An Analysis Of Feminist Sensibility Revealed In Childwold

Joyce Carol Oates has long been misunderstood and well recognized in the critical circle for her ruthless anatomy of social violence, her scaring description of bloodshed scenes and her original probe into different styles and genres. Consequently, the traditional critical discourse about Oates usually defines her works into a limited critical normality, deliberately or indeliberately neglecting her attempts and assimilation of other literary thoughts. With feminist movement in full swing in the 1960s-70s, as a woman writer with great social responsibility, she also shows great concern about it and actively transforms her feminist consciousness in her writing from a unique perspective. Thus to feel out whether she shows feminist concerns in her textual narration absorbs more and more people interested in her and her works. Based on such understanding, the thesis will approach Childwold from the feminist perspective to throw a new light on the study of the text by tracing Oates's feminist sensibility revealed in the text.From her construction of a mother-centered family in Childwold, a lonely country in West New York, Oates begins to practice her feminist ideology. Her arrangement of the characters' destiny and the practice of an experimental narrative discourse which, in feminist opinion, goes concord with the revelation of female inner psychological reality, further illuminate her conscious attempts to feminist narrative discourse. In addition, by examining her reconstruction of the pedophile theme shared by Lolita, a male giant's writing, it's easy to discern her transcendence to the male-dominated narrative mode which usually reduces female into passivity, silence, absence or even just a symbol to be narrated. In this text, Oates deconstructs and subverts the oppressive patriarchal system by transforming her women to authorial entity and by presenting her male characters fragmented being and failures. Their presence of her female at the center of the text, their audacity to speak out their own needs and fierce gaze back at male intrusion, their capacity for manipulating their own life and their growing consciousness of self-value and self-identification undermine the traditional stereotypical gender roles and upgrade them to somehow self-dominant living space. Therefore, a detailed analysis of the text will clarify readers' misunderstanding of Childwold and offers a good case to gain an insight into Oates's feminist writing. The thesis is divided into four parts to expound Oates's feminist sensibility revealed in Childwold.Chapter one is to trace the interpretive history of J.C. Oates and Childwold from various perspectives in the hope that it can equip our present feminist analysis of the text with a broad critical background with an emphasis on the salience of Oates's feminist sensibility.Chapter two is devoted to a brief introduction to some important viewpoints of feminist criticism to provide a theoretical perspective for our feminist reading of the novel and of the necessity of carrying out such a study in current societyChapter three concentrates on the analysis of feminist ideology transmitted in Oates's narrative discourse, by discerning her intention to construct a mother-centered family structure, by interpreting her female and male characterization, by examining what her narrative technique transmits, and by unveiling her reconstruction of pedophile story. All of this fully expresses Oates's feminist ideology in her deconstruction and subversion of patriarchal domination. Muffled women's voices become the dominant discourse in Childwold. They are liberated from nanated margin and endowed with the power for discourse. Consequently failure becomes the key word to interpret her male characters.Then in Chapter four, we can naturally draw a conclusion that the novel just like her critical essays can find a full expression of her feminist sensibility although often being neglected by the critical field. Further enriches Oates's feminist critical discourse and justify her feminist denomination.