Female's Alienation In Mourning Becomes Electra

Mourning Becomes Electra is Eugene O'Neill's excellent drama concerned with females. In this play, O'Neill describes female's plight and alienation in the rigid and distorting Puritan society. Because of the in-depth representation of female's plight and alienation, Mourning Becomes Electra is highly-rated and is regarded as the key to O'Neill's Nobel Prize for Literature.Inspired by the female's alienation and Socialist feminism theory, this thesis aims at exploring the female alienation in Mourning Becomes Electra. This trilogy develops with the constant intensification of female's alienation, and ends when female's alienation reaching its climax. O'Neill wants to employ the tragic ending to call for people's attention to female's alienation.This thesis consists of five parts. The first is introduction, providing a literature review, announcing the thesis and major arguments. Chapter One illustrates the manifestation of female's alienation in this play. It starts with unusual physical change of Christine and Lavinia, and moves on to the loss of femininity and dysfunctional family relationships. Chapter Two analyzes the reasons for female's alienation with the help of Socialist feminism. Female's alienation in this play can be attributed to repressed feminine sexuality, feminine narcissism, reproductive labor and motherhood and women's economic reliance on men. Chapter Three interprets Eugene O'Neil's rethinking and solutions to female's alienation. The conclusion part summarizes the previous chapter and draw a conclusion that only free and independent woman can get rid of alienation and a environment without constrain of Puritanism is a necessity.