An Analysis Of Women's Destinies In The Valley Of Amazement By Amy Tan From The Perspective Of Spatial Criticism

Published in 2013,The Valley of Amazement is a new book by Amy Tan,one of the most distinguished Chinese-American women writers in the contemporary age.The novel revolves around Violet who is a hybrid of Chinese-American descent and describes the life experiences and changeable destinies of three generations of women in China's special historical and cultural conditions.Their destinies are influenced by the geographic space,social space and psychological space.At the end of 20~thh century,spatial theory rose and began to penetrate into the field of literary criticism.Spatial criticism roots itself on the postmodern culture and society.As a new critical method,spatial criticism develops itself based on cultural geography and forms its own theories by absorbing some postmodern theories,such as cultural studies,feminism and identity.With reference to the spatial criticism of Henri Lefebvre,Michel Foucault and other spatial theorists,this paper mainly discusses the women's destinies of three generations through the detailed analysis from the aspects of geographic space,social space and psychological space,an attempt to bring some enlightenment to the self-searching women in the dual cultural backgrounds who have the same situation as the female characters in the novel.At the beginning,the thesis gives a brief introduction to the author,the novel,the literature review and spatial theories.The body part explores the women's destinies of three generations from the perspective of geographic space.Through the analysis of their geographic life backgrounds of the orient and the west,Shanghai and San Francisco,The Hidden Jade Path and The Hall of Tranquility as well as Moon Pond,it explores the effects of the geographic displacement on women's destinies.Besides the geographic space,human beings are actually living in the complex social space.Based on social space theory,the thesis discusses women's destinies from the aspects of culture,gender and mother-daughter relationship to explore their changes in culture space,gender space and family space.Psychological space is the manifestation of three female characters'will.And the thesis proceeds to the analysis of women's inner psychological space.Self-identity,female consciousness and the reconciliation are supposed to be revealed.The last chapter is the conclusion of this thesis,summarizing the important influences of the changeable spaces on women's destinies.