A Study Of Alice Munro's Short Stories From The Perspective Of Ecofeminism

Alice Munro, the Canadian winner of the Nobel Prize in literature for 2013, enjoys prominent status in contemporary literary world. She is not only known as the queen of short story but also compared to “the Contemporary Chekhov” by the famous American Jewish writer Cynthia Ozick for her remarkable writing features of mirroring such serious topics as birth, senility, sickness and death through her exquisite writing of the daily life of the civilians in small towns. As a female writer, Alice Munro not only endows her short stories with profound consideration about the fate of women but also employs lots of scenery descriptions which deeply reflect her ecological thought. In her early work Lives of Girls and Women published in 1971 and recent work Runaway published in 2004, Munro deeply attacks patriarchy and anthropocentrism by depicting the oppression men have suppressed on women as well as the harm human beings have done to nature, which echoes that of Ecofeminism. Ecofeminism believes that women and nature are related intrinsically because of their similar subordinate status in the patriarchal society. Therefore, through textual analysis, this thesis aims at decoding the inherent similarity between women and nature and the unbalanced relationships between modern civilization and nature, modern civilization and women, men and women embodied in Munro?s short stories from the perspective of Ecofeminism.This thesis consists of four chapters besides the introduction and conclusion. Chapter One mainly focuses on Ecofeminism literary criticism and its main characteristics as well as Munro?s Ecofeminism awareness. Chapter Two analyzes the compatible relationship between women and nature from the Ecofeminism point of view, including Della?s affinity with nature, Addie?s affiliation with nature as well as the symbolic connection between Tessa and nature. Chapter Three explores the unbalanced relationship between women and men from an Ecofeminism perspective, which is mainly unfolded by three figures: Della, Carla and Lauren. These three women figures live in different environments but are pitifully faced with similar predicament: being pushed to the marginal subordinate status in the patriarchal society. Chapter Four probes into women?s pursuing for self-emancipation, which can be demonstrated by four figures: Addie?s awakening of self-awareness; Juliet?s attempt to get rid of the patriarchal value; Grace?s escaping from the cage of marriage and Robin?s striving for the harmony between men and women.Patriarchal system and anthropocentrism are the roots for both women and nature?s subordination. Munro?s depiction in Lives of Girls and Women and Runaway about the compatible relationships between women and nature as well as the unbalanced relationships between modern civilization and nature, modern civilization and women, men and women deeply unfold her profound Ecofeminism expectation to replace the patriarchal system with a completely new one in which men and women, human beings and nature can coexist in harmony.