An Interpretation Of By The Light Of My Father's Smile From The Perspective Of Gender Performativity

Alice Walker,one of the most famous American writers,who thought deeply about the black,women and all kinds of marginal groups with the problems of unfair treatment and used them as the root of her writing,evoking the equal consciousness of many women in the pursuit of sex-identity,identity and freedom.Alice Walker's unique feminism thought pushed her writing to a literary climax and she has been a pioneer for other women writers who have worked together for women.By the Light of My Father 's Smile was published in 1998,which is one of Alice walker's most famous masterpieces.The novel tells the story of a dead father's confession to his daughters,reviewing a series of father's cruel atrocities for their daughters,and revealing the status of the oppression of black women under patriarchy and the pursuit of female status.The thesis introduces Judith Butler and her gender performativity theory,which is led in by queer theory and derive gender performativity theory from Gender Trouble.And it suggests that women not only have the fate of oppression,they also have the right to pursue their sexual rights.Gender is not single,permanent,fixed,but has the features of continuity,repeatability and conditionality.At the same time,it also reveals that gender identity of the subject is not established,but has the characteristics of fuzzy and instability.On this basis,the female characters in By the Light of My father 's smile are combined with their theoretical texts to make the theory of gender performativity more clear.The paper consists of five chapters.The first part is the lead-in of the article,which gives a brief introduction to Alice Walker's life and literary status.And it also introduces the writing background and source of her masterpiece of By the Light of My father 's smile.Then,it briefly analyzes the domestic and foreign research status of the novel.Understanding the different perspectives of the novel is to better understand the context of it.The second part mainly introduces the important theory of the novel,that is gender performativity theory of Judith Butler.According to the concept of queer as lead-in,the thesis uses the social role theory and the construction of identity making a deep analysis of the Gender Trouble in gender performativity theory.The third part centred on two female characters to have a text interpretation of performativity,making a deep excavation of the heroine of Pauline and Susannah in the pursuit of desire and identity freedom of the struggles,and clarified the performativity features of gender performativity and other characteristics.The fourth part is about the gender identity of the characters in the novel,having further analysis of the gender identity under the theory of gender performativity,which introduce cross-gender identity,queer female identity and androgyrous female identity.The fifth part is the conclusion.In the subversion of the traditional concept of gender performativity of Butler,we have a deep understanding of the relationship between the two opposite understanding of gender performativity initiative and the collapse of patriarchy.At the same time,there is a deeper analysis of the protagonist's confusion about gender and gender identity,which reveals the inevitable trend of female exploration and the pursuit of freedom of identity.