Violence, resistance, and myth in the texts of Silko, Kingston, Mukherjee, and Erdrich.
Item
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Title
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Violence, resistance, and myth in the texts of Silko, Kingston, Mukherjee, and Erdrich.
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Identifier
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AAI9917676
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identifier
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9917676
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Creator
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Markel, Maureen.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Neal Tolchin
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Date
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1999
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, American | Literature, Modern | Women's Studies | Sociology, Ethnic and Racial Studies
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Abstract
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My thesis examines literary violence in the works of four American women writers from distinct ethnic groups: Ceremony (Leslie Marmon Silko); Woman Warrior (Maxine Hong Kingston); Jasmine (Bharati Mukherjee); and Tracks and Love Medicine (Louise Erdrich). I propose that the violence in each work is rooted in feminism and functions as an expression of revolt against patriarchal suppression. Each author's shaping of violence relates directly to her ethnic background. Both Kingston, who is Chinese-American, and Mukherjee, an East-Indian immigrant, have grown up in a misogynist society where the very act of writing defies their culture's admonishment to be silent and passive. Their characters fight centuries-old traditions of repression, as well as the prejudice of the dominant white society, to develop selfhood and independence. Erdrich, of Chippewa and German-American descent, explores generations of Chippewas living on land reservations where violence issues from the context of a dysfunctional community and its ensuing problems---alcoholism, abandoned children, lives displaced and extracted from their roots. Her description of the rape and abuse of women echoes the rape of Indian land and heritage. Silko, who also writes from a mixed-blood heritage (Laguna/Mexican/white), differs from the others in that her culture is matriarchal. Thus, her assessment of the role of violence contrasts theirs: she represents violence not as a tool of justice and empowerment but as a form of witchery corrupting those who employ it.;Despite the ethnic differences of the authors, their novels share similar themes: violence and resistance in cultural adaptations; the clash of values and traditions; the quest for self-definition in the context of repressive and conflicting social values; generational and gender conflict; nature as a reflection of internal violence and as a metaphor for reconciliation and transcendence; the potential of violence to intimidate, diminish, corrupt as well as to liberate and empower. Moreover, in creating her work of mixed genre, each author subverts and revises a traditional literary form: the memoir (Woman Warrior), the Western (Ceremony), the female bildungsroman (Jasmine) and the Christian life of the saints (Tracks, Love Medicine). My study will demonstrate how the use of violence in each work effectively critiques and redefines the particular genre and how it shapes the reader's consciousness of gender and social justice both within the specific ethnic context and within the larger framework of the dominant American culture.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
