Women’s Existential Dilemmas And Self-seeking In Gordimer’s Novels

Nadine Gordimer is the first African female writer to win the Nobel Prize for literature who occupies an important position in the international literary world.She is known worldwide for her writings on ethnic conflicts in Africa and reflections on racism.At the same time,Gordimer had paid attention to other social issues in Africa,including women’s issues.In Gordimer’s novels,although most of them do not focus on women’s problems,works such as Burger’s Daughter,My Son’s Story and The Pickup take women as the protagonists,focusing on the problems of male domination and racial oppression suffered by African women.Taking the African women in Gordimer’s novels as the research object,this thesis explores the plight of African women in the multiple contradictions in families and societies and their pursuit of self subjectivity from the theoretical perspective of "Stiwanism".In addition to the introduction and conclusion,this thesis is divided into three chapters.The first chapter mainly discusses Gordimer’s writing on patriarchy over women in African families.Women represented by Julie in The Pickup and Ella in My Son’s Story were deprived of their right to speak under the male hegemony of father and husband.They were materialized into a tool of male domination.The second chapter extends to analyze that the women in the novels are coerced into the vortex of multiple contradictions in African society.Both black women represented by Ella,and white women represented by Rosa,sufferred in the midst of racial conflicts and male social hegemony.The third chapter explores women’s pursuit of self subjectivity in the works.Many women in Gordimer’s works finally awakened in thought,fought hard to resist the shackles imposed on them by patriarchy,bravely walked out of the family and devoted themselves to the cause of solving social problems such as ethnic conflicts in Africa.Although their self pursuit may not be successful,their ideological awakening and bold actions are enlightening.In her novels,Gordimer portrayed diverse kinds of women with different ethnic groups,classes and social identities,deeply showed the struggle and pain of African women in multiple social contradictions,and explored the possibility of women’s resistance to patriarchy and racial oppression.Gordimer’s writing on women reveals the complexity of African women’s problems,especially the entangled and complex relationship between women’s problems and other social problems such as race,politics,which is thought-provoking.