The Vicissitudes Of American Feminist Consciousness During The Second-wave Feminist Movement Reflected In The Tillerman Novels

The Tillerman series help establish the fame of Cynthia Voigt, the American writer of Young Adult novels whose protagonists, mostly heroines, are free from stereotypical gender-defined roles. This nonsexist manner of writing enables a study of the Tillerman novels from a feminist perspective. The first two novels of the Tillerman series, Homecoming and Dicey's Song, center on the growth of Dicey Tillerman in her puberty. Abandoned by their mother, Dicey, at the age of 13, assumes the awe-inspiring responsibility of keeping her siblings safe and fed along their journey to find a decent home. Apart from the main plot of the children's homecoming, a more interesting and historical subplot makes the feminist tonality of the two novels much more obvious—hidden in the narrations, conversations and sometimes memories are the scraps of the lives of Abigail Tillerman and Liza Tillerman (respectively Dicey's grandmother and mother). Through a feminist reading of Homecoming and Dicey's Song, and combined with historical and sociological studies, the paper analyzes the transformation in the feminist consciousness involved in the lives of the three generations of the Tillerman women, which, according to the analysis, reflects the vicissitudes of the second-wave American feminist movement and the transformation of American women's feminist consciousness in this period.The paper is divided into three parts.The introductory part consists of two sections. Section one includes a brief biography of Cynthia Voigt and an introduction of the Tillerman series, focusing on Homecoming and Dicey's Song. Section Two reviews the current studies of the Tillerman Series.The second part is the main body of the paper, which deals with the research question in three chapters. The first chapter reviews the rise and fall of the second-wave American feminist movement. The second chapter gives a historical and sociological analysis of the lives of the three generations of the Tillerman women and the transformation of their feminist consciousness. Through a close reading of the texts, the transformation of their feminist consciousness is specified into six aspects: the Tillerman women's control of their own life, their perceptions of the relationship between love and power, their views of marriage and family, Liza Tillerman's dilemma as a single mother, Abigail and Liza Tillerman's madness, and Abigail and Dicey Tillermans'self-development. The Transformation of their feminist consciousness in these aspects proves the progress of the Tillerman women from what Greer describes as"the female eunuch"to"the whole woman". The third chapter deepens the...