The Tendency Of Willa Cather's Feminist Thinking In Her O Pioneers!

As Simon de Beauvoir contends in her The Second Sex that each woman should shape a unique mode of existence for herself Willa Cather is one of such women. Let's people go on talking and she will go on living as she thinks best. Choosing writing as her profession by herself, she makes up her mind to be he first one to bring the Muse to her own country 2 accordingly she has devoted all her energy, passion and life to art which is an exacting master for her. Having lived together with a woman for more than 40 years, Willa Cather remains single all her life. Because she firmly believes that a husband and marriage will smother her art and he married nightingale never sing again. Strongly dissatisfactory with the role omen in the kitchen assigned to women traditionally, Willa Cather will by no means channel her imagination only to ove and marriage In the end, she succeeds in searching for her woman identity in her fierce dedication to art and her aspiration for freedom. Although she won be satisfactory to be labeled as a feminist, her works and her very life journey betray herll these show that she has a rather strong tendency of feminist thinking. In some sense, she can be regarded as a precursor of modem feminism. During her long writing life, Willa Cather has successfully created a series of remarkable and moving women images that differ greatly from the weak and dependent women characters in the past traditional literature. Most of Cather's women are strong, independent, and autonomous, always attempting to take the fate into their own hands. 0 Pioneers! is the first mature book of Willa Cather, with the heroic protagonist Alexandra as the representative of such women characters. Applying the feminist literary approach in this thesis, I will give a detailed analysis of the heroine Alexandra in an attempt to illustrate Cather's feminist thinking tendency and prove that in a sense, she is a precursor of modem feminism. The thesis is composed of five parts. The introduction summarizes Willa Cather's main achievements, pointing out that her feminist thinking tendency plays a very important part in her final success. Chapter I, made of three sections, is one of the two major parts in this thesis. The first section points out that Cather's creation of Alexandra being an independent, intelligent and autonomous woman is a reaction against the 搘oman myth Woman can be as rational as man can. The second section chronicles Alexandra's arduous pioneering on the prairie, comparing her with other male pioneers in her family and also her lover. It gives an emphasis to the fact: It's Alexandra, a woman instead of a man, guides this process. The third section explores the possibility of another frontier myth-- the Eve myth, a female one that is the opposite of the male centered frontier myth -- the Adam myth. Chapter H, another major part of this thesis, is made up of two sections. Section one points out that Alexandra still lives in a patriarchal society which results from men's possessing of the private property in the family. Here Willa Cather discloses and strongly criticizes men's prejudice against women and their dominance over women. In the novel, Alexandra has made unremitting efforts to revolt against such oppression in order to defend her individual rights and seek her happiness. The second section focuses on Alexandra's longing for freedom and the public world. Not limiting her imagination only to land and family, she craves to compete with men freely in a wo...