Bellow's View On Women: Seen From The Delineation Of Female Characters In Herzog

In the contemporary literary world, the famous American Jewish writer, the 1976 Nobel Prize winner, Saul Bellow is considered as the most important novelist after Faulkner and Hemingway. Bellow concerns the spiritual crisis in the society with unchecked materialistic pursuit, the value of existence, and the struggle and quest of the mind, for which Herzog is his most representative work, thus establishing his status in the literary world. But in his works, what Bellow concerns is mostly the man, giving little attention to the women around the men. Even some critics consider women in Bellow's works only as the extensions of the different phases of the protagonist's development.The thesis aims to analyze the women characters in Herzog from the perspective of feminist theory and argues that the writer Bellow, in delineating the women characters, betrays his own view on women thoroughly. The thesis is composed of three parts.Chapter One is the first part, which is an introduction to Bellow's literary career, Herzog and its previous studies both at home and abroad and the theoretical framework of the thesis.The second part is the main part of the thesis. It is made up of two chapters. Chapter Two analyzes the superposition of Bellow and Herzog, the similarity between Sandra and Madeleine and the narrative style (the cross-use of the first and third point of view), from all of which demonstrating that in Herzog, Bellow puts most of himself and his opinions in the novel; besides, a lot of soliloquy, Herzog's many unsent letters are in fact the expression of Bellow's concern for social, political and philosophical issues through Herzog's mouth. It also explores Bellow's attitudes towards three kinds of women: for Madeleine, Bellow depreciates and uglifies her out of his hatred for her betrayal of Herzog: due to the male narrator and male-centered conciousness, the image of Madeleine described in the five days by the narrator and in Herzog's memory is distorted under the male hegemony and she is described as a beautiful but cruel woman, thus demonstrating Bellow's hatred for scholarly women with independent identity and pursuit by reconstructing her complete image; the delineation of four traditional Jewish women with more praise than criticism shows that Bellow has traditional patriarchal psychology; in the description of Herzog's two mistresses Ramona and Sono, Bellow gives them great praise which embodies Bellow's selective view on women and his male hegemonic thoughts with himself as the center. Chapter Three mainly deals with the cultural, social and personal reasons for Bellow's different attitudes for the three kinds of women: as the second generation Jewish immigrants living in the America, Bellow is greatly influenced by the Jewish and Christian culture; besides, under the influence of the patriarchal ideas, Bellow has been holding negative attitudes towards the feminist movements; furthermore, he is lack of understanding for women and how to build a harmonious relationship with women, thus contributing his failure in several marriages and his negative view on women.Chapter Four is the third part, which is the conclusion of the thesis. It summarizes the key points of the thesis, pointing out that in writing the novel Herzog, Bellow puts most of his life and opinions in it. At the same time, the narrative style of the novel also betrays the superposition between Bellow and Herzog. Thus, the novel is hard to avoid becoming the tool for Bellow controlling the right of discourse. In this novel, Bellow's different attitudes towards women are all from the perspective of himself, fully reflecting Bellow's male hegemonic thoughts.