Eco-feminist Thoughts in The Awakening_英语毕业论文.docVIP

Eco-feminist Thoughts in The Awakening Abstract: Kate Chopin’s famous novel The Awakening portrays a woman’s social, sexual and spiritual awakening vividly and successfully. In describing the protagonist Edna Pontellier’s awakening, the author uses many complicated images, such as the sea, the birds, the field. Through these images, the novel presents the close relationship between nature and women. The paper analyzes the eco-feminist thoughts expressed in this novel by the colorful images. Key Words: nature; awakening; eco-feminist thoughts Kate Chopin’s The Awakening astonishes the canon of the late nineteenth-century American literature with a frank portrayal of a woman’s social, sexual and spiritual awakening when it was published in 1899. Chopin’s feminist ideas challenge the ideology of the female identity in the patriarchal society. That is the reason why the novel received overwhelmingly negative response. The first review of the novel in St. Louis Republic called The Awakening “the story of a lady most foolish.” The reviewer of the St. Louis Mirror said the novel “leaves one sick of human nature,” while the Globe-Democrat called it “a morbid book.” The St. Louis public commented that the book committed “unutterable crimes against polite society” and “should be labeled poison.” The Chicago Times-Herald criticized Chopin for entering “the overworked field of sex fiction.” With the rapid development of feminist movement, people begin to realize the importance of this book in the 1960s. There has been widespread interest in the work: it certainly holds a unique place in the canon of American literature. Keneth Eble describes The Awakening as “a first-rate novel,” praising it for its “general excellence.” Larzer Ziff called it “the most important piece of fiction about the sexual life of a woman written to date in America”. Chopin’s editor, Per Seyersted, Emily Toth saw The Awakening as feminist criticism in the form of fiction, and Edna as the embodiment of t