“The Other” Being Trapped In Marriage

“Why Women Kill” is a dark comedy broadcast in the United States in 2019.It tells a story of how three women of different ages and personalities handle their marriage crisis in the same mansion.The common suffering of the three heroines is the infidelity of their husbands.Since it was broadcast,it has been widely regarded as a radical feminist work.At the end of the story,they all killed someone.Based on Beauvoir’s theory of the other,through analyzing the main female images in this television series,this thesis aims to prove that these female characters,trapped in marriage,are still being put in a traditional position as the other.In addition to the introduction and conclusion,this paper is divided into three chapters.The first chapter mainly discusses female images as the other being dominated in family status,the marginalized other by male discourse and the other subjected to social evaluation system.Women become the oppressed other in their submission.The second chapter focuses on the female images as the other being defined by men.They are respectively the subordinate other,the gazed other and the negated other.In this sense,women are always defined as the other by men.The third chapter mainly analyze the female images as the other who lived on marriage,the other compromised to nominal marriage and the other returned to traditional marriage.The dependence of female characters on marriage makes them the other being confined by marriage.Through analyzing the main female images in Why Women Kill,this paper aims to prove how women,trapped in marriage,become the other being oppressed,defined and confined.The study of the images of the other in Why Women Kill season one contributes to the in-depth interpretation of this television work,and at the same time to deepening the understanding of the plight faced by the marginalized characters,so as to provide some inspiration for the development of women.