An Ecofeminist Reading Of Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres

This thesis aims to explore Jane Smiley,an American contemporary writer's most famous novel—A Thousand Acres from the perspective of ecofeminism.This novel is a rewriting of Shakespeare's King Lear out of the awareness of the ever-increasing environmental issue in American life and dissatisfaction with an interpretation of King Lear that privileged the father's needs over the daughters'. The rewritten story not only wins her a great success but turns out to be a typical ecofeminist critical text.Ecofeminism is a movement working against the interconnected oppressions of gender,race,class and nature.These interconnected oppressions are due to patriarchal structures which justify their dominance through classifiable or dualistic hierarchies:heaven/earth,mind/body,male/female,human/animal,spirit/matter, culture/nature,white/non-white.The study proves that Smiley presents a web of interconnections between nature—especially land and animals,and humanity, and that the structures of patriarchal consciousness that destroy the harmony of nature are expressed symbolically and socially in the repression of women.In the novel,both the exploitation of nature and the suppression of women are presented due to the influence of the patriarchal culture and hierarchical system.The thesis aims at exploring in detail how the land is intricately connected to the human body and how the female body in particular is associated with the land,and how the land and women may be dominated and controlled by men.Through exploration,an appeal is made that we should dismantle the patriarchal domination over both women and nature because there is no true liberation of women without the equal liberation of nature.This thesis consists of six-chapters.Chapter one is a literature review of the theory of ecofeminism,the author and the novel,the assumptions,research questions,and methodology.Because the novel tells a dark tale of a corrupt patriarchy which operates through concealment,and it is a story in which characters attempt to manipulate one another through the secrets they possess and the subsequent revelation of those secrets,Chapter two gives some analyses of the disjunctions between appearances and hidden realities,reflecting the tension and unreasonableness of real everyday living in a dysfunctional rural family steeped in a patriarchal tradition.Chapter three is an exploration of patriarchy's crimes against nature,and the consequential Crimes against animals and the whole humanity. Chapter four focuses on analyses of women's physical and psychological oppression and domination by the patriarchal society.Chapter five is about the ecofeminist reconstruction of the world.A dialogic human/nature relationship and women subject construction are expected to liberate nature and women.Chapter six comes to the author's brief conclusion of the previous illustration,the findings,and the recognized implications and limitations of the present study in the hope of encouraging further research in this domain.