| American writer Theodore Dreiser's first novel Sister Carrie and Chinese female writer Wang Anyi's Changhen Ge have received the readers'recognition and great praise in their respective countries. Both of the works manifest the authors'concern for women's fate as well as their living circumstances from their own perspective of feminism. Although the historical backgrounds and genders of the two authors are different, and they live in different countries, we can discover similarities between the two women characters by comparative analysis. So, based on the theories of transcultural comparative analysis and feminist criticism, the author intends to make comparisons of the images, individualities and experiences of the women characters in these two novels, and to delve into their female consciousness in two different social and cultural backgrounds, and to explore how social backgrounds and attitudes influence the authors'writing. By comparison of the two books, we will find that although Theodore Dreiser is a male writer and his novel Sister Carrie is held to be amoral at first, western civilization enables the author to freely describe the female character, who is obviously provided with rebelling feminist characteristics. Sister Carrie is considered to be a representative of new women in the society of that day while Wang Anyi's novels are full of obvious female consciousness though she herself refuses to have her name associated with the term"woman writer". Having traditional female virtues in mind, Wang Anyi tells her story based on a compromise between female consciousness and traditional ideas.This thesis consists of five parts:Introduction part aims to give a short review of the research on the two writers and their works.Chapter One is divided into three sections. The first section and the second section make a general survey of two authors and their writing backgrounds. The third section gives a brief survey of comparative literature and indicates the perspectives and the goals of the thesis. Chapter Two contains three sections. The first section refers to the history of western feminism. The second section introduces feminism and female writing in China. The third section is a summary and comparison of the western and Chinese feminism development. Generally, this chapter is a review of feminism in the west and China.Chapter Three is made up of four sections. The first section compares the"New Women"and the stereotyped women from the perspective of feminism. The second section discusses the awakening of the two heroines'female consciousness in seeking independence and courage. The third section proves that two heroines are enthusiastic seekers. One has been seeking her dream and the other one has been seeking passionate love. Their pursuits are endless. The fourth section exposes the discrepancy between the feminist views of the two authors mainly by comparing two endings in the novels.The last part of the thesis is the conclusion that highlights the findings in the previous chapters. In this part the writer intends to make an account of different social and cultural backgrounds of the two novels'writing, and to explore how social attitudes influence the two authors'writing. Furthermore, the writer represents us the problems Chinese women are facing. Of course the whole thesis leaves much to be desired. It intends to promote further discussions about female writing and the development of feminism in future China. |
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