On Idea Of Environmental Justice In OPioneers

Willa Cather (1873-1947) is the only woman to be included in the Sixteen Modern American Writers (1974). She achieves wide recognition for her novels of frontier life on the Great Plains. As one of her Great Plains trilogy, Cather’s first frontier novel O Pioneers!(1913) establishes her as a first-class novelist.The unique artistic relationship of Cather’s works to the natural environment is widely identified. Since1990s, literary critics have interpreted O Pioneers/in the context of the emerging field of ecocriticism. However, most previous reviews classify it as a work of the first-wave ecoriticism—ecocentrism, which advocates wilderness appreciation and conservation, while this dissertation considers it as a representative of the second-wave ecoriticism—environmental justice ecocriticism. What Cather highlights in the novel is not wilderness conservation but positive environmental transformation. Besides, Cather also probes into the crucial connections between environmental concerns and social justice, reflecting another important dimension to environmental justice ecocriticism. Thus this dissertation aims to reinterpret O Pioneers! from the perspective of environmental justice ecocriticism.This dissertation contends that what Cather conveys in this novel is an ideal for the harmonious relationship between man and nature, man and man, and man and society based on justice.