Qn The Theme Of Silence In The Bonesetter’s Daughter From The Perspective Of Post-colonial Feminism

As a prominent representative of the Chinese American female writer, Amy Tan has been highly praised by the readers and has attracted wide attention of the critics ever since the publication of her maiden novel The Joy Luck Club. Her works are well received both in popular literary market and in academic circle. The vivid female images and the exquisite female relationships in her works are always attracting and affecting thousands of readers. Amy Tan is good at describing the mother-daughter relationship and she discusses thoroughly in her works the conflicts as well as mutual understanding between the mother and daughter. Besides, she pays close attention to the silence of the Chinese American women in the dominant white society, and at the same time, she reveals the reasons for the silence from aspects of psychology and culture. Furthermore, she explores with great efforts how the Chinese American women can break the silence and reconstruct themselves.Published in2001, The Bonesetter’s Daughter is the fourth novel of Amy Tan. It is an autobiographical novel based on the experience of three women from a lineage of Amy Tan’s family. In this novel, the mother-daughter relationship is still the main theme but it should be mentioned that the silence of the daughter, the mother and the grandmother in this novel is another mission of the story. Based on the theory of post-colonial feminism, this thesis analyzes the reasons for the silence of the women characters in The Bonesetter’s Daughter and digs in the ground the way for the marginalized Chinese American women to find their lost voices and regain their subjectivities.There are three chapters in this thesis in addition to the Introduction and Conclusion. Chapter One gives a brief introduction to the post-colonial feminist theory and discusses the causes for the silence of the Third World women. Chapter Two analyzes in detail the silence of the three women characters---Precious Auntie, LuLing and Ruth as well as the reasons for the silence. Chapter Three probes how the three women break the silence and construct their subjectivities. With the analysis of the text of this novel, this thesis tries to explain how Amy Tan excavates the lost voice of Chinese American women under the cultural hegemony in the American society.