Changes Of Gender Relations In Harold Pinter’s Plays

Harold Pinter has been generally considered as the foremost representative of British drama in the second half of the twentieth century after George Bernard Shaw. His name has entered the English language as an adjective used to describe a particular atmosphere and environment in drama:Pinteresque. The Swedish Academy praised him for his contribution to the world literature:"He restored theater to its basic elements:an enclosed space and unpredictable dialogue, where people are at the mercy of one another and pretense crumbles. With a minimum of plot, drama emerges from the power struggle and hide-and-seek of interlocution."(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/en-tertainment/4338082.stm)Pinter’s earlier plays are categorized as "comedy of menace", whereas Martin Esslin labels them as part of the Theatre of Absurd with regard to the miserable and lonely characters, isolated and bleak environments and non-communicable language.However, Pinter is not only a playwright of absurdism, but also a serious, conscientious and realistic playwright who is concerned with the contemporary society and conditions of human existence. His apparent ambiguous dialogues and characterizations usually reflect the playwright’s observation of the real world. In that case, gender relations in Pinter’s plays from his earlier age to the later political theatre are worth close analysis which, hopefully, will shed light on the playwright’s view on feminism which was popular during the aforementioned period.This thesis chooses The Birthday Party (1958), The Homecoming (1964), Old Times (1971) and Mountain Language (1988) as target play texts, by closely analyzing his texts and combining the historical background with Pinter’s biographical information and his thinking, highlighting the female figures in the gender relations and their power struggles with the other sex.The thesis is constituted of four chapters, each of which deals with one text. Chapter One focus on Meg in The Birthday Party, a housewife and castrating mother being marginalized and suppressed by male menace. Chapter Two deals with Ruth in The Homecoming, who is struggling for constructing her own individuality within the patriarchal family but still leaves her future uncertain. In comparison with other plays, Kate is the main target for discussion in Chapter Three, where this study tries to show how Kate regains the dominant power in the marital relationship by the exorcism of her homosexual lover. Female images in Pinter’s later political play, Mountain Language, will be analyzed in Chapter Four, where this research finds a female hero who can still not get rid of the suppression from men. This research tries to present the point of view mainly from feministic perspective, trying to explore Pinter’s changing ethics on gender problems.