Search for Women's Sense of Self : A Feminist Reading of Walker's "The Lover", "Fame" and "Abortion"

Abstract

The female protagonists are in oppressed and troubled condition from their male partners and social patriarchal norms. Thus, these three stories show the female troubled relationship, their emptiness, their dissatisfaction and passionless life and career during 1970s American society. Alice walker's these three stories, The Lover, Fame and Abortion shows the bitter condition, troubled relationship and emptiness in female protagonists' life. It analyses that how female protagonists feel an ache, sad and un-full-fill in the stories at the time of 1970s. This research argues the women and the black women who were oppressed and dominated socially, physically and sexually and it tries to get freedom from the dominance. Most of the female protagonists' look like slave in the story, but they want to redefine their womanhood. So the main argument of this paper is to overcome the sufferings of women and redefine the sense of self. Taking this point in case, the researcher explores the similarities between Alice walker's three stories that the female protagonists are struggling for the fulfillment of dissatisfaction from their male partners. It will be substantiated in women's studies frame, under the concepts from Mary Wollstonecraft's Feminism, Judith Butler's Gender Trouble and Behavior and Bell Hook's Feminist Theory; From Margin To Center, supports the woman's studies under the feminism. Thus, the researcher explores in this paper that the Alice Walker‟s three female protagonists‟ real situation, sufferings. Struggling and research of self-hood and how they resist against patriarchal society. Further, it unfolds individual‟s consciousness, prosperity and advancement of life-style.