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摘 要

杰克·伦敦的动物小说自发表以来便广受世界读者的欢迎，批评家也从进化论、意识形态理论、生态主义、等各种角度对其文本进行了评论。随着20世纪70年代以来后殖民主义理论的兴起与发展，批评界对后殖民主义文化理论的关注日盛。本文拟将从后殖民主义角度解读杰克·伦敦的动物小说。本文将从西方与非西方的对立以及男性与女性的对立来揭示杰克·伦敦在文学文本掩盖下的东方主义立场，并通过他对非西方、女性这两种“他者”的创造、凝视、和操纵，探究其作为主体对身份认同的构建。

关键词：杰克·伦敦；后殖民主义；东方主义；他者

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 1

3. Introduction of Postcolonialism 3

4. Orientalism in Jack London’s Novels 5

4.1 The White Man and the Indian 5

4.2 The Dominator and the Dominated 8

5. Antithesis of “Self” and the “Other” in Jack London’s Novels 11

5.1 Female Figures in Jack London’s Novels 11

5.2 “Self” and the “Other” 12

6. Conclusion 14

Works Cited 15

1. Introduction

Jack London (1876-1916), coming from the bottom of the society, grew up in the slum area of Oakland. Born in a family that has neither fixed occupation nor fixed residence, he lived a tough life in his teens. To support the family, he had to drop out of school, but he didn’t stop learning. He kept reading, and years later, he went to the University of California for further study.

As a prolific writer, Jack London, in his forty years’ life, wrote more than fifty books on a wide range of topics, covering 19 novels, 152 short stories, 3 scripts and extensive reportages, informal essays, political papers and so on. Jack London enjoys a national reputation for his short stories about the cruel and vigorous 1ife of Yukon, published in many magazines and then in a book, The Son of the Wolf (1900); His works often criticize social abuses and advocate the belief of Karl Marx, such as his early book, The People of the Abyss (1903), describing London’s slum situation veritably. Martin Eden (1909) and John Barleycorn(1913) are two of Jack London’s famous semi-autobiographical works.

Jack London is well-known in the literary world both home and abroad and he was called “the father of American proletarian literature” by the famous American novelist Irving Stone. He is often paralleled with Walt Whitman and Mark Twain and is regarded to exert considerable influence on the later writers such as Ernest Hemingway, Jack Kerouac, and Robert Ruark.

2. Literature Review

Jack London was a famous writer in the early 20^th century in America. His experiences furnished him with plenty of material for his stories. Critics have made analysis of London’s works from various perspectives. Owing to a variety of philosophies that have influenced Jack London throughout his life, scholars hold varied statements on his ideology.

Jack London is often listed as a realistic writer in different literary histories for his experience of poverty and hardships and the heavy burden of life he has to undertake before his success, especially for his works that reflect the cruelty and ugliness of the capitalistic society at his time such as Martin Eden, The Iron Heel and The People of the Abyss. In History and Anthology of American Literature (2003), edited by Wu Weiren, Jack London was regarded as a realistic writer, because of his patently autobiographical novel Martin Eden, his beliefs in Marx’ socialism, and his rather darker views of Nietzsche and Darwinism in his The People of the Abyss, The Iron Heel, and The War of Classes. In Wu’s book, The Call of the Wild was noted as Jack London’s commitment of his belief in the law of survival and the will to power.

It was largely because of his animal tales that Jack London was considered as naturalist by lots of scholars, such as Chang Yaoxin, Mao Xinde, and Jacqueline Tavenier Courbin. Professor Chang Yaoxin categorized Jack London in his A Survey of American Literature as a naturalistic writer along with Stephen Crane and Frank Norris. Many Darwinists and Spenserian ideas are embodied in his novels. So he is regarded as a naturalistic writer by most literary critics because naturalism is theoretically based on the theory of evolution.

