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In the past twenty years, there are many mixed domestic and foreign research achievements of Amy Tan’s famous novel The Joy Luck Club. The moral of the western academic circles mostly concentrates on the interpretation of the race, gender, identity, class, nationalism etc.. But the domestic tends to the works of cultural political criticism and thin art aesthetic. When The Joy Luck Club published shortly, the American academic circles have cheered immediately. In March, 1989, a lot of praised reviews have started appearing in the important media of America. Such as, Time John Snow TigerLadies, News weekly Doroth Wang A Game of Show Not U. In the late 1990s, Amy Ling, Ben Xu and many other American critics have commented the edge literature of The Joy Luck Club. They thought that Amy Tan developed the America Chinese literary tradition exotic and abandoned the stereotypes about Chinese women at the same time. China’s academic research on The Joy Luck Club begins in 1994, and it mostly tends to cultural political criticism. One is from a cultural criticism angle to discuss the cultural identity of the work, such as “Edge culture and The Joy Luck Club; another is from the feminist perspective analysis the work’s female consciousness, such as “ethnic Chinese” Gu Jingyun, 2007. Interested in Amy Tan’s women characters in The Joy Luck Club, the author chooses to write the paper from the feminist aspect. Amy Tan not only highlights the feminist characteristics of all kinds of female images in writing content, what is more important is that she developed a breakthrough in writing methods. “Throughout the 1970s, ‘feminist awakening’ became an increasing focus of feminist attention”. But up till now, there has not been a summary research work on the theme. So the author is willing to do further work on the basis of the former studies. This paper comprises five parts. The first part is introduction to the author and the novel and the overview of The Joy Luck Club. The second part is mainly about feminine consciousness, including definition and development. The third part is about gender discrimination in The Joy Luck Club, discussing from two aspects: the gender discrimination of the mothers and the daughters. The fourth part is the main body. In this part, the author will explore feminism awakening of the mothers and the daughters in The Joy Luck Club. It includes the mothers’ rebellion, fighting and revival, and the daughters’ action is referred from another aspect. Then is the modern significance of feminism. The fifth part is the conclusion of this paper, in which the author analyzes the novel’s theme and a short summary of the modern significance of feminism, and feminism consciousness in Amy Tan. In short, strong female thinking is a large prominent feature in The Joy Luck Club. The author will from this unique perspective to talk about this novel.
II. Feminism Consciousness
2.1 Definition of Feminism Consciousness
Feminism is also known as feminist, women’s liberation, gender affirmative (gender equality) doctrine. It refers to the end of sexism, sexual exploit action, sex discrimination and sexual oppression. To promote sexual equality, then people created and launched class social theory and political movement. Besides criticism it also focused on the analysis of gender inequality and the promotion of the underlying rights, interests and issues.
2.2 The Development of Feminism Consciousness
Feminism has experienced three waves. The first generation of feminist (from the late 19th century to the early 20th century) is for equal political rights to men. It originated in the French bourgeois revolution and after the Enlightenment and sync with the Industrial Revolution in European.
The second generation of feminist is the modern feminism (from the early 20th century to the 1960s). Feminism in this stage is the most important stage. Western feminists found that while women’s strive for equality have made significant achievements in the political and economic spheres, however unequal status of women in social life has not improved radically. This contradictory situation prompted feminist thinking in depth, forming a unique feminist theory. There are three factions: