从《啊,拓荒者!》看西进运动中美国妇女的嬗变

以《啊,拓荒者!》中两个女性人物为例,揭示镀金时代这一阶段的西进运动对美国妇女的影响,指出当时的主流社会坚持传统,认为集"虔诚、贞洁、顺从、居家"等品德于一身的女人才是真正的女人,虽然西部老一辈女性也极力维护这样的传统,但在西部成长起来的新一代女性却偏离了传统。拓荒岁月的艰辛迫使她们走出家这个"女人的领域",在外面的世界里像男人一样地奋力拼搏。同时,也给她们提供了更多的发展空间,使她们有机会充分展示她们作为人的才干,而不仅仅是社会定义的"女人"的才能。这样成长起来的她们,自然有着与东部发达地区的女性以及西部老一辈女性不一样的精神面貌和价值观念。

The Impact of the Westward Movement on American Women —An analysis of Willa Cather’s O,Pioneers!

Through analyzing two women characters in O,Pioneers!,this article explores the impact of the Westward Movement on American women during the Gilded Age.It argues that though the mainstream society insisted on traditional view of womanhood and the older generation in the West tried to maintain tradition,the women grew up in the frontier deviated from the track of tradition.The motivity is the difficult circumstances forced them to walk out from "women’s sphere" and to venture into "men’s sphere",working and struggling as tough as men did.This kind of life was full of hardships,but it provided them an opportunity to develop and bring into full play their talents,not the talents of the socially defined women but those of full human beings.Consequently,they took on a new mental look and accepted values quite different from those held by the mainstream society and shared by their mothers and grandmothers.