Construction Of The Subjectivity Of Females

Joyce Carol Oates has been paying constant attention to the living conditions of women.Again in Missing Mom Oates raises the issue of unfair treatment of females.Unlike her previous works which feature the determinedly rebellious women,Missing Mom centers around normal desperate women.When confronting male domination,women do not resort to extreme measures but gain support from nature.Ecofeminism highlights the parallels between the oppression of nature and that of women.Val Plumwood’s theory of mutuality further emphasizes the importance of relationships with human others and earth others for the formation of identity.By virtue of Plumwood’s theory,the thesis argues that in Missing Mom Joyce Carol Oates constructs the subjectivity of women by establishing the mutual social relationships and the mutual human-nature relationships.This paper consists of three parts.Part Ⅰ,Introduction,provides a literature review about Oates’ s works and an introduction of Plumwood’s theory of mutuality,and puts forward the significance of this thesis.Part Ⅱ consists of three body chapters.Chapter one is a detailed exploration of how the selfhood of women comes under threat within patriarchy in Missing Mom.Chapter two focuses on what kind of problems the oppressed housewives and career women have with their relational self in the novel.Chapter three discusses how the genuine identity of the female characters are formed through mutual relations with other humans and nature.Part Ⅲ,Conclusion of the thesis,reiterates the idea that in Missing Mom Oates shows her concerns about the identities of women and the crucial role of relations,especially the ecological relations,in the formation of the identities of females.