The Body Repeats The Landscape

"The body repeats the landscape. They are the source of each other and create each other. We were marked by the seasonal body of earth, by the terrible migrations of people, by the swift turn of a century, verging on change never before experienced on this greening planet."This epigraph of A Thousand Acres encompasses much of the significance of the novel's thematic concerns and what will be explored in this thesis.This thesis, inspired by the development of ecofeminism theory, is a project which focuses on the relationship between women and nature in patriarchal society. This project is limited to study of Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres which won both Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award in 1991 and to demonstrate that the novel A Thousand Acres is not only the rewriting of King Lear as most critics have concluded, but also a typical ecofeminist critical text. And the aim of the thesis is to exemplify the ways in which an ecofeminist perspective can introduce new dimensions to a literary analysis of a well-known work and to point out the importance of using ecofeminist critique to understand, and not simply to judge, particular works about women.This thesis is divided into four chapters. Chapter One provides a theoretical framework based on which the thesis develops and a general introduction of Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres. Chapter Two is devoted to analyzing the intersection of the female body and nature in the novel, showing the connection of the two from several aspects. Chapter Three demonstrates how woman and nature are abused in a patriarchal society and why they are connected as Smiley plots in A Thousand Acres. Chapter Four displays what are the potentials for restoration of women and nature from the patriarchal society. Smiley weaves a classical myth--Persephone&Demeter's tale--into her novel to encompass the ecofeminist concerns and the potential for restoration as well. Chapter Five gives a brief summary and conclusion of the thesis and raises questions of the ambiguous ending of the novel for further research.