A Study Of Pearl S. Buck’s Pavilion Of Women From The Perspective Of Multiculturalism

As a distinguished winner of Nobel Prize, Pearl S. Buck, an American writer, makes greatcontribution to the republic of letters. Most of her works are about Chinese culture andChinese people, so they gain much attention and popularity among Chinese readers as wellas critics once those books are published. According to the statistics, it is found that most ofstudies are from the perspective of Post-colonialism, Orientalism, and Feminism and so forth.Although some of them are from cultural perspectives, they just pay much attention tocultural difference and cultural conflicts. Few of critics would connect this novel with themulticulturalism. This thesis intends to fill in the blank and exert itself to prove Pavilion ofWomen is actually a text of multiculturalism.The thesis mainly includes two main chapters in addition to an introduction and aconclusion. Chapter One offers a brief introduction to Pearl S. Buck and her works, as wellas a literature review. Chapter Two concentrates on multiculturalism and its formation andthe connotation applied in this thesis, and the relationship between multiculturalism andPearl. Because Pearl was born in and grew up under both Chinese and Western cultures, sheis familiar with and absorbs the essence of them. She knows that every culture has its dross,and hopes that both cultures can co-exist harmoniously in the world. Chapter Three is themost important part of this paper. In this chapter, the study of multiculturalism is carried outconstruction of the House of Wu, the characters’ modeling, and the narrative strategies. First,through giving a vivid description of the House of Wu, this thesis intends to show that thisimage is full of elements of multiculturalism. Second, by comparing the stereotypes of bothChinese and Westerners, it tries to study the reasons of misunderstanding between bothpeoples. Then Pearl reverses and subverts the stereotypes of Chinese and Westerners bydeconstructing the images of Madame Wu and priest Andrew and setting up perfectexamples with excellent Chinese and Western characters. Finally, the special narrativelanguage and writing style are adopted as narrative strategies to construct multiculturalism,which shows her wish that multi-culture could co-exist harmoniously in the world. ChapterFour is conclusion. Through her experiences and study about Chinese and Western cultures,she exerts her all efforts to create this novel full of multicultural elements.To sum up, Pavilion of Women illustrates well Pearl’s multicultural conception andproduces practical significance for the modern world. By depicting the transformation frommisunderstanding and conflicts to communication and understanding between the Chinese and Western culture, Pearl has presented her belief to the readers that the mutualunderstanding and reconciliation of multi-culture are the future trend of society’sdevelopment. And she also makes her best wishes that multi-cultures could co-existharmoniously all over the world.