Gender Construction

Alice Walker, an African-American poet, novelist, essayist, feminist and political commentator, is one of the most prominent and influential writers in contemporary American literary field. As an outstanding representative of women literature, Walker’s works, which are famous for the merciless exploration of gender oppression within the black family, reflect the survival status of black women who are living in the crevice between the mainstream white culture and black male culture and concentrate on the black women’s suffering as well as struggling. Walker actively explores the way for the black women’s self-independence and spiritual freedom, being called "black Virginia Woolf"as a result.By the Light of My Father’s Smile, published in 1998 by Alice Walker, centers on father-daughter relationship. It extends and strengthens the theme of black men’s oppression on black women. After a careful reading of the novel and the relevant research in China and abroad, the thesis studies both gender construction and deconstruction through the analysis of different types of female images in the novel from the perspective of feminist psychology, concluding that gender construction is the essence of social oppression on women and gender deconstruction is actually women’s violation of the society.The thesis is divided into five chapters. Chapter 1 introduces Alice Walker and her literature achievements, By the Light of My Father’s Smile and its literature review abroad and in China, as well as the significance, methodology and overview of the thesis. Chapter 2 introduces the theory of gender construction in feminist psychology and the social origins of gender construction. Chapter 3 discusses three conventional female images and their gender construction. Chapter 4 explores another four unconventional female images and their deconstruction of gender. Chapter 5 comes to an conclusion that in the patriarchal society, women are socially constructed to be oppressed. For the solution, on one hand, women should try to solve the problem from the origins of gender problems. On the other hand, women should be aware of their oppression, try to deconstruct the traditional notion of gender by expressing themselves, seek a new way of living in the male-dominated society, and finally establish an equal and harmonious relationship with the men.