我的安东尼亚的生态女性主义分析-analysis of my antonijas ecological feminism.docxVIP

PAGE PAGE 10 none that makes them seem better worth knowing” (qtd. in O’connor, 2001: 88). Then, there appeared some Marxist studies of My ántonia in the 1930s and 1940s. During this period, the novel received critical attention as lots of articles, reviews and books were devoted to Cather’s works. But because of the Great Depression, reviewers with Marxism criticized My ántonia for being romantic and escapist and not concerned about the severe social, political and economic situations. Granville Hicks continued to applaud the “bleakness and cruelty” of the land in the novel, but by equating Cathers literary decline with her growing political conservatism, charged that Cather had “never once tried to see contemporary life as it is” (1933: 708) and “surrendered to the longing for the safe and romantic past” (1933: 710). In spite of all these, however, My ántonia remained its high status, as all critics agreed that it was Cather’s masterpiece. In the third stage, the 1950s and 1960s witnessed some New Critical studies of My ántonia. Scholars began to focus on the text itself and tried to justify the seemingly deficient structure. James E. Miller, Jr. found the internal unity in My ántonia. In his view, the cyclic theme pervaded the novel: the cycle of the seasons of the year, the cycle of the stages of human life and the cycle of the phases of cultural life. My ántonia was “ultimately about time, about the inexorable movement of future into the present, of present into past” (1958: 484). Similarly, Terence Martin found “structural coherence” (1969: 305) in Jim’s drama of memory. As far as he was concerned, Jim defined both the theme and structure of the novel, for the novel did not present the story of ántonia, but “a drama of memory by means of which Jim Burden tells us how he has come to see ántonia as the epitome of all he has valued” (1969: 308). In the fourth stage, people began to conduct feministic studies of My ántonia. In the 1970s and 1980s, scholars expl