a close shot on Oates’s views on nature and women,and how she writes down the novel under the influence of eco-feministic thoughts.Chapter Two focuses on women’s oppression under the eco-feministic view on nature in the novel.Since woman has a special relationship with nature,thus the subordinated position of nature in industrial civilization is combined with women’s degraded position,reducing women to be the largest victims in the industrial age.Chapter Three makes a deep analysis of women’s oppression in the eco-feministic view on patriarchy and race.Influenced by the mainstream patriarchal and white superior cultures,Rebecca and her mother Anna,the Jewish descendants,are forced to suffer from maltreatment and persecution in society,especially Anna who has lost her identities as a wife as well as a mother and ends up in extreme desperation.Chapter Four discusses women’s awakening of Eco-feminist consciousness from their tragedy.In order to survive in the hostile environment,Rebecca actively confronts those who oppress and dominate her.After the failure of confrontation,she makes three escapes and further changes her identity including her name,physical appearance and attitudes.Eventually,Rebecca succeeds in pursuit of a harmonious society where she truly finds love,freedom and inner peace.The Conclusion of the thesis makes a summary of women’s tragedy from the perspective of eco-feminism.It concludes that women’s tragedy is worthy to be explored because the reasons of women’s tragedy and their terrible conditions are essential premises to their awakening,and they need to reconstruct a harmonious society where women,men and nature can coexist together.