Reconstruction Of The Subject Identity In The Valley Of The Moon:An Ecofeminist Perspective

The Valley of the Moon is one of London’s pastoral novels in his later works, and London explores the relationship between human beings and nature under the modernization and he also describes the significance of females in leading males out of the life predicament in industrialization.This thesis aims at exploring the feminist awareness and the ecological sense shown in The Valley of the Moon. And the ecofeminist perspective will be applied to interpret this work. Ecofeminism first appears in the early 1970s. Francois D’Eaubonne, a French feminist, put forward the term "feminisme" in her book Le Feminisme ou la mort in 1974. In this theory, ecological awareness and feminist awareness are combined together so as to provide two angles of the research on literary works: gender and nature. The ultimate purpose is to arouse people’s concern and respect of females and nature.The interpretation of the work will be carried out from the following aspects: the first aspect will be the analyzing of the feminist awareness in The Valley of the Moon. The focus will be the binary opposition of males and females in Oakland and a conclusion can be drawn that phallogocentrism in the man-dominated society is the main cause of the absence of the female’s identity as a subject. The second aspect will be how the ecological sense is manifested in The Valley of the Moon. Through the description of the human being’s excessive exploitation to natural resources in Oakland as well as in some places in the protagonists’ journey, London shows his great concern about ecology and his thought about the main cause of the destroying of nature——the anthropocentrism. Thirdly, through the same situation of females and the nature, this thesis gets another conclusion that nature and females have an inner connection that they are both passive objects and subordinates to the current subjects. Finally, this thesis researches on the reconstruction of the identity of nature and females. In The Valley of the Moon, both nature and females acquire independent and positive identity as subjects. For the reconstruction of females’identity, the process of the change of females’identity is described from the oppression under the patriarchy system to the awakening, and then to the realization of the females’ identity by the guidance of the deified female image. For the reconstruction of the identity of nature, the protagonists saw some people preserving nature and they put their thought of nature protection into practice in the valley of the moon. Nature was respected and the identity of nature was reconstructed. And nature, in return, offered peace and harmony to the couple. From the above-mentioned aspects, the main statement of this thesis can be concluded: nature and females have inner connection and the reconstruction of the identity of nature and females in The Valley of the Moon deeply shows London’s ecofeminist awareness.