생태여성주의 현대 미국소설에 나타난 포스트모던 목가의 양상

Abstract

This paper reads contemporary ecofeminist fictions, Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres and Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer, to find some ecocritical features of postmodern pastoral. American pastoral was an ideal premised on harmony and balance, while it depended on ownership and conquest in the American history. Postmodern pastoral undresses the ideology of American pastoral which sanctions the oppressions of women and the natural world, and thereby it restores nature and women to their authentic positions. A Thousand Acres and Prodigal Summer present the natural landscape surrounded by the threatening world-views such as patriarchal instrumentalism and anthropocentric attitudes. They also show women characters that face the androcentric ideology based on the difference in gender. Women characters pursue the world of harmony and equality as they are armed with ecofeminist consciousness.