A Comparative Study Of The Grass Is Singing And The Edible Woman From The Perspective Of Eco-Feminism

The Grass Is Singing and The Edible Woman are respectively the first novels of British female writer Doris Lessing and Canadian female writer Margaret Atwood. Doris Less ing is a prominent British female novelist in the20th century, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in2007. Her novels care for female’s life and nature’s destiny. Crowned as the queen of Canadian literature, Margaret Atwood enjoys a high fame in the world as a poet and novelist. Her works manifest the following three themes:feminism, nationalism and ecologism. Being the influential women writers in western literary circles, they have been deeply concerned about the oppressed plight of nature and women suffered in the male-dominated society.With the recognition of eco-feminist literary criticism in recent years, some scholars have begun to pay attention to the eco-feminist consciousness embodied in The Grass Is Singing and The Edible Woman. But so far, nearly no articles make integral comparisons between these two novels from the perspective of eco-feminism. This thesis aims to employ comparative studies to unearth eco-feminist literary thoughts reflected in them, and find out patriarchy and harmony, the former is the common reason for oppressing women and nature, the latter is the common goal for them to pursue.The thesis consists of five chapters.The first chapter presents a brief introduction of the two novels, the authors and their status in western literature. It also gives a brief summary of the literature review of current studies on them and the development of eco-feminist literary criticism. Eco-feminism has an open system and interconnects with other disciplines closely, such as ecology, feminism and so on. It intends to explore the special relationship between degrading women and depreciating nature, opposing the patriarchal worldview and the way of thinking of anthropocentrism, and proposing to build a brand-new and harmonious relationship between men, women and nature.The second chapter analyzes the close relationship between female and nature embodied in the two novels. Eco-feminists respect nature and all forms of life and advocate a biocentric worldview. They emphasize the association of women with nature and land, and dissect that patriarchy is indeed the root cause of men’s oppression of women and nature. This chapter focuses on the symbolic links and the experiential links between women and nature to discuss the similar experiences of them in the two novels.The third chapter analyzes the heroines’different fates from the eco-feminist perspective. Through the comparative studies, different attitudes from the two women result in their different fates. In The Grass Is Singing, Mary can not bear the pressure under the patriarchal society and chooses to resign herself to the fate, even refuses to get close to nature. Her negative attitude finally leads to the perishing in her life. While Marian in The Edible Woman constantly sums up the causes of her stress and learns lessons from her intimate friends Ainsley and Clara, with her tenacious resistance to the fate of being a prey of the patriarchal society, she ultimately disengages herself from the coming marriage with her fiance Peter.Chapter Four adopts the eco-feminist literary criticism to explore further into the ultimate goal of the two novels—harmony. Owing to suffering from a variety of disharmonious experiences and stress, Mary finally falls down under the black servant Moses’knife willingly. In this way she has achieved her eternal pursuit of harmony. Marian is overwhelmed by her engagement which makes her unable to eat anything. By presenting Peter a woman-shaped cake as a substitute for herself being eaten by the marriage system in the patriarchal society, Marian has realized her personal inner harmony.Chapter Five is the conclusion part, which summarizes the eco-feminist elements that appear in the two novels and digs patriarchy up which has proved to be the common root of the tragic fates of women and nature. The purpose of the thesis is to advocate the harmonious coexistence of human and nature, despite the fact that there are no royal roads for pursuing harmony, while unremitting struggle to oppression is indeed the effective way.The rereading of the two novels from the perspective of eco-feminism shows that both novels are concerned about the status of women and nature, and criticize patriarchal society and the process of industrialization which harmed both female and environment. In combination with contemporary social reality, the thesis probes into the practical significance of the ravaged fates of women and nature, and urges people to rebuild the world by eco-feminist principle. Finally harmonious coexistence between human and nature in the same society can be achieved.