An Analysis Of Theodore Dreiser’s Jennie Gerhardt From The Perspective Of Eco-feminist Theory

Theodore Dreiser was an American novelist. He was born in a German immigrant family. The poor family background made him experienced a lot of suffering in his life. Also, these sufferings provided him the original materials of literary works. Finally he became the pioneer of modern American fiction and the representative of American realistic writer along with Hemingway and Faulkner. He accomplished Jennie Gerhardt in1911. It was a novel about a poor girl suffered her life under the oppression of capitalism and male domination. Jennie Gerhardt is among "one hundred of the best English novels in20th century" selected by the Modern Library in America. However, there have not a research analyzed the novel from the Eco-feminist perspective yet.Standing on a very objective position, the writer of this thesis analyzes the transition of women’s attitude of facing the male-domination surroundings in the patriarchal society, in which people are experiencing the transition from free capitalism to monopoly capitalism. It would end up as a different result if women realized the reason of situation in capitalist society under male domination. In this thesis, a new research field has been exploited by analyzing Jennie Gerhardt from ecology and female perspectives. This thesis presented three ways to testify the Eco-feminism element in the novel. The very first step is the way how woman and nature associated with each other. The second step is the way how man has been dominating woman and nature from the early days to nowadays. The third step is the way how woman and nature would choose a pass to get rid of man’s oppression and gain freewill to stay equal. It will come to a conclusion that women will find their own way to free from male domination and implement the rights through understanding the benefit of nature’s response toward male domination. It is sincerely hoped that this thesis could provide a little recommendation to the latter researches which involving the topic about Eco-feminism or the related works.