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Amy Tan was among the first Chinese American writers who brought Chinese American culture and experience to a wide circle of both Chinese and American readers. Like mothers and daughters in Tan’s novel, Tan had a strained relationship with her mother who was a traditional Chinese woman. According to Amy Tan “they wanted us to have American circumstance and Chinese characteristics.”(Tan Amy, 1989: 21) In The Joy Luck Club, we could find Tan’s shadow from at least one of the daughters or even more. The main characters of this novel are four Chinese women and their Chinese American daughters. Four mothers were all from China and experienced a lot in China. They suffered from the cruelty of the war, the betrayal of their husband and the oppression of the family. At the beginning, they just resigned themselves to their unfortunate fate. As time went on, they could not put up with them and began to fight for themselves. Gradually, they began to realize that “it is their faith rather than their fate that can change their life.”(Tan Amy, 1989: 34) Eventually they immigrated to the United State and built up new families. They expected that they could bury their sorrow experience in the deep heart and began to live a new life in American. So when they had children, they put too many expectations to them. However, when daughters were in low position in the families, their mothers persuaded their children to be brave from their own special experience in China. At last, their American daughters learned how to be brave and say no to their husbands.
Women in China were always in a low position in the Feudal society. The first generation of Chinese American women immigrated to the United States. While in most circumstances, men just regarded their wives as tools to delivery babies. Most women had no choice but to obey their husbands and they kept silent. However, in The Joy Luck Club, it presented how four mothers broke silence and their daughters fought for their own right in the family. This reflected the awakening of female consciousness. “Feminism begins with the premise that women's and men's position in society are result of social, not natural or biological factors. They do believe that women's experiences, concerns, and ideas are as valuable as those of men and should be treated with equal seriousness and respect.”(L.Andersen, 2001: 9) Feminism is a collection of movements aiming at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights for women. In addition, feminism seeks to establish equal opportunities for women in education and employment. Although women’s situations were different, they had the same life experience that they were in a lower position and had no right to vote. Moreover, they had a slim chance to work. In a word, women were treated as the appendage of men. In the 17th century, it appeared that English people Maried Astell, which put forward points about feminism. “Sex differences are biological, but gender encompasses all the traits that a culture assigns to and inculcates in males and female.” (Kottak, 2003: 185) At that time, England was going into industrial society and many factories began to accept women workers. Meanwhile, the pision of labor of society had been changed. Women did not belonging to home any more, and they could go out to find a job.
This thesis is pided into six parts. The introduction part illustrates Amy Tan’s literary life and her first novel The Joy Luck Club. It also reviews the research done on this novel. Chapter One is the brief introduction to Amy Tan, her work and the definition of the female consciousness in the paper to analyze the material. In Chapter Two, there will be the literature review. Chapter Three mainly discusses the awakening of mothers in the novel. They began to break the silence and voice their own opinions. Chapter Four aims to introduce the awakening of daughters in the novel. Chapter Five presents some reasons of female consciousness about mothers and daughters. The final chapter concludes that every rebellion of women’s consciousness. They begin to fight for their own right, which is not only a progress in women’s status, but also in the whole society. This paper aims at making a clear demonstration and analysis of awakening of female consciousness that Amy Tan has depicted throughout The Joy Luck Club, delving into the impact of female consciousness by combining the social background of that time. In the contemporary days, female discrimination still exists in some parts of the world. Violence, crimes, conflicts and even terrorism, induced by female prejudice and oppression, still happen occasionally. Traditional values of family that men are superior to women are also attributed to the root of female prejudice. So the study of this novel’s theme—female consciousness is still meaningful in China and America, even in the whole world.