The Bamboo Fence That Can's Be Broken Through

The unusual family background, living experience, continuous culture tradition and the cultural atmosphere made Dreiser not only commiserate with women but also want to control women. The conflict idea made the leading actors in his works concluded some women who have awakening consciousness and some men who have rooted patriarchal consciousness. The contradiction appeared different tendency in different creative period of Dreiser. This dissertation discusses the intrinsic reason for his creating characters and arranging the plots of stories by analyzing Dreiser's family background and living experience at first. Then, through analyzing the masculine images (including elder's images and colossus's images) and female images (including colossus's images, weak images and revolt images) in his works, the dissertation tries to prove: Although Dreiser resisted the tradition whose center is patriarchal consciousness as well as supported and advocated the female independence in his early period creation, the female consciousness in his works changed weaker gradually with the time passed. Displaced, patriarchal consciousness strengthened gradually. In this period, sometimes, feminism returned because of Dreiser's inner contradictory conflict, but he still couldn't avoid the patriarchal consciousness's influence. The patriarchal consciousness not only determined the characters under his pen but also influenced his works' structure and eventual arrangement.