On The Subversion Of Stereotyped Female Gender Roles In The Good Wife

On Sept. 22 nd, 2009, this TV series The Good Wife made its debut on CBS, and it is Alicia, this “good wife” that roused widely focus and heated discussion by regaining her role as the bread-winner of her family and the decision-maker of her life, after the sexual scandal and imprison of Peter, her husband who was a state attorney.As a combination of studies on films and feminism theories, feminism film theory that is derived from 1970 s has long been regarded as a main methodology to disclose the constructed world in films and TV series, in which women always play their parts as the oppressed, the controlled, the obedient and the subordinate; while feminism film theories also help see some progress that has been made in getting rid of the stereotyped character fulfilling social expectations and male desire.This thesis, from the perspective of male talk, male gaze and “gender performativity”, will focus on analyzing how the characters, the plot and language in The Good Wife display the subversion of the female image as the subordinate in the constructed patriarchal world.The body part of this paper consists of three chapters: chapter one explores the changes of female gender roles from silent inferior female talk to voiced superior female talk; chapter two focuses on the relationships between female characters and male characters in order to analyze the roles differently portrayed as subjects of their own, rather than, as in the tradition, “the Sexual Object of Male Gaze”; chapter three explores how Alicia and Diane are progressively portrayed as, not the Other and the inferior, but the master of their own life and career.