Women’s Emotions And Readers’ Emotional Simulation In Gilman’s Short Stories

In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short stories,the author uses superb narrative skills to express rich women’s emotions,which challenges the stereotyped women’s emotions in Western traditional literature.In men’s writings of women,women’s emotions are polarized,as a result of the complicity of patriarchy and capitalism.As Raymond Williams points out,culture is also a material production and the construction of various social ideological choices.Literature,as a representation of culture,is also the result of material practice.On the one hand,traditional Western literature is the practice field of patriarchy and capitalism,presenting the polarization of women’s emotions.Women were either repressed emotionally as the gentle“lady”figure,or presented as hysterical,crazy and irrational.On the other hand,literature,as a medium for disseminating ideology,also reinforces the polarized images of women’s emotions,and thus generates a unified standard to discipline women in the real world.In this sense,it is particularly necessary to explore women’s emotions in feminist writers’works that adopt literature as a field of practice to challenge patriarchy and capitalism by revising women’s emotions in men’s writings.Among these works,Gilman’s short stories are notably striking for emotional depiction and are of high academic value in this research area.From the perspective of affective narratology,this thesis mainly focuses on the emotional catharsis,emotional management,situational empathy between characters and emotional simulation of readers in Gilman’s short stories.Emotional catharsis is the reflection of patriarchy and phallocentrism,which highlights the confusion,anger and anxiety of women who were torn between traditional ideas and new demands of feminism in the late 19^thand early 20^thcenturies.Emotional management signifies women’s formal resistance to the dominant discourse,in which their calmness and firmness indicate the breaking of previous stereotypes and are the way for women to reshape their subjectivity.Besides,situational empathy between the characters reflects the writer’s genuine appeal to establish a harmonious relationship among women and between the two genders,involving multiple levels such as the view of motherhood and family.Finally,Reader’s emotional simulation achieves the communication between the text and the real world,and realizes the text’s realistic function.In this process,the emotions of suspense,curiosity and empathy felt by readers are the result of Gilman’s careful design.Gilman aims to inspire women to get rid of the shackles of the past and form an independent self,while calling for mutual understanding between the two genders to build a more harmonious society.On the basis of previous research,this thesis adopts a cognitive perspective to explore women’s emotions in Gilman’s short stories.It not only deeply explores the emotional expressive function of specific narrative skills,but also conducts contextual analysis combined with cultural background to examine the power flow behind emotions.At the same time,it takes into consideration reader’s emotional simulation,which helps to realize a comprehensive study of author,text,reader and history.In the respect of expanding the research space of Gilman’s works and exploring the emotional representation,this thesis has some enlightening significance.