The Call of the Wild written by Jack London describes a kidnapped domesticated dog turning into a wild animal, while its companion novel White Fang details a wild wolf’s journey to domestication. The present literary study on these two novels can mainly be classified into three categories:

The first one is to take them as escapist novel. In other words, they are regarded as allegories suitable for children to read. Nash’s The Call of the Wild: 1900-1916 pointed out that the novel succeeded as an escapist literature that it is useful for children to have a positive world outlook. However, this kind of study just remains on a superficial level.

The second one is to analyze the naturalism that embodies in them. Some of the researchers argue that Jack London depicts many characteristics of humanity which is related to our position in nature. In Naturalism in Jack London"s novels-Talking from The Call of the Wild and White Fang, the author elaborates the writing styles of naturalistic creation and expounds the effects on the animals from the perspective of the environment.

The third one is elaborate London’s superman philosophy and superman complex. Irving Stone, a famous biographer said that “Nietzsche had a great emotional effect on Jack London. He found the theory of superman in Nietzsche’s works. Jack felt that superman philosophy was to his taste because he thought he was a superman who could conquer any barriers” (Stone, 1938: 23). In these novels, two protagonists have strong will, infinite strength and can defeat their enemies in the fight.

Besides, psychoanalysis, myth and archetypal criticism are also employed to elaborate his works.

Domestic research on Jack London’s The Call of the Wild and White Fang evolved into prosperity after 1980s. The studies have been developed into diversified methods: Life Philosophy of Jack London-Theme Analysis of The Call of the Wild by Li Xingliang and Yi Jianhong’s Theme Discussion of White Fang, are two of those that explore from the perspective of discussion themes; Jian Junhong’s Image Interpretation of Buck in The Call of the Wild in The Call of getting Rid of the Chain of Love and Responding to the Freedom is an example of those that expound on traditional images; Yi Jianhong’s Discussion on The Call of the Wild and White Fang From the Perspective of Psychoanalysis of Sea dogs and Wolves and Huan Caixia’s Superman Thought in Tentative Discussion on The Call of the Wild and White Fang are examples of those that analyze the inward world of Jack London from the point of view of psychoanalysis; and Discussion on rspective of Jack London in The Call of the Wild by Zhao Linya researches from the viewpoint of narratology.

All in all, all the perspectives mentioned above help a lot in studying these two novels. However, many critics have neglected Jack London’s postcolonial viewpoint and attitude in these two works. Therefore, the present author intends to explore this theme and the organization of this paper is as follows:

In the first part, a brief introduction of the postcolonialism theory is offered, while the second part is about the presentation of Orientalism in White Fang, and the last one is built on the basis of the relationship between male and its sexual “Other”-- female.

3. Introduction of Postcolonialism

Postcolonialism aroused in the later half of the 20th century and was made theory in the 1970s. Frantz Fanon, one of the founders of contemporary postcolonialism, marked the beginning of postcolonialism through his work The Wretch of the Earth (1960); however, it was not until Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) was published that the theory was substantially promoted and its full-blown system was formed. The term “postcolonial” was further intensified by The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures (1989) by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin.

Colonialism started with the emergence of European nation-states in the 15th century, and by the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the previous empires and the newly emerging expansionist powers, such as the US, Japan, had colonized as much as eighty-five percent of Africa, America and Asia. During the two world wars, most colonial nations were politically on the verge of revolt (Zhu Gang, 2008: 284). On such occasion, the western colonists had to give up their domination over the colonized countries. As the former colonies gained independence in succession, the international relationship had undergone great changes. Nevertheless, the conflict between West nations and the Third World countries which were once colonized still continues, and colonialism does not terminate. “The unbalanced development in politics, economy and culture still makes them maintain an internal tension, which is demonstrated as cultural colonialism” (Said, 1978: 4 – 5).

Palestinian-American scholar Edward W. Said is one of the most eminent theoretical pioneers of postcolonialism. He possesses a high international acclaim as American literary and cultural critic, whose work Orientalism is considered to be the foundation of postcolonial literary and aroused great attention and criticism in both Western and Eastern academia. As a branch of postcolonialism, Orientalism concerns the West’s study on Eastern society. It is not only a mode of thinking that the West imagines the East but also a discourse through which the West dominates the East. Orientalism is an outlook contending that the Orientals are always inferior to the Occidentals. It always constructs an advanced West as well as a lagging Oriental “Other”. The so-called Orientalism, is actually an ideological system with a strong Europe-centered undertone.

