摘 要

美国女作家苏珊·格拉斯佩尔于1916年出版的《琐事》和桑德拉·希斯内罗丝的《喊女溪》虽横跨近一个世纪，却都不约而同地以女性觉醒的形式探究了父系社会下身体或心灵受到家暴的女性们的反抗。本篇论文从女性主义出发对比两篇文章，推论出女性觉醒的过程及其原因。

论文分为五个部分：第一部分绪论对比总结了两部作品的背景与主题，回顾了国内外研究现状。第二到第四部分探究了女性角色的三个心理阶段，逐渐由“幻觉”到“破灭”直至最终的“觉醒”。具体来讲，第二部分着重分析了女性角色们婚前与婚后对自身命运的幻想；第三部分过渡到女性对幻想的破灭，并从外在畸形和内心挣扎两方面分析其原因；第四部分分别从个体和群体两种角度揭示了女性的觉醒。第五部分总结了在性别平等诉求日益紧迫的环境下人类社会中女性觉醒的必然性。

关键词：《琐事》；《喊女溪》；女性觉醒

Abstract

American female writer Susan Glaspell’s Trifles (1916) and Woman Hollering Creek (1991) by Sandra Cisneros, spanning almost a century, explore similar counterattack of women in the patriarchal society in the form of awakenings from either mental oppression or physical abuse. The paper attempts to analyze and conclude the procedures and reasons of feminine awakenings through comparing the two works from feminist perspective.

This paper is divided into five parts. The first part serves as the introduction to both works with regards to their background information and subject matters along with literature reviews. The second to fourth part, there are three stages of mental phases of the female protagonists, gradually changing from “Illusion” to “Disillusion” and then “Awakenings”. Specifically, the second part concentrates on the illusion of women before and after marriage; the third part transits to their disillusion with analysis of the reasons from both external deformities and internal struggles; the fourth part reveals women’s awakenings from two aspects, as individuals and groups respectively. The fifth part concludes the entire paper: women’s awakenings are definite to arise in the human society with increasing acknowledgement of the equality among genders.

Key Words: Trifles; Woman Hollering Creek; feminine awakening

Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Illusion 3

2.1 Unmarried 3

2.2 Married 5

3 Disillusion 7

3.1 External Deformities 7

3.2 Internal Struggle 9

4 Awakenings 11

4.1 Awakenings as Individuals 11

4.2 Awakenings as Groups 13

5 Conclusion 15

References 16

Acknowledgements 18

Feminine Awakening:

From Trifles to Woman Hollering Creek

1 Introduction

It is recognized that women have long been considered subordinates to their male counterparts, and their situation did not improve until a series of feminist movements appeared along with the emergence of literary giants writing about women. Particularly, the twentieth century witnessed the prosperity of numerous female literary figures together with their prominent contribution to the world’s literature and feminist movements, including Susan Glaspell’s Trifles and Sandra Cisneros’s Woman Hollering Creek.

Being two feminist writers, Susan Glaspell and Sandra Cisneros focused on social issues, especially gender inequality and women’s situations. In 1916, Trifles by Susan Glaspell was first played at the Wharf Theatre and has received great compliments from both the public and critics for its contribution to remark women’s unequal status since then. Inspired by a real murder case happened in Indianola as she was the reporter sent to do that trial, Glaspell decided to bring female rights to the forefront and arose public’s attention to the equality of women (Ben-Zvi, 1992). Nearly a century later, Sandra Cisneros, with the influence of previous masterpieces related to feminism like Susan Glaspell’s Trifles, inherited the legacy in her Woman Hollering Creek (1991) to explore the similar situations of women’s struggles in the patriarchal society. Likewise, in Woman Hollering Creek, Sandra Cisneros also examined the female character’s struggle under domestic abuse and her psychological changes in emancipating herself based on the famous Mexican folktale of La Llorona (Roberts, 2018).

Throughout the years, the existing studies related to both Trifles and Woman Hollering Creek mainly focused on gender inequality with enhanced recognition of feminist movements such as the cooperation among females under gender discriminations in Trifles: The Path to Sisterhood (1989) by Phyllis Mael and the oppression towards women based on Latin American culture and folk tales in Harryette Mullen’s “A Silence Between Us Like a Language”: The Untranslatability of Experience in Sandra Cisneros’s Woman Hollering Creek (1996). On the other hand, although research on both works paid due attention to gender issues, either had little research on the women awakenings from feminist perspective, needless to say the association between the two concerning female characters’ awakenings as both individuals and groups.

Consequently, this paper is to combine these two representative works in feminist field to make rounded analysis on three stages of feminine awakenings of the female protagonists from illusion to disillusion and finally to awakenings with close study of external situations of social traditions and male-oriented cultures. Structurally, the paper focuses on the three mental phases listed above that are accompanied by further divisions of each part, respectively marriages as dividing line for illusion, exterior and interior factors to explain the disillusion and aspects of individual and group awakenings.

With close analysis of female characters’ psychological transitions, it is supposed to understand the deeper causes of gender inequality and the process for women to break the chains. It is designed to both provide inspiring milestones as encouragement for feminist movement and successful examples for further movements concerning the interests of other minority groups. On achieving these goals, the paper would be on the basis of original texts of the two literary works in addition to previous research concerning feminism.

2 Illusion

Both as victims of domestic abuse, either mentally or physically, the female protagonists in both Trifles and Woman Hollering Creek suffer a lot to go through psychological transitions in their marriages. Similarly, they share the same three phases of psychological transitions in general that could be concluded as illusion, disillusion, and awakening. In the first stage, namely the illusion, both Minnie Wright of Trifles and Cleófilas from Woman Hollering Creek immerse themselves in the illusionary fantasy of their marriage life. To be more specific, it could be divided into two stages with marriage as the dividing line – unmarried and married.

Trifles is delicately arranged by Susan Glaspell without the presence of the female protagonist – Minnie Wright. However, the author leaves ubiquitous evidence of the presence of Minnie throughout the plot from its origin to the process and to its ending, and it occurred to the audience more strongly of the figure of Minnie Wright and the unity of women as a whole (黄坚，杨烨，2014). As a result, in Trifles, the illusion of Minnie is indicated by other characters’ lines. On the other hand, unlike Minnie Wright, the illusion of Cleófilas from Woman Hollering Creek is directly shown through her own thoughts and behaviors as it is written in third-person.

This part focuses on the identification and explanation of evidence and manifestation of the illusion towards marriage of both Minnie from Trifles and Cleófilas of Woman Hollering Creek.

2.1 Unmarried

Before marriage, women tend to imagine a nice husband and the wonderful married life even since they are just little girls. Without exception, both Trifles and Woman Hollering Creek portray their female protagonists as that of innocent and naïve unmarried girls fantasying and depicting their imaginary happy life.

In Trifles, as a little unmarried girl, Minnie Wright – Minnie Forster then – leads a fulfilling and meaningful life by herself through doing what she wants to do. With the help of Mrs. Hale’s reminiscence, the figure of young Minnie Wright is vividly shown that “she used to wear pretty clothes and be lively, when she was Minnie Foster, one of the town girls singing in the choir” (Glaspell, 1916: 6). When Minnie is still a girl at her parents’, she is light-hearted and carefree to dress herself and behave vivaciously as an innocent happy girl. Besides, she would be able to do what she feels like to do whenever she wants, including singing as a chorister.