Song For Females Under The Shackles Of Patriarchy

It is a common phenomenon that the women are deserted in literary works.Theodore Dreiser, an realistic writer from America, has described the images of a group of deserted women in his works. They were beautiful and kind-hearted, but all of them were bound to be a deserted woman. The patriarchal oppressions can account for their tragedies, but there is no denying the fact that they themselves should take responsibility for their own unfortunate fates. This thesis probes to make a research on the deserted women in Dreiser's Works from the perspective of feminism.The thesis can be divided into three parts:Part one mainly introduces the classifications of deserted women in Dreiser's works.There are two main kinds of deserted woman images in Dreiser's works, namely the traditional deserted woman and the modern ones. Being kind-hearted and obedient, the former with spirits of dedication and sacrifice can abide by the regulations made by patriarchal society without any complaints while the latter with their initiative and confidence usually dare to defy the patriarchal authority and challenge cultural traditions because they were not satisfied with their position of "the second gender".Part two depicts the unbearable burden of the deserted women in Dreiser's Works, namely the suffering and despair of the traditional deserted women,the puzzle and struggle of the modern deserted women. The traditional deserted women were loyal to their beloved men,but they were abandoned in the end. Meanwhile,the modern deserted women became the desperate wives hopelessly when they used up all their life potential in their love or marriage life.Part three explains the possible reasons for their tragedies of the deserted women in Dreiser's Works. There are four main reasons responsible for their tragedies.First, the sense of gender hierarchy and the division of gender role from.patriarchal society, together with the Virtuous idea from Christian culture, are the roots of their physical and mental torture. Second, the servility and the dependence of their own led to their tragic fate. Finally, the family background and the life experiences of Dreiser, along with the culture that the writer had received, can not be ignored.