Oppressions And Rebellions: An Interpretation Of Women’s Tragic Fates In American Pastoral

Philip Roth is one of the most prominent Jewish-American writers.His masterpiece American Pastoral,was published in 1997 which has enjoyed great popularity since its publication and earned him the Pulitzer Prize.In this novel,Philip Roth presents an incisive examination of America from the 1940 s through the 1970 s through the experiences of the Levovs.On the one hand,it depicts many grand historical events like the Vietnam War and the Watergate Affair,Civil Right Movement etc.however,on the other hand,it also describes the tragedy of the Levovs,a small family of three.Namely,how this warm family of Seymour Levov,a successful Jew,Dawn Dwyer,a former beauty queen and Merry Levov,their sweet daughter,has been broken into pieces ever since Merry becomes an anti-war extremist and Dawn has an affair with their neighbor Bill Orcutt.As Roth’s most outstanding work,American Pastoral has drawn lots of critics’ attention and been explored from different kinds of perspectives since its publication.But critics usually focused on the male protagonist Swede and held the view that he is an innocent man punished by his virtues,and female characters in the novel are victimizers responsible for his distress.Some critics have attempted to interpret female characters like Dawn and Merry and justified their behaviors but it was a pity that they failed to explain how the tragedy of these two poor women came into being.Simone de Beauvoir argued that “one is not born,but rather becomes,woman”,which is to say,in the patriarchal society,man dominates and controls woman and woman’s history and situation are determined by man’s needs and interests,thus it is the society,not woman’s nature that defines her as the Second Sex.On the other hand,Steve Garner put forward that American society is a hierarchal one,at the top of which is the group of the white Anglo-Saxon protestants,whose culture becomes the dominant culture of the United States,thus other ethnic groups like Jews and Irish people are doomed to be oppressed.Therefore,this thesis aims to thoroughly analyze women’s tragic lives from the perspectives of feminist criticism and whiteness studies.Under patriarchy,women become the Other-in the familial sphere,they become man’s personal possessions,in the social sphere,they are disciplined to be feminine so as to cater to man;meanwhile,in the society dominated by the white Anglo-Saxon protestants,women from other ethnic groups are marginalized-Dawn feels inferior because she is a Celt,and Merry,the daughter of a Jew and an Irish,is unable to own a fixed identity thus gets fully lost.However,women do not resign themselves to the oppressions,rather,their lives are full of rebellions-Dawn tries to bury the past as a beauty queen,raise cattle and do a facelift to get rid of man’s control,construct her own subjectivity and begin a new life,but she naively dreams of entering the dominant circle by marrying Bill Orcutt,a typical white Anglo-Saxon protestant,which wastes all her former efforts;Merry makes herself to become a woman completely contrary to people’s expectation by overeating,challenges man’s sovereignty in sexual relationship and demonstrates her anger towards the white Anglo-Saxon protestants through her anti-Vietnam war activities,but her means are so extreme that she becomes a dying Jain.So eventually,it can be concluded that women’s tragedies are doomed because of the oppressions they suffer from both patriarchy and the dominance of the white Anglo-Saxon protestants,and although these two brave women try to rebel,the oppressions are too powerful for them to get rid of.