A Probe Into O'Neill's View Of Womanhood

Among the large numbers of lively and vivid characters created by O'Neill in his plays, there are about one-third of female characters. Yet, many critics hold negative attitudes towards his female characters as well as his view of womanhood. They think that O'Neill never exceeded the narrow limits of the traditional male idea of women popular in the western culture and literature. His biography author Louis Sheaffer thinks that most of O'Neill's women characters are either lascivious and fierce and tough evil women or they are extremely virtuous women with unbelievable sublime minds. Some feminists even assert that O'Neill never really intended to create the real women images. These remarks are lopsided views and are unfair comments on O'Neill, which reflect those critics' prejudices and misunderstanding against O'Neill and O'Neill's view of womanhood.Through a careful reading of the original text, the author of this thesis first analyzes O'Neill's female characterization on the basis of his plays and also on the facts about his female characters provided by the plays. Then the author probes into the characterization of his females from his point of view of tragedy. According to the character features of his females, we pigeonhole his female characters into four neat categories: "Strindbergian female destroyers", "neurotic figures", "whores" and "Madonnas". But for nearly all of O'Neill's female characters there is one common feature: anomalous or abnormal. The reason for O'Neill to characterize his females as morbid or unreasonable was his view of tragedy which determined his female characterization. In O'Neill's opinion, the unknown fate was not the cause for tragedy, but the inherent quality of human nature was. This inherent quality of human nature was the "subconscious" which was hidden deep in people's soul, and which could not be controlled by the "conscious". This very "subconscious" which O'Neill paid close attention to, tried to dig out and described was in fact the reflections of the mental scar on people made by the morbid social system as well as the social ideology.O'Neill's unusual life experiences as well as his rebellious ideas stemming from it greatly influenced his view of tragedy and his female characterization. So his femalecharacters dare to depart from the classics and rebel against orthodoxy, fight against the old tradition, and pursue their self-realization. This in fact reflects O'Neill's own idea of denying the old tradition and disdaining all the existing moral norms. O'Neill projected his rebellious ideas onto his demonic female characters. The author of this paper argues that those licentious and fierce and tough evil women as well as the characters with morbid psychology and unreasonable sense in O'Neill' s plays are really the playwright's own subconscious images. They are "the melancholy projections of the repressed male egos. " We cannot tag O'Neill with "misogyny fixation" or "male chauvinism" just because he created some "ferocious women" or "prostitutes". In fact, we can find some feminist sentiments in him. Though O'Neill's view of womanhood is traditional, his female characters reflect to a certain degree O'Neill's feminist ideas and his advanced modern view of womanhood. O'Neill's description of female characters "conforms to the feminist vision of womanhood."This paper also analyses four of bis female characters. Interpreting the text with the feminist point of view, we find a feminist mainstream. O'Neill created his female characters following the pattern of "awakening - resisting - failure - struggling for the survival. " Abbie in Desire Under the Elm pursues her true love and disdains the traditional moral norms. She challenges the patriarchal society with her rebellious and daring actions of denying the traditional marriage and family conception. This reflects the awakening of the feminist consciousness. Nina Leeds in Strange Interlude resists the old tradition and fights against her fate. But no matter what effort she has made, she cannot get out of the dominance and control exerted by those men incarnated as "God the father". Finally she has to give up and accept the life position arranged by the patriarchal society. Mary in Long Day's Journey Into Night devoted wholeheartedly to the family and tried to live up to the standards of "virtuous wife and good mother", yet she doesn't get the happiness and pleasure promised by this myth. On the contrary, she pays for it with a high price. At last, Mary has no choice but to escape in her madness. Josie Hogan in A Moon for the Misbegotten plays the role of a "lascivious woman", contrary to the image of "virtuous wife and goodmother." Yet behind the mask, she plays the role of "Madonna." But no matter what role she chooses to play, it shows that Josie has got no other alternatives. This reproduces the women's real living status in the patriarchal world.This process of "awakening-resisting-failing -struggling for the survival" also parallels the developing process of O'Neill's feminine consciousness and the process of formation for his view of womanhood. O'Neill failed to develop "an advanced view of womanhood", but he presented the living status of women in a patriarchal culture through his female characters. He reproduced on the stage the helpless and lonely struggling of the 19th century American women who were oppressed by the traditional sexual prejudices; and he described those women's miseries and unhappiness and how they bore the heavy burden of shackles from the male concepts. O'Neill's female characters are not the traditional women figures of "angels" or "femmes fatales" in male literature. They are lively and colorful, and they are independent and have a sense of selves as well as self-consciousness. They are real women images. And they are also a gallery of the playwright's self- portraits under the various guises.