The Disintegration Of Patriarchal Order

Barbara Kingsolver was born in 1955 and grew up in Kentucky countryside.She used to live in Europe,Africa,Asia,Mexico and the southern United States.Due to these experiences,her works often reflect her familiar places and situations,and focus on topics such as the struggle for social justice and equality,and the interaction and conflict between human beings and environment.As one of her best sellers,The Poisonwood Bible tells the story of reverend Nathan Price who leads his family on a mission to the Congo.Through the narration of five keen-eyed women,Price’s wife and four daughters,Kingsolver combines the thorny issues of religion,politics,race,sin and redemption with infinitely steady hands,and expresses her sympathy for the Congo and her criticism against Western colonialism.Eco-feminism is a new field in the study of Kingsolver’s works in recent years.Eco-feminism is committed to discovering the common destiny of nature,women and other underprivileged groups as all of them are under oppression.Based on Karen Warren’s ecofeminist theory,the thesis explores the contradictions and conflicts between multiple oppressions and the ones under oppression: men and nature,men and women,men and all the other vulnerable groups,and analyzes how nature,women and the underprivileged resist and eliminate the fate of being oppressed and then completely disintegrates the patriarchal order.The introduction part of this thesis introduces Barbara Kingsolver,The Poisonwood Bible and literature reviews of the novel.The first chapter elaborates on the eco-feminist theory and its research methods and reveals the significance of Karen Warren’s eco-feminist theory to the analysis of the breakdown of the patriarchal order in the novel.Chapter Two takes the revolt against anthropocentricism as an entry point to analyze men’s oppression on nature and the revolt of nature on human body and mind.Chapter Three revolves around the opposition to androcentrism and studies male oppression on women and women’s pursuit of self-liberation and self-rescue.Chapter Four explores the resistance of other underprivileged groups in the novel,including the disabled,the blacks and the Congo as a member of the Third World.Based on the theory of ecofeminism,the thesis expounds the disintegration process of the patriarchal order in The Poisonwood Bible,so as to reveal that nature,women and other underprivileged groups are a community of shared destiny as well as a powerful force to resolve conflicts,resist oppression and achieve equality.The disintegration of patriarchal order is not only to improve women’s own power and status,but also points out the direction for the healthy development of gender relations,marriage,family,human beings and social systems,so as to build an ideal society of peace,freedom,pluralism,equality with differences but no hierarchical oppression.