Women's Escape In Life

Alice Munro,a Canadian female writer,was the winner of Nobel Prize in Literature in2013.She devotes all her life to the creation of short stories,known as “our Chekov”,and she is considered as a master of contemporary short stories.Munro's latest collection of short stories Dear Life was published in 2012,which consists of 14 stories that reveal Munro's eternal themes of growth,marriage,love,disease and death.It has attracted the attention of a wide range of critics once it was published;at the same time,it is also the last and the best work that Munro recommends to readers.Many scholars and critics at home and abroad have analyzed Alice Munro's novel Dear Life from various perspectives.However,most studies focus on themes,culture,narrative arts,feminism,existentialism,comparative literature and psychology and etc.Munro's psychological portrayal of women's daily life is meticulous,and female characters in her novel are escaping from freedom while pursuing freedom;and life for them is the march of freedom,which makes them struggle with the contradictory demands among their individual selves,family and social expectations.And some of the unique interpretations contained in Fromm's theory of freedom provide theoretical support for this research.This thesis tries to analyze the female characters of five stories in Dear Life from the perspective of Erich Fromm's theory of freedom.It is divided into three parts,including introduction,body and conclusion,of which the body part is composed of four chapters.The first part introduces Alice Munro and Dear Life,Erich Fromm's theory of freedom,as well as researches and comments on Munro's Dear Life at home and abroad,and then points out the research significance of this thesis.And the paper takes the “bond”,“escape”and “spontaneity” involved in Fromm's view of freedom as the theoretical starting points to analyze Munro's novel and reveal the essence of women's life.Chapter one is the theoretical basis of this thesis,which expounds three main concepts of Fromm's theory of freedom in detail,such as “bond”,“escape” and “spontaneity”.The individual in modern society gets rid of all the “bonds” that once gave meaning and security to life and gains freedom but again falls into the state of powerlessness and isolation.In order to get rid of this state of insecurity,the individual strives to “escape” from freedom but is driven into a new bond.But this bond,at the expense of sacrificing the individual self,would not restore his lost security.Therefore,this “escape” from freedom makes the individual trap into a new bondage.However,based on the premise of without suppressing oneself or splitting reason and nature,“spontaneity” can help the individual obtain the real self and behave by his free will,which makes him regain security and realize the true sense of freedom.Chapter two illustrates women's dilemmas in life from the dual meaning of “bond”.Women play multiple roles at different stages of life,and correspondingly suffer from multiple dilemmas.However,“bond”,as a node connecting women with family and society,not only gives them a sense of security but also limits their pursuit of freedom and self-realization.Therefore,women linger on the brink of contradiction among their individual demands and family responsibilities and social expectations,and their pursuit seems to be annihilated by daily trivialities in actual life,and gradually become powerless and isolated in family and social life.Thus,the “bond” again becomes a kind of bondage and yoke which gets in the way of their pursuit of freedom and self-realization.Chapter three focuses on the deep concept of “escape” to pay attention to women's psychological process in life.The state of isolation and powerlessness brought about byfreedom forces women to begin to seek the new “bond” relationship after escaping from bondage.Women dominated by sensibilities succumb to external male authority in the name of love,which make them sacrifice parts of their individual selves in life to find the lost sense of security.But the internal authority again restricts women intangibly in the name of responsibility and conscience,forcing them to give up their individual demands and come to their senses in life.Whether woman's emotional occupation or rational occupation,it is a kind of “escape” that separates oneself and suppresses oneself,therefore,the new “bond” is temporary and fragile.Chapter four further explains the fundamental cause and the way out of women's successive failures in life through the concept of “spontaneity”.It is doomed to fail for woman to “escape” to the new “bond” relationship,and the accident and tragedy in life are good evidences.And their attachment to authority is actually a dependency on the power and security,and the “escape” at the expense of sacrificing parts or all of the self is fragile.Once the time is ripe,they will be awakened again to pursue their inner selves.Therefore,the absence of spontaneity is the fundamental cause of failure.Only on the premise of the realization of self-integrity,can women build the equal and independent “bonds” with others while seeking freedom and happiness.Based on the above discussion and analysis,the conclusion part points out that the female characters created by Munro are confronted with different predicaments at different stages of life,and endless isolation and powerlessness hide behind the seeming happiness in life.Being confronted with the double pressure from society and family,women struggle on the edge of the contradiction between social or family demands and individual self's demand.No matter the passive submission or the active attempt,woman still meet with accidents and tragedies unexpectedly in actual life.Although these plights of survival are the universalphenomena for women,their pursuit of freedom and happiness is endless.And they will eventually find the meaning of life through spontaneous activities.