Scarica Analyzing Pearl Buck's 'The Good Earth' & Intersectional Feminist Fiction e più Appunti in PDF di Letteratura Angloamericana solo su Docsity! 5° lezione 22.10 Analysis of the first eleven chapters of the novel “The Good Earth” FEMINIST FICTION in a “NON-FEMINIST” AGE Shaffer Robert “Feminist Novels in a “Non-Feminist” Age (ESSAY) TITLE: it points up in a direction that the argument will take. Buck was a feminist writer, and she was writing in a non-feminist age. Feminist fiction/novels. Was Buck a feminist? It depends on what you mean by feminism. She stated that she did not consider herself to be a feminist. Shaffer disagrees about how Buck sees herself and proves that she had an effect and a starting point that was compatible with the idea of feminism, even though she denied it. When a feminist movement is usually divided as formed two different waves: the first was the movement that led to the winning of the vote (the goal was the possibility to vote) and then, there was a long silence in mainstream study that lasted 40 years until the 1960s the 2nd wave of feminism. Buck was most productive in the non-feminist era. Shaffer is trying to deconstruct both notions and tries to prove that the decades from the 1930s until 1960s were not a feminist era. He wants the reader to understand the feminism that Buck is using in her work. CRITIQUE OF WOMEN’S STATUS IN AMERICAN SOCIETY (slide) She did something that is very complex. Slide A category that Shaffer uses to define Buck’s work is “critical internationalism”. She was spreading an antiracist internationalist attitude that was not shared in American society at that time. she was utilizing what Shaffer calls the cross-cultural perspective, which enabled her to show that she refused to uphold the viewpoint that American society constituted a model for the world. Slide Buck and Intersectionality The fact that she did not want to be associated with feminism has to do to the fact that in the 1940s and 1960s there was very weak awareness of the complexity of female identity. she did not think that women were one large group that could be considered and considered the same time. she was more interested in the elements that divided women, the system of differences that made women experiences more unique. Not grouping women as a large unified entity but the differences. Another key term is INTERSECTIONALITY “quote” Her awareness of the complexity and differences among women prevented her from feeling some sort of closeness to the feminist movements of the 1940s and 50s and 60s, when she was cancelled from history of American literature because of political attitude. Slide Shaffer’s thesis We now can appreciate Buck’s modernity. It was her political activism that led her exclusion from American literature. Now we can read her works in the light of a different awareness. SLIDE Intersectionality is a new word. Link It has become popular in the current decade. Buck was intersectional before the word existed. She had an approach to literature and society that required the complexity of idea of identity that intersectionality offers. SLIDE “What is intersectionality” It was used to argue that black women are multiply burdened because they are black and women. The discrimination you face is more complex and different. SLIDE INTERSECTIONALITY The notion of intersectionality was used to refer to gender and race. SLIDE WOMEN’S LABOR We are encouraged to pay attention to the fact the O-lan is a poor woman, wife of a poor peasant. There is various access to her identity. The new concept introduced is that O-lan works it is new as far as the representation of Chinese women concerns. She had worked with her husband in the Chinese countryside. Buck had the chance to come across farmers and she could tell stories that were not usually told, and these stories made available a different world of femininity and different aspect of women’s life in China. American nationalism which needs to be tackled from a critical perspective. nationalism does not equal democracy. Buck believed in a cosmopolitan world view and her rejection of nationalism led her to have a critical approach towards American nationalism. SLIDE GENDER POLITICS He quotes another scholar to explain his thesis. The problem was that there was a limited number of representation available. Western and Americans were not interested in stories set in China. Publishing houses were not encouraging.
