The Call From The Margin

Tillie Lerner Olsen(January 14,1912——January 1,2007)was one of the outstanding Jewish left-wing women writers in the United States.Olsen’s literary output,though limited in size,is deep in meaning.She was the recipient of nine honorary degrees,National Endowment for the Arts fellowships,and a Guggenheim Fellowship.Also among the honors bestowed upon Olsen was the Distinguished Contributions to American Literature Award in 1975,and the Rea Award for the Short Story in 1994.As a left-wing woman writer,Olsen pays her special attention to the fate of the working-class women who have suffered layers of oppressions and reduced to be marginal.It is reflected in two short stories "I Stand Here Ironing"(1956)and "O Yes"(1957),as well as a title novella "Tell Me a Riddle"(1960)in the collection of short stories Tell Me a Riddle(1961),in addition to the only novel Yonnondio:From the Thirties(1974).However,up till now,there has been no systematic study on the analysis of women images in Olsen’s works from the intersectional relationship among gender,class and race.In view of this,this thesis focuses on the representations of the marginal women images in Olsen’s works to make a thorough exploration of how and why those women are multi-oppressed and degraded to be marginal from three aspects:gender,class and race.Besides,it also further analyzes the inner calls of the marginal women,in order to reveal Olsen’s feminist consciousness,class-consciousness and racial consciousness.The main body of the thesis includes three parts:Chapter Two pays attention to the concrete representations of marginal women images,including gender victim,class inferior and racial other.In terms of gender,the marginal women in Olsen’s works not only lose the power to control their bodies and power of discourse,but even lose their subjectivity.As for class,they become the"scapegoat" of capitalist private ownership,worse still,their inner communist revolutionary dream has been forced to be repressed for years.In races,they are excluded and discriminated by the white except the marginal white,thus becoming the "other",besides,they can’t return back to their homeland.Consequently,they are degraded as outsiders within the white-dominated society.Chapter Three explores the roots why those women are forced to be marginal from four aspects in detail,containing the laws of traditional Judaism,patriarchal system,capitalist private ownership,and racial discrimination.The irreconcilable and intersectional contradictions caused by the differences of cultures among gender,class and race,make them maladaptive to the new society.Particularly,the dominant power embodied by masculine culture,bourgeois culture and racist culture in the new society oppresses those women and makes them be in margin.As a result,they have no access to integrate themselves into the white-dominated mainstream society.Moreover,they can’t get back to their original one.Eventually,they are trapped in the predicament and are reduced to rootless marginal women.Chapter Four analyzes the inner calls of the marginal women.Their different forms of resistances to multiple oppressions unveil their inner calls for the disintegration of gender bias,justice among classes,and equality among races.Moreover,through depicting the marginal women images in her works,Olsen expresses her own feminist consciousness,class consciousness and racial consciousness,namely,all the women of different class and of different race should be liberated from gender bias,be treated in a just way and be in equal status.In this way,all the women can get all-sided freedom and development.Through the systematic analysis,the Conclusion can be drawn that the marginal women in Olsen’s works are caged by multiple oppressions,fortunately,with their gradual realization of their consciousness,they not only perceive their inferior situations,but give resistances in different ways,which expresses their inner calls for freedom,justice and equality.Through the interpretation of marginal women images,this thesis reflects Olsen’s sympathy for working-class women,and her criticism of patriarchal system,capitalist private ownership as well as racial discrimination through the depictions of marginal women characters.Meanwhile,it reveals that Olsen,as an American Jewish left-wing woman writer,speaking for marginal women and calling to liberate marginal women from gender,class,and race,expresses her reflection on history and the hope to achieve communist dream.