A Comparative Analysis Of The Female Characters In The Human Stain From The Perspective Of Feminism

Philip Roth(1933-) is a famous Jewish American writer with all awards in literature field except Nobel Prize. As one of the leading authors in20th century, Roth has created a host of great novels, non-fictions and other collections. Since the publication of The Human Stain in2000, Roth has deeply established his leading position in the literature world. This novel covers a wide range of themes which include academic settings, race issues, identity crisis, political correctness, feminism and so on. In this dissertation, the author centers on the analysis and the comparison of the three female characters. It is conducted from the perspective of feminism, after that reasons of their common destiny are pointed out.It begins in1998when the President Bill Clinton had an affair with Monica Lewinsky. Just in this same year, Coleman Silk the protagonist in the fiction ran into a chaos and that is where the story begins. The narrator of Nathan Zuckerman recounts a tale of three women centering on Coleman Silk. For a better interpretation of the three female characters in The Human Stain, this dissertation is divided into five chapters. The first chapter is introduction, including a brief introduction to the author and his achievements in literary area, followed by literature review on The Human Stain both domestic and overseas. Finally the purpose and significance of this research are clarified. Chapter Two contains three parts. Firstly the definition of feminism is explained. Secondly the development of feminism will be illustrated based on three waves of feminist movement. The time and characteristic as well as the achievements of each feminist movement will be present. Thirdly, the development of feminism in literature will be illustrated with some examples of famous authors and their works accordingly. The main body of this thesis begins with Chapter Three. The three female characters will be analyzed separately under the view of feminism. The description order is according to their appearance in this novel. Faunia Farley appears first, she is a victim of patriarchal and bourgeois society, which is thoroughly expressed by her tragic childhood and failed marriage. Then the analysis on Delphine Roux is followed. Delphine Roux, she is a lost white immigrant and hardly integrates into American mainstream culture. Her tragic life consists of her career crisis and emotional crisis, together with which and her afterwards nervous breakdown indicate that she is a victim of sexual politics. The last one Mrs. Silk is a black woman oppressed by multiple forces. The living atmosphere always makes her depressive, besides that she feels excluded by her white colleagues in hospital. In Chapter Four comparisons of the three female are carried out and then reasons of their common destiny are illustrated. The three females are from different social backgrounds and live in different times, but all of them, Faunia Farley of lower class, Delphine Roux of upper class or Mrs. Silk of black women, are doomed to a tragic life. In Chapter Five the root of their destinies are figured out:in the society of binary opposition, a routine is formed to explain everything from the perspective of binary opposition in the world. The two opposite factors are unequal, but what the former word represents is superior to the latter, which resulted in the latter one’s oppressed position. The three Females’ tragic life is the result of the ideology of upper bourgeois class and patriarchy in the human society. Women should insist on multiple developments and get rid of binary oppression ideology. Only in this way can women achieve their self-realization.