In Orientalism, Said researched how the orientalist discourse shaped the cultural imperialism of the Occident, the western world, over the Orient or the Third World countries. According to Said, “through the colored spectacles of the Western world, the image of the Orient or the Third World countries are defined as inferior, which serves as ‘the Other’ in order that the West’s self-image is secured as the superior ‘Self’” (Said, 1978:126).Said explored the Eurocentric point of view of postcolonial theory in terms of subject/object, one/other, which all assumes the superiority of the West over the East. According to Said, “Orientalism” mainly concerns with three aspects: firstly, Orientalism tends to be more related to politics than associated with scientific. Secondly, Orientalism facilitates the construction of the East as stereotyped and fixed “other”, and the construction of identity is on the basis of the establishment of opposites and “other”. Thirdly, Orientalism is about the false representation of the relationship between the Orient and imperial expansion.

4. Orientalism in Jack London’s Novels

4.1 The White Man and the Indian

In Jack London’s animal novel White Fang, there are no notable words of the author’s different attitudes towards different people. However, it is from the details that we can trace the faint signs of his opinion on different races of people and his superiority as a civilized human being over those savage Indians and his preference for the western civilization.

Weedon, White Fang’s white master, represents the West (Occident), while Beaver, the Indian master, is the representative of the Non-west (Orient). Therefore, we can explore Jack London’s Orientalism by analyzing the difference in White Fang’s inclination towards his two masters.

Human beings as we are, we can hardly read what the animal’s real thought. So all the thoughts possessed by the wolf can be regarded as the opinion that the author may holds. We learn from the text that how London understands and constructs the animal’s attitude towards human beings, by extension gain the idea about his own feeling of superiority over the Non-west, and his confidence of dominating and subjugating them.

Through close reading of the novel, it is easy to find that White Fang takes distinctive attitudes towards his different masters, although he called all of them as gods.

When he first came across human being, he was innocent about the strange creature, however “a great awe descended upon him. He was beaten down to movelessness by an overwhelming sense of his own weakness and littleness. Here was mastery and power, something far and away beyond him” (London, 1980: 71). And London explained it this way “the cub had never seen man, yet the instinct concerning man was his. In dim ways he recognized in man the animal that had fought itself to primacy over the other animals of the Wild……The spell of the cub’s heritage was upon him, the fear and the respect born of the centuries of struggle and the accumulated experience of the generations” (London, 1980: 71).

At the very early stage, White Fang considered Gray Beaver as the most powerful god, who was supposed to be obeyed and from whom punishment would be offered if the dog dare to disobey. It is not until he first saw a white man at Fort Yukon that he came to realize that there was another race of superior gods: “those white gods were strong. They possessed greater mastery over matter than the gods he had known, most powerful among which was Gray Beaver” (London, 1980: 116).The white men are much stronger and more powerful than his Indian god. Gray Beaver is suddenly degraded as a “child-god” among those white-skinned ones. It is apparent to tell that Jack has again put his own thought into the wolf’s mind and taken for granted that white men is superior to Indians. To a certain degree, the racialism has been revealed through the perspective of White Fang.

