Dancer In Shackles--A Feminist Analytical Study Of The Age Of Innocence By Edith Wharton

In my opinion, Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence can be included in feminist literature because it is centered on the destiny of women, with anti-patriarchal commitment.Feminism began when women sought to analyze the conditions that shape women's lives and advocated some change in women's subordinate existence in the patriarchal society. Since the late 1960s, Feminist Movement has flourished and it has won many rights for women.Moreover, feminist criticism, its self-transformations have produced a complex proliferation of works, has a great influence on literary criticism.Among various kinds of feminisms, I apply Beauvoir's the Second Sex and French Feminism as theoretical basis to analyzing the characterization in The Age of Innocence.Beauvoir believes that woman is the product of society and she is not born to be subordinate. Besides that, she thinks that woman is always defined as the Other by men, and that there is always a conflict between her true self and the role of the Other she is expected to play.The representative of French Feminism, Helene Cixous, strongly opposes the binary trick in the patriarchal mode of thinking. She thinks that in the most fundamental man/woman binary opposition, woman is considered as weak and passive, while man strong and active. Therefore, she works out the concept of pluralistic difference to substitute binary opposition. Another French Feminist Juliet Christeva holds a different viewpoint that the word "woman" can not be defined and that every woman has her own characteristics. In this way she also cleverly destroys any binary way of thinking.If we analyze the characterization of May and Ellen from the perspective of Beauvoir's theory, we may draw a conclusion of Wharton's feminist thoughts. Wharton believes woman is an artificial product under the pressures of society. By setting Ellen as an example of the emancipated woman, she points out a promisingroad to women's liberation.However, if we analyze the characterization of Archer from the perspective of French Feminism, we may draw a different conclusion. Wharton, when deconstructing the essentiality of men in man/woman binary opposition, goes to the extremes and thus creates another sexualism in a disguised form-woman is superior and man is inferior. Moreover, in her efforts to praise Ellen and depreciate May, due to her unconscious acceptance of patriarchal mode of thinking, she also forms another series of binary oppositions.If we compare Wharton's feminist thoughts with that of Bronte and Lessing. we may understand more clearly Wharton's function in the development of feminist literature: to serve as a link between the past and the future. Bronte as a representative of the earlier stage claims equality with men, but she fails to find a solution. Wharton realizes the impossibility of claiming absolute equality , but her over-appraisal of women and unconscious influence by the binary mode of thinking also leads to a wrong direction. Lessing is labeled as feminist writer in the 1970s and her feminist thoughts are more reasonable. While exposing the difficult situation of women, she advocates bisexual personality, which is the trend of feminist literature. On the day when bisexual literature is prevailing, the idea of sexual discrimination will disappear from people's mind, and feminist literature, in my opinion, will disappear accordingly.