In And Out Of The Pavilion: A Critical Analysis Of Orientalism In Pavilion Of Women

As an American writer who spent almost 40 years in China, Pearl S. Buck's writings to a certain extent quite objectively represented some important aspects of China, especially Chinese life in rural areas during the 1930s, immensely contributing to the western world's renewed knowledge and understanding of the country and its people. There is no doubt that these writings opened up a new perspective from which to look at China. However, as an American whose education and moral and intellectual development were embedded in Eurocentric or Americocentric cultural, intellectual, and ideological traditions, Buck'work is not innocent of what Edward Said calls Orientalism, which to varying degrees informs her fictional, biographical, and journalistic writings. This thesis undertakes to examine traces and structures of Orientalism as encountered explicitly or implicitly in her novel Pavilion of Women. It will, through the lens of the relationship between Pastor Andréand Madame Wu and her son, uncovers or foregrounds the Orientalist structures of attitude and reference underneath her ideological and positional complexity, arguing how the novel consciously and unconsciously reinforces and reproduces Orientalism.The thesis is divided into five parts: three chapters preceded by an introduction and followed by a conclusion. Chapter One gives a brief introduction to Said's universally acclaimed Orientalism, which inaugurated what is known as postcolonial studies, focusing on the concept of Orientalism. This chapter analyzes in sketchy terms the relationship between Buck and Orientalism and investigates the Orientalist structure of feeling as encountered or implied in Pavilion of Women. Chapter Two discusses the ways in which Buck's novel effectively represents aspects of China during the 1930s: The patriarchal hierarchy of the traditional Chinese family, the social customs such as concubinage and foot-binding depicted the novel and the Confucian ethics that constitutes the basis of Chinese society. Chapter Three analyzes the relationship between Pastor Andréand Madame Wu and her son. This chapter argues how Pastor Andréis portrayed as the messiah of Madame Wu and her son as well as millions of Chinese like them. The chapter interrogates Buck's Eurocentric or West-centered ideology and ideological unconscious which sees the West as the messiah of the non-West and Pastor Andréas the messianic West personified.