The change of White Fang’s emotion is of significance to attest the point as well. He respected Gray Beaver more than liked him and it was mentioned more than once that he had no affection for Gray Beaver. It was punishment, fear and the respect for god that made him yield to his Indian master. And he had been suspicious about man-animal’s hands and contended that their hands always gave hurt, though sometimes offered meat. He hated to come too close to human’s hand. What’s more, the bind between the dog and the man was described as an ancient covenant which is handed down from “the first wolf that came in from the Wild entered into with the man” (London, 1980: 102), rather than the dog’s affection or anything else. While his feeling about his superior god is quite different, love took the place of like, “which latter had been the highest feeling that thrilled him in his intercourse with the gods” (London, 1980: 153). This emotion was so strong that it gave him the feeling of keen-thrilling satisfaction when Weedon Scott is present while pain and upset when he’s absent. In this case, his attachment to his new master has far beyond “the ancient covenant”. Therefore, it can be concluded that London has strong confidence about white men and he gave readers the illusion that only white men, who are highly civilized and wise, can tame the beasts from the Wild. What’s more, cunning to hurt as White Fang thought human’s hands to be, he compromised when Weedon descended his hand upon his head after two days’ soft and soothing talking.

London’s partiality can also been seen from his appellation of White Fang’s masters. When referring to Gray Beaver, London tended to employ the term “man- animal” or just call him directly as “Gray Beaver”. However, when it comes to Weedon Scott, London often used the term “his god”. It is a quite thought-provoking phenomenon, and it can be understood that London was just trying to demonstrate how the protagonist, or say, the wolf feel. Meanwhile, it can be explained as this is the way that London wished the wolf to feel. The term “man-animal” is designed to degrade the Indians in an indiscernible way to the condition of animals, which is as inferior as White Fang, from which it can be concluded that the wolf do not respect Gray Beaver so much. On the contrary, the appellation “god” in some sense elevates the status of the white man in White Fang’s eyes. Although this can be understood as the wolf possessed different affection for these two men, we can also say that it shows a pride of London for being a white, western man.

White Fang seemed indifferent to his Indian master. Lack of affection, it appeared passive in action. After the wolf attacked an Indian boy by accident, his young Indian master Mit-sah protected him from being hurt by the boy’s family. However, when Mit-sah was attacked by other boys, White Fang just looked on at first and thought “this was an affair of the god” (London, 1980: 101). He didn’t leap in those combatants until he realized that Mit-sah was one of his gods. This kind of behavior was driven sort of by rational thinking rather than sentiment.

By contrast, his impulse of protection for his white master tended to be more instinctive and sentimental. His love for Weedon allowed nobody to get close to him or even show a slight bit of hostility. The loyal dog “snarled and bristled and glared malevolently” (London, 1980: 166) when he saw Weedon ’s mother hug his dear master, which was very like a hostile act in his eyes and one that he could not stand for.

How could a dog know who is the superior man or who is the inferior one? Did he make the judgment according to their skin color? That sounds ridiculous. A dog could not think that much, but a man would. It is the author, Jack London, who tried to make readers believe so. He tried to degrade the Indian (Non-west) so that to elevate the white man (West). The West is the “Self” in London’s eyes, while the Indian, the Non-west is the “Other”. They functioned as a contrast of the West and helped confirm the identity of the West. White Fang called Weedon “god” and Beaver “man-animal”. The West is depicted holy whereas the Non-west is described as animal-like and the West is worthy of the protagonist’s love while the Non-west deserves only his indifference. All the elements mentioned above conform to the theory of Orientalism put forward by Said.

4.2 The Dominator and the Dominated

The advantages of white men over Indians are revealed through the contact between Beauty Smith and Gray Beaver. After Smith saw White Fang, he wanted very much to take possession of him. The fierceness and aggression of the wolf made him realized the impossibility of wresting him directly. Hence, he came up with the idea of trading with money. Though he failed at the beginning, he did not give up; he had another plan, which was to subjugate Gray Beaver with bottles of whiskey. The whiskey breeds thirst and made Beaver no longer stuck to his original thought. Beauty Smith achieved his goal. The whiskey here can be considered as the product of the civilized west. By extension, its corruption of Gray Beaver’s mind symbolized the exploitation and cultural imposition of the colonized. Although Beauty Smith in this novel was a bastard, he had superiority over Beaver since he was a white man and was familiar with alcohol and its characteristic of breeding thirst, thus reducing one’s will and making damage to one’s life. In order to take possession of White Fang he could ruin Beaver’s life to make him pick up the desire for whiskey, which could only be bought from white men. However, all he wanted to do with White Fang was to let it fought against other fierce animals to gain money for him. The chaos in Beaver’s life he caused was not in his consideration which resembles the imperialism that subjugated and exploited the colonized. “In the end his money and goods and temper were all gone. Nothing remained to him but his thirst” (London, 1980: 124). The righteous image of Beaver in White Fang’s eyes turned out a drunkard. However, Smith was not sorry at all for what he had done, not to mention being guilty. All he wanted was how to keep the dog as his own belonging and make money for himself.

