The Self-lost And Self-Pursuing Of Female Image In O'Neill's Late Plays

The dissertation is mainly about the analysis of the female characters in O'Neill's late three plays: The Iceman Cometh, long day's journey into night, A Moon For The Misbegotten. By analyzing the women's repressive situation caused by patriarchy, and by showing their agony in suffering self-lost, the main problems that I want to explore are the women's common difficulty, and their rough journey from passive state to exploring, fighting action and to self-identity. The dissertation is divided into four parts. The first part is the introduction prescribing ethic background of O'Neill's ages, especially about the progressing process of female ethic view that rooted in patriarchy society. In such a society, women are forced to play the role of good mother and lovely wife, so their living area is more and more confined into family without any connection with outside world. Both the age trait of late of 19 century described in O'Neill's three plays and the age background of 1930s when O'Neill produced his famous plays are sure to be affected by ethic views at that time. In the second part, the self-dissimilation process of female characters in iceman cometh is analyzed. By analyzing the dissimilated trend in women's self because of their catering for patriarchic views, the process of self-lost when they are gradually dissimilated into tools for traditional ethic is discovered, so did the reason of women's self-dissimilation and heterosexual hatred. The third part is mainly about the female character Mary. Comparing to the passive, dissimilated women talked about in The Iceman Cometh, Mary realized the agony suffering from self-lost vaguely. But she is too weak to accept the self-lost, so she pulled herself out of the man's world by taking drugging and looking back past happy times. The way she abandon the man's world is very popular, which reflecting the women's popular spiritual problems caused by patriarchic ethic. The fourth part is mainly about a female character Josie in A Moon For The Misbegotten. She has experienced the journey from playing traditional role voluntarily to abandoning such role to identifying her true self, succeeding in accomplishing self-identity, which has transcended patriarchy in a totally new way. Her strength and adamancy enable her to accomplish the self-identity task leaved by female characters in The Iceman Cometh and Long Day's Into Night, and finally set up a wholly new self.