The Effect Of Male Characters On The Growth Of Female Consciousness In Alice Munro’s Short-stories

The famous contemporary Canadian short-story writer Alice Munro isconsidered as one of the most influential writers all over the world. In this thesis, herearlier and new opuses are selected for analysis. In these stories, she portrays theescape of women from the oppression imposed by the patriarchal society, andemphasizes the importance of women having their own voices in order to realize thesocial value. From the perspective of feminism, this thesis analyzes the effect of malecharacters in Alice Munro s short-stories on the process of female consciousnessgrowth from early phase to establishment, interpreting the story from the perspectiveof the efforts that female makes for self improvement. Munro writes in her worksabout the daily life of ordinary women. Using bright, sensitive and spirituallytroubled female as main characters, she describes conflicts in life from femaleperspective. Her opuses reflect the desire and expectation, struggle and efforts intheir whole life with a space in favor of female physiology and spirit culture and sheexpresses her concern with women from the perspective of self understanding.Munro portrays the duality in real life such as the opposition between maleconquering consciousness and feminine rebellious consciousness, the pressure of theescaping desire and the bound of the reality and the unbalance of conjugal relationand parent-child relationship. The contradiction and confusion when women facingchoice are described with subtlety, which revealed her profound understanding of life.The writing intentions of the author are analyzed from the female characters, and theeffect that male character exerts is ignored. The analysis of male characters inMunro s short-stories is helpful to the research of the development of femaleconsciousness during the post-feminism period and to the better understanding of thecontemporary western society.The research approach adopted in this thesis is the textual analysis with thetheory of feminism. The thesis consists of three chapters. Based on feminism, Chapter One analyzes the effect of the Father Figure in the awakening of femaleconsciousness. Since the fall of matriarchal society, women have been in a weak andoppressed position, and men dominate the family and society. As the first man thatfemale contacts, the father is the key person in female s growth, playing anassignable effect in the early phase of female consciousness. In Munro s works,fathers are divided into two groups, the violent father and the silent father. ChapterTwo discusses the effect of husband figures on the female consciousness ofself-exploration, especially the effect of authoritative husbands on the femaleindependent consciousness, and the effect of intimate husbands on the femaleconsciousness of self-realization. The images of intimate husbands are different fromtraditional male features, and will exert positive effects on the establishment offemale consciousness establishment. They provide enough tolerance andunderstanding, through which women obtain unprecedented self growth. ChapterThree analyzes the effect of male friends on the female consciousness ofself-construction. Women clearly know their specialties, and participate in social lifewhen they perform social obligation and responsibility so that their social value andlife pursue are enforced.The study finds that as a self consciousness of position, function and value inthe objective world, female consciousness becomes the inner motivation which hasstimulated women s pursuit of independence. It is a dynamic process for theawakening, exploration and establishment of female consciousness. The impact frommen that women met in different phases of self-identification can not be ignored.This is the significance of this research topic.