Commodification of women in Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild

Abstract

The present thesis attempts to analyze the different modes of female exploitation and their suppression perpetuated economically, mentally and socially by the males from within and outside the family in the novel Into the wild. In the novel, the female characters like Billie, Jane Burres, Gail Borah and Mary in the text are not only oppressed from the patriarchal system but also by the economical condition. The status of working class women in patriarchal capitalist American society is very pathetic. They have been treated as commodities. The unpaid wage in domestic work, low wages in industries and economic dependence on the males have made all the female characters such as Billie, Jane Burres, Gail Borah and Mary in the novel live with alienation, repression, domestic, sexual and mental violence. They are, in a sense, sacrificed for the desire, pleasure and satisfaction of male members such as Walt, Bob and Wyne. They cannot revolt against the males because they have already been trapped in the structure of capitalist patriarchal society.