It is similar to material practices of imperialist, exploring natural resources and turning indigenous people into slaves. The colonizers built their imperialism overseas and penetrated into indigenous cultures and caused chaos both in social status and spiritual belief of the colonized and dominated and corrupted them politically, culturally and spiritually. After the colonizers went away, there left a disordered and disunited country. The god in White Fang’s heart who made laws and was righteous turned into an image of absurdity, weakness and incompetency. It indirectly shows that London considered the Indians as victims and the oppressed.

The dog’s Indian master Gray Beaver didn’t talk much. Except for his introduction of Kiche (mother of White Fang) to other Indians and naming White Fang when he first met them, he didn’t speak at all in the following thousands of words’ narrative. He didn’t say a word when punishing White Fang, and was voiceless when awarding him, during which all the words were expressed from the perspective of the dog or from the perspective of the author. Even when Gray talked with Beauty Smith about how brave and fierce the wolf was, he didn’t have his own language. The sentence “no, White Fang was not for sale at any price” (London, 1980: 123) is a typical example, which was supposed to be said by Beaver himself, though expressed by the author instead. What’s more, after Smith cultivated successfully Gray as a drunkard, he got the chance to trade with Beaver. During this trade, only the white man had his words, while Gray Beaver was still voiceless. When the white man said “you ketch um dog you take um all right...you ketch um dog” (London, 1980: 124), Gray Beaver was supposed to say something, however, he replied nothing. There were no voiced words. Compared to Beauty Smith and Weedon, the image of Beaver was not as much vivid. The feeling of the dog for him was sort of indifferent. Even for Smith, he had his great anger and hatred and he was hysterically angry when he saw Smith turned up again, who was going to steal him stealthily then. Not to mention his deep affection for Weedon. There were abundant detailed plots showing his attachment to his dear master. It can be felt through the language and the action as well that Weedon was a perfect master.

Discourse is a symbol of political right and it contains and spreads power. It is a tool or a form possessed by and made use of power for dominance, oppression and liberation. As Said pointed out, if Orientalism is not considered as a discourse, it can not be understood completely. London deprived the discourse of Gray Beaver and caused his status of voicelessness, which by extension means deprivation of his political rights and degradation of his social status. It may not be done on purpose. However, it is his undersigned description that makes us learn his subconscious thought and how he thought about the Indians (Non-west), which could be concluded as cultural imperialism.

The analysis of the relationship between the white men and the Indians reflects the relationship between the “Self” and the “Other” in Orientalism, in which Said described them as binary opposition, one of which is the “Center” while the other is marginalized. Apparently, for London, white men are the “Center” that are superior and full of power and bound to dominate the others, and the Indians (Non-west) inferior and animal-like and inclined to be subjugated.

It is not just a subjective inclination of Jack London his own, but a social epitome of the American ideology at that time. The America in which Jack London lived was one that with a complicated social situation. At the beginning of the 18^th century, America commenced its expansionism. It enlarged its domain to several times the size what it was. In 1830, America bought Louisiana which marked its beginning of expansion. After that, it merged Florida, Texas and Oregon at quite small cost. And then, America invaded Mexico and made war with it and eventually forced Mexico to cede a great amount of land.

