Oppression And Rebellion In Joyce Carol Oates's The Falls

The traditional critical discourses about Joyce Carol Oates are mainly on her unique style of writing and her characterization of social violence. As a serious writer with a high sense of social responsibility, Oates is also concerned about the proper relationship between men and women, human world and nonhuman world. The Falls (2004), one of Oates's latest works as well as one of her most ambitious novels, brought her to the Prix Femina Etranger. Her combination of environmental problems with women issues is clearly reflected in this novel. This thesis tries to explore the theme of oppression and rebellion in The Falls from an ecofeminist perspective, intending to show Oates's remarkable insights into feminism and ecology.Oates's childhood experience and her love for nature make her concerned about the change of nature in such an industrialized society; influenced by her family female members as well as the Feminist Movement, she is unconsciously writing about women's living in the patriarchal society. The oppressed status of nature and women is clearly depicted in The Falls. Nature has become the object to be conquered and the profit-making instrument in the male-dominated society; the high-class women are passive in marriage, without job or political rights, and the poor women even in position of belittlement in society. Man exploits and transforms the natural world ruthlessly, for which he shows little respect. But nature is not something obedient as expected. The environment pollution has made human lose their home for living and brought disaster to people's health; women, like nature, who are not always the subject of the patriarchy, also rise to fight.It seems that Oates is striving to redress the imbalance between man and nature, man and woman by concentrating on describing the unharmonious relationship between them, hoping to call on people to rebuild a harmonious man-nature and man-woman relationship. All in all, The Falls embodies Oates's concern about environmental crisis and women issues in her unique way.