To Kill "the Angel In The House": A Feminist Approach To Strange Interlude

Eugene O'Neill had made great contributions to the development of modern American drama and was honored as "Father of Modern American Drama". As a great playwright with strong social responsibility and humanistic thought, he showed great ardor for realistic production, concerning about the existence of the male and the female, especially the female struggling in the hard conditions.In Strange Interlude O'Neill presented us a new female image—Nina who has strong struggling spirit. At first, in order to get happy, Nina is submitting herself to the male's prestige and power, but gradually finds that the men in her life are undependable and have no ability to make her happy. Then, Nina's feminist consciousness is awakening. To pursue her happiness, Nina starts to bravely question and rebel against the male's authority. However, Nina's fight never goes beyond the patriarchal culture, and ends in failure.The practices of feminist movements show that in order to realize women's emancipation, women should strive for their rights of living independently and regain their identity and dignity. At the same time men should stop regarding women as the second sex as they did in the past. They should regard women as independent individuals equal to them. In a word, on the basis of mutual equality, men and women should respect and fully display their respective gender specificities, so as to achieve a harmonious co-existence of the two sexes and contribute to the development of the human society. That is what O'Neil had been expecting all his life.The thesis consists of six parts:Introduction, four chapters and Conclusion.The Introduction part briefly introduces Eugene O'Neill and his Strange Interlude, summarizes the literature review of the play and points out the views to be discussed in the thesis.Chapter One concentrates on the development of feminist movements and feminist criticism. Chapter Two illustrates the oppression on Nina in the patriarchal society and points out that under the oppression Nina is forced to depend on men in her life to get a secure life and happy.Chapter Three reflects the male's impotency and weakness, and exposes the contradiction between Nina's dependency and the men's undependability.Chapter Four analyzes Nina's feminist consciousness and her rebellions against the oppression and discusses the realization of women's freedom.The last part, Conclusion, points out possible ways of women's emancipation on the basis of summarizing the whole thesis, and appeals to men and women to work together to build a harmonious relationship.