After the civil war, both the economic and political structure of America undertook great changes in 1960s, which lay fundamental foundation for the development of capitalism. And the capitalistic economy of the U.S. developed in a dramatic speed during that time. At the meantime, the Westward Movement was kept carrying on. The indigenous Indian tribes were driven by the colonizer away from their own land. The U.S. government took all actions, such as threatening, deceiving, bribing, to force the Indians to sign unequal treaties to make them give up their living land. The Indians lived in an abyss of misery, and when they could no longer tolerate, they raised themselves to resist the government. Thus it led to bloody massacre which caused genocide of lots of Indian tribes.

The discovery of gold ore in western regions made worse of Indians’ situation. The living area of Indians kept being compressed and infringed upon. They were treated like animals by the American government, worthless and of no rights.

5. Antithesis of “Self” and the “Other” in Jack London’s Novels

One of the features of Jack London’s works is being full of manly content. And The Call of the Wild is a typical novel that praises masculinity. It mainly talks about fortitude, strength and life-force, and nearly all the animals and human in it are males. It is a novel of male.

5.1 Female Figures in Jack London’s Novels

There are only two female creatures that turning up and worthy of being paid attention to. One is a female dog named Curly and the other is a woman whose name is Mercedes, and both of whom have a tragic ending.

Curly was a good-natured dog coming from Newfoundland, and she liked to show her kindness to other dogs, she was friendly. But she was depicted by London as sacrifice for Buck’s learning material of fighting. She made advances as usual to a husky dog in her friendly way, and died innocently and tragically from the sharp teeth of those fierce northern dogs. “She lay there limp and lifeless in bloody, trampled snow, almost literally torn to pieces” (London, 2013: 28). This was an unforgettable lesson of Buck and it was a vicarious experience and Curly was the victim instead of Buck himself. Curly was the only female dog, though it had big size, it was inclined to get hurt facing those northern dogs. “Two minutes from the time Curly went down, the last of her assailants were clubbed off” (London, 2013: 28). The brief of the time proved that it was vulnerable and weak of a female in the northern snowing world. Curly was the only female dog in the novel and was so unlucky to have been chosen by London as the sacrifice. Therefore, we can take it this way: female doesn’t have any advantage in such environment; it is a world of men, or a world of male. Women are marginalized silently and unconsciously.

Another female is one of Buck’s third master Mercedes, “she was pretty and soft, and had been chivalrously treated all her days” (London, 2013: 120). Therefore, in fact, she didn’t fit the northern world at all. She was capricious and sentimental and did everything without plans. She tended to bother her brother and husband when they were occupied with their business. She was of no ration, as she cried when she learnt that she needed to dump her private belongings that were unnecessary and were even a burden. She paid no attention to the storage of their food for dogs and showed her stupid and unnecessary kindness to dogs with giving more food. She did this with intention that she didn’t want the dogs to suffer from hunger, which, on the contrary, made hunger come faster. She knew nothing about thinking in a long run. It was her existence that turned the life of Buck a horrible nightmare. Buck perceived that he could not rely on his three masters, so he preferred being beaten to death rather than moving on. He was right, the two men and the woman fell into the icy water and ended their dramatic and funny journey. This was the second female and her ending was also a tragic. Compared to Curly, Mercedes seemed funny and absurd. Her softness and beauty that are supposed to be nice characters of women become something worthless and even make readers feel sick. Through the attitude of Buck, again we can learn the opinion of London for Mercedes. “Buck did not like her, but he was feeling too miserable to resist her, taking it as part of the day’s miserable work” (London, 2013: 110). Pretty as Mercedes was, it was miserable for Buck to tolerate her embrace. In Buck’s eyes, Mercedes deserved no respect and she had no place in his heart, and she all she did was to make everything worse. Women are people who couldn’t live independently and couldn’t survive in adverse circumstances; they are so weak and powerless that they need man to protect them.

5.2 “Self” and the “Other”

In another novel of Jack London Sea Wolf, London depicted a woman carefully. Her name was Maud Brewster. In Sea Wolf, Maud was no longer a female image that was marginalized, and she had her discourse, loud and powerful, and she was an important role in the novel. From this perspective, it may be summarized that London respected and thought highly of women. However, when the novel is further analyzed, there comes out another conclusion.

