| As one of prestigious local writers in American literary world,Sarah Orne Jewett(1849-1909)was born in southern Maine of America.Most of her works meticulously depict the daily life in New England rural towns in a fresh and natural way,paying great attention to the whole world.There is no exception to one of her finest novel The Country of the Pointed Firs.As a female local writer,Jewett is always associated with feminism,ecofeminism and local New England characteristics.Some critics hold that her works suffer from the certain narrowness of scope in gender and region,which is somewhat too small to be representative of the human condition.However,they ignore her great concern for life itself and her abiding love and compassion for the whole world.In view of this,this thesis,based on textual and theoretical analysis of Material Culture Studies and philosophy of life,will discuss the writing of life in the novel from the following three aspects:the universality of life,the continuity of life and the sociality of life.This thesis includes five chapters:the introduction,three chapters of the argumentation and the conclusion.The introduction elaborates on the author Sarah Orne Jewett’s life,her literary achievements,the basic information of her work The Country of the Pointed Firs and the research status at home and abroad.It will also sort out the research methods,research ideas and research values of the thesis.The second chapter to the fourth chapter is the main body of the thesis.The second chapter analyzes the universality of life in The Country of the Pointed Firs.Firstly,the Dunnet habitants show great physical strength and spiritual vitality.Secondly,non-traditional living bodies represented by animals,plants and artifacts in the works achieves their life imagination by participating in the economic,social and cultural life of human beings and becoming an indispensable part of humans.Under the care of human beings,they embrace a huge value of social life.In the end,this chapter summarizes the overall view of life that world is a whole one and world is life,showing Jewett’s universal love for the universe.The third chapter analyzes the continuity of life in The Country of the Pointed Firs.From birth to death,life leaves its traces on the world.Even if the physical body dies,the personal memory and the collective civilization will continue.For the individual,the destination of his life lies in his spiritual return to home,while for the life as a whole,the destination is infinite and eternal development.The fourth chapter explains the sociality of life.At the gender level,men and women break the traditionally fixed label and stand on the united front before love and loneliness.At the regional level,the city and the country benefit each other through economic,knowledge and experience exchanges,achieving a win-win situation.At the racial level,New England has actively carried out cross-cultural exchanges with other races in the process of inheritance and development,featuring an advanced "deified" and "generalized" group.This chapter,based on three different social relations,shows the consistent value that life pursues—the ideal of life community of seeking mutual assistance while reserving differences.The fifth chapter is the conclusion of the thesis.The life writing in The Country of the Pointed Firs shows Jewett’s broad,unique and profound compassion for the universe.First,she attributes the world to life and explains the upward vitality and development potential of humans,animals and plants,and other objects closely related to humans,showing great love for the world.Secondly,in terms of the length of life,she believes that the death of the physical body is not the end of life and noble spiritual pursuits will illuminate the long road of life.For an individual life,the destiny of the "home-coming" spirit is of great importance,and for the life as a whole,the destiny of life will be eternality.In the end,she constructs a life community with different networks of relationships in gender,region,and race,explaining life’s impulse to pursue a common home.Jewett’s life writing breaks the traditional binary opposition between people and things,life and death,men and women,cities and countries,and race and outsiders.She places these relationships within the framework of life,breaking through the limitations of traditional local literature and female literature to draw a grand vision of life and the ideal of a life community,which is innovative and forward-looking. |
