The Study Of The Female Bildung In The Woman Warror

The Woman Warrior is the Chinese American writer Maxine Hong Kingston’s first novelissued in1976, winning the year’s National Book Critics Circle Award as a non-fiction book. Ittranscends traditional Initiation novels in style by illustrating women’s growth process throughfive individual stories. In a totally fresh view, Kingston interprets women’s growth experiences asemancipating from patriarchal restraint, obtaining financial independence, breaking mentalbondage, gaining personal freedom, and realizing eventually the women’s self-surpass inpsychology.The paper, taking The Woman Warrior as the research object, discusses from a view offemale’ Bildung how minority groups, especially Chinese American females, realize self-successin an environment full of discrimination as well as confusion and thinking of individual growth.The novel consists of five classical stories, and the writer depicts Chinese American women’sgrowth ordeal and identification recognition respectively in five different phases. The novelvividly reconstructs the process of how a Chinese American female under gender and racialdiscrimination, painstakingly looks for female value and cultural identification and finally growsinto a self-focusing female with modern ideology. Meanwhile, the heroine advocates a resoluteand staunch ideal personality－with firm faith, going through tough times, small potato can beblessed by God, and turns into a true warrior in life.The paper consists of six chapters. They are sequentially the introduction, the literaturereview, the theoretical framework of the Bildungsroman, the application of Bildungsroman in thetext and conclusion. This dissertation attempts to use female growth theory to analyze the text inorder to prove that The Woman Warrior is a typical female Bildungsroman.The first chapter is an introduction about the profile of Maxine Hong Kingston and herliterature achievements as well as the main contents of The Woman Warrior.The second chapter mainly discusses the present situation of the study of Kingston’s worksand Bildungsroman as well as the research significance of Chinese American literature.The third chapter illustrates the definition of Bildungsroman in details. Firstly, it introducesthe definition of traditional initiation novel and an American cultural expression style of initiationnovel. Secondly, it interprets female Bildungsroman and Chinese American female’s opinion ongrowth to verify The Woman Warrior’s identification of a typical initiation novel. The fourth chapter discusses from three aspects about the awareness of women’s growth inThe Woman Warrior. By adopting an ideal of virtual fancy, it interprets the heroine’s positiveliving attitude and portraits marginal girls’ confusion, helplessness, struggle, living statuses andawakening consciousness between two cultural worlds. From constantly struggling for self tofinally breaking the silence to voice her inmost feeling, gaining a thorough relief, the heroine turnsto be an authentic woman warrior.The fifth chapter focuses on summarizing and refining the process of female Bildung fromthe work. The women’s growth process which experiences first-stage rebel reaching compromisebetween two genders and cultures and ultimately getting into combination after mother anddaughter’s recognition to each other. The novel reflects the gender oppression and racialdiscrimination Chinese American women have suffered, therefore the writer bears a responsibilityof combating gender discrimination and racial prejudice. Such a kind of resistance should not betoo radical and a mild reconciliation is required for the two genders and cultures in harmony. Inconclusion, it points out that Kingston, marginalized by “two worlds” has to be a mediatorbetween the two genders and cultures. Taking the matter of releasing from identification dilemmain pursuit of self into calm account, that enables The Woman Warrior to be a typical research ofwomen’s initiation novel and we could fully understand Chinese American women’s life. Thisdissertation focuses on women’s growth from a unique point of view. The pursuit of women’sinitiation reflected in Kingston’s works is the constant pursuit of women’s independence anddignity.The sixth chapter is conclusion. The Woman Warrior is a representative work in women’sinitiation novels, from which we could see the process of women’s growth, the awakening ofwomen’s self consciousness and what’s more the struggle women have paid for pursuing self-value.