Maud Brewster had beautiful appearance: she had light brown hair, “the eyes were large and brown and lustrous, the mouth sweet and sensitive, and the face itself a delicate oval, though sun and exposure to briny wind had burnt the face scarlet” (London, 1981: 123). Her smile was amused and sweet. She was a writer who had created many works. She was well-educated and had read lots of books, thus she had deep thoughts, like the protagonist Humphrey Weyden and also like Jack London himself, who knew the importance of reading and education. What’s more, she had good personality and was of morality. Although she was a “small woman” who was weak and easy to get afraid, she had strong and brave soul. She showed her sturdiness when facing Wolf Larsen and his cruel behaviors. When she and Humphrey got away from Ghost and drafted the ocean, she was like a warrior when fighting against the furious ocean. Though she felt afraid, she held back her fear and took on the responsibility with Humphrey. Brewster was kind and warm-hearted. Wolf Larsen once tried to violate her, luckily, he was stopped by Humphrey, who was very angry and he was about to kill him. It was Maud who saved Wolf by persuading Humphrey. She was moral and merciful and holding a heart full of kindness to Wolf Larsen, who was a beast that everyone on Ghost wanted to kill. Even if she almost lost her chastity at that time, she chose to forgive him and let him go.

Above all, Maud was a perfect woman, a sage, a goddess in author’s eyes. Therefore, Humphrey fell in love with her without surprise. She was not in the least an ordinary woman. She could not be considered as a symbol of female. Maud was an image that had been unduly praised. It gives us the information that maybe only such kind of female could catch London’s eyes.

In the narrative, there was an interesting plot talking about seal hunting. The hunters hunted the seal for the skins so that “they might later adorn the fair shoulders of the women of the cities” (London, 1981: 107). No man ate the meat or the oil of the seal, “it was wanton slaughter and all for woman’s sake” (London, 1981: 107). Women here were the symbol of or synonym for vanity. They were of no wisdom or charm. They cared only about how they looked and didn’t know what life was like and how hard it was. That was women of the cities and the image of the general female group.

Female in London’s works fail to display how they actually are in real life. They lose their beauty or charm and all the beautiful characteristics in his works, or they become perfect and unreal like Maud. All of them are the sexual “Others” under the male gaze, who have no right to speak for themselves, and cannot represent themselves but be represented. Being the shadows of men, they play a critical role in helping man to build and confirm their masculine feature. As they are reflection created by the author and are made for his purpose of praising manly feature, the images of female in Jack London’s works are either foolish and timid or perfect, both are unreal. In such relationship between men and women, male are depicted mighty and invincible while the identity of female are constructed as the “Other” of male.

6. Conclusion

This thesis explores the postcolonialism in Jack London’s The Call of the Wild and White Fang. When examining White Fang, the paper focuses on the dog’s different attitudes towards his two masters, which reveals the Orientalist theme of the novel. When it comes to The Call of the Wild, this thesis chooses another angle—the relationship between male and female, to develop the argument on the binary opposition of the “Self” and the “Other”.

The postcolonialism in Jack London’s works is generated partially by the social condition in the late 19^th century and the early 20^th century, when the nation was in an age of imperial expansion. Also, the Darwinism that advocates “Survival of the Fittest” has influenced the author a lot and facilitates the development of his postcolonialism. His White and Yellow, Yellow Handkerchief and The Unparalleled Invasion are regarded containing postcolonialist theme.

There are lots of aspects and details that concerning with the postcolonialist theme in Jack London’s animal novels, while what this dissertation has explored is not enough due to the limitation of the time and space. Further studies are expected to delve into it.

Works Cited

[1] Ashcroft, B., Griffiths, G., amp; Tiffin, H. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-colonial Literatures. London: Routledge, 1989.

[2] Stone, Irving. Sailor on Horseback: the Biography of Jack London. London: Collins, 1938.

[3] London, Jack. Sea Wolf. New York: Bantam books, 1981.

[4] London, Jack. White Fang. Airmont: Airmont publishing Co.,Inc, 1980.

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