Appearance · Alienation · Return

Wendy Wasserstein(1950-2006)is one of the most famous Jewish female playwrights in contemporary America.Wasserstein,born in the 1950 s,was a witness and witness to the second wave of American feminist movement.Wasserstein’s plays focus on the fate of American intellectual women with traditional education.These women are suffering and confused in their self-identity under the impact of the new female ideology.Although the important theme of Wasserstein’s plays is feminism,her works also show the ideological dilemma of Jewish women’s identification with Jewish identity and acceptance of Jewish tradition,and the fact that Jewish women are more difficult than WASP women in the second wave of American women’s rights.This article takes Wendy Wasserstein’s three representative works Isn’t it romantic,Heidi Chronicles and The Rosenzweig Sisters from 1971 to 1997 as the research objects,and uses the method of text analysis to show Jewish women’s perplexity in facing different cultural values and difficulties arising from identity when accepting Jewish culture and American culture.The Jewish women in Wasserstein’s works not only retain a certain Jewish national temperament,but also integrate a certain flavor of American culture.In these works,Chinese Thurstein expressed different degrees of Judaism,reflecting her acceptance of Jewish identity,and her reflection on Judaism lasted for a lifetime.In the introduction,this article mainly introduces Wasserstein’s works and the research status of her works at home and abroad,analyzes the Jewish cultural origin of Wasserstein and the definition of Jews and Judaism.The first chapter is based on the work Isn’t it romantics which shows Wasserstein’s concern for Judaism through the motif of Jewish literature and Jewish assimilation.The second chapter is based on Wasserstein’s estranged attitude towards Judaism in Heidi Chronicles,analyzing the survival predicament of modern intellectual women.The third chapter analyzes the return of Judaism in Wasserstein’s The Rosenzweig Sisters,and interprets the differences in Jewish identity of the Rosenzweig sisters and their psychological process of returning to Jewish tradition after making some efforts.In the form of comedy,Wendy Wasserstein reflects Jewish immigrants and their descendants’ identification with Jewish identity and their dilemma in choosing Jewish identity in contemporary American society through Jewish manifestation,alienation and return.Under the assimilation of the powerful Anglo-Saxon White Puritans(WASP)in the United States,Wasserstein’s creation method was actually based on Jewish identity.She reconsidered and criticized the lack of understanding of Jewish identity.Her works carry her deep reflection and deepening on the feminist movement and provide readers with a new perspective of observation.