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1.2. Theoretical Basis and Study Significance
Close reading is a technique which is used for full reading literature text. It is the critical method that is concluded by the younger critics in America. In literature criticism, close reading refers to the careful, sustained interpretation of a brief passage of text. It places great emphasis on the inpidual words, syntax, and the order in which sentences and ideas unfold as they are read. It is now a fundamental method of modern criticism.
Feminism is a collection of movements and ideologies aiming at defining, establishing, and defending equal, political, economic, cultural, and social rights for women. This includes seeking to establish equal opportunities for women in education and employment. It originates from French and American Revolution in the late eighteenth century. The development of feminism is pided into three parts.
The first wave of feminism took place in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The goal of this wave was to pursue social rights for women with a focus on suffrage. The wave formally began at the cause of equality for women. Elizabeth Cady Stanton drafted the Seneca Falls Declaration which marked the success of the movement.
The second stage began in the 1960s.This wave unfolded in the context of anti-war and civil rights movements and the growing self-consciousness of a variety of minority groups around the world. In this stage, sexuality and reproductive rights were dominant issues, and much of the movement’s energy was focused on passing the Equal Rights Amendment to the constitution guaranteeing social equality regardless of sex.
The third stage of feminism began in the mid of twentieth century. In this phase, it defied conventional and established male notions about women and about how they feel. It makes readers sensitive to the question of gender as an important factor in interpretation through the political critique of representations of women in the text of male authors.
The thesis analyses the feminism in the novel from the theory of Simon de Beauvoir. In her opinion “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” (Beauvoir, 1953: 376) According to Simon de Beauvoir, a woman must break the bonds of patriarchal society and define herself if she wishes to become a significant human being in her own right and to defy male classification as the Other.