A Comparative Study Of The Ecofeminism In Tess Of The D'Urbervilles And My Antonia

French scholar Francoise d' Eaubonne first put forward an idea of ecofeminism in 1974.Ecofeminism is the result of combining women's liberation with ecology movement,and it is an important school of feminism study and also an important school of ecological philosophy.It starts from the perspective of gender to study ecological problem and pays attention to women and nature,then points out that the male domination and human's control of nature are rooted in the patriarchal culture.At present,ecofeminism becomes increasingly influential in feminist movement and environmental movement and quickly develops in west counties,especially in Europe and America.It becomes a new literature perspective to use ecofeminism to evaluate literature works.Ecofeminist literary criticism uses the principle of feminism and ecology for references.It researches the relationship among literature,nature and women and advocates the culture which is not separated from nature and criticizes the patriarchal system.Both English critical realistic novelist Thomas Hardy and American novelist Willa Cather have the experiences of country life and have a special feeling towards natural environment.That is why they make natural scenery as the background in their literature works.Tess of the D'Urbervilles is one of Thomas Hardy's famous works.My Antonia is praised as a pioneering literature work of frontier times.Both of the two novels use female images as leading characters,describing their circumstance in their whole life.As a male writer in 19 th century when patriarchal ideas was prevailed in that age,Hardy describes the heroine from male's perspective of observation and male's narrative mode;while Cather,a female writer who began to have female consciousness in 20 th century,she uses more female perspectives to describe female images.The thesis is divided into seven chapters.Chapter one gives a brief introduction of the authors and the works.Chapter two presents the critical background of two novels both in China and abroad in detail.Chapter three gives a brief survey of ecofeminism and introduces the ecofeminism consciousness of the two authors,and it includes ecological consciousness and feminism consciousness.Chapter four analyzes the similarities between the two novels from the perspective of ecofeminism.Chapterfive mainly explores the differences between the two novels from the perspective of ecofeminism: difference in degree of delicacy of descriptions of women and nature,difference in degree of criticism of patriarchal culture,different expression in gender relations and difference in degree of description of female consciousness.Chapter six makes differences understanding of male and female writers on ecofeminism in other works.Chapter seven is the conclusion part of the thesis.This thesis begins with ecofeminism perspective and attempts to make a comparative study of the images of women,the women-nature relationship and women's resistance to the patriarchal culture in Hardy's literature work Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Cather's literature work My Antonia.It does an analysis of similarities and differences between the two novels from the perspective of ecofeminism.And then we could find that the similar ecofeminism thoughts between the two novels are women's intimate relationship with nature and women's resistance to the patriarchal culture.The biggest difference between the two novels is their different tragic and happy endings in the novels.Tess is sentenced to death and says goodbye to her love forever;while in the end of My Antonia,Antonia regains her love and lives a happy life with a huge family.By comparing the ecofeminism thoughts in the two novels,we could draw a conclusion that male writers represented by Hardy give less exquisite description of nature and women and the criticism of the patriarchy culture is halfway;while female writers represented by Cather emphasize more harmony between men and women and reveal stronger female consciousness.Different genders between male and female writers have different opinions about ecofeminism.Only friendly co-existence between mankind and nature,men and women can help us create a harmonious society.