An Existentialist Feminist Study Of Riders In The Chariot

Patrick White is one of Australia’s most important English-language writers of the 20^thcentury,and one of the two Australian writers to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.Riders in the Chariot,also translated as The Chariots or Four-wheel Drive,is one of White’s representative works.It mainly tells about the life experiences of four outcasts of society.Because of family,birth,religion and other reasons,the four protagonists in the novel all experience their respective misfortunes.They are:the strange Miss Hale,also called Mary,an eccentric old maid;the poor Ruth,later becomes Mrs.Godbold;the Jew Himmelfarb;and the Australian Aboriginal Alf Dubbo.They all experience different sufferings and trials,which coincided with the consistent theme of White’s works:suffering and atonement.In addition to these four protagonists,there are some minor characters in the novel that are equally worthy of attention:Mrs.Jolley,Miss Hale’s housekeeper;Mrs.Frack,a friend of Mrs.Jolley,a widow with a decent appearance and a vicious heart;Mrs.Chalmers Robinson,Ruth’s female employer in Sydney;and the prostitutes Mrs.Kaliel and Hannah.Since the publication of this book,there is less criticism on the special analysis of female roles,and no scholar has analyzed it from the perspective of existentialist feminism.The author of this thesis believes that the female characters in this novel deserve further exploration.In addition,the issue of women’s identity and status is still a hot topic worthy of attention today.Therefore,this thesis adopts Simone de Beauvoir’s existentialist feminism to discuss the female characters in the novel,attempting to analyze the deep-seated causes of women’s oppression and seek a way out for women to win their freedom and emancipation.This thesis starts with Beauvoir’s existential feminist theory,and makes a comparative analysis of the female images in Riders in the Chariot from the following three aspects:the Other status and causes of the female characters in the novel,such as Miss Hale,Mrs.Goldbold and Mrs.Jolly;the different choices of these different female characters in the face of internality and other oppressions;and the very different results of such different choices.The free choice made by Mrs.Goldbold allows her to gradually overcome the internality and realize the transformation to transcendence,while the choices of other female images imprison them in their internality.Through such detailed analysis,this thesis finally draws a conclusion:in the patriarchal society,the status of women is suppressed and reduced to the Other,and the women under the internal sexual bondage can not get rid of the Other status thus cannot realize their independence.To sum up,only when women fundamentally get rid of the shackles of internality and gain economic and spiritual independence,can they achieve transcendence and obtain freedom and liberation.