This novel gives readers the very first impression of the conflicts between mothers and daughters who are brought up in different social backgrounds and then the compatibility between Chinese and Western culture. Until today, people find out that The Joy Luck Club is an obvious feminist work which not only shows the cultural confliction and compatibility but also how women fight against inequity and research for self-value and other qualities of women under the oppression of the society of patriarchy(Hua Xi,2008:92-93). However, the female values and their formation in a certain society are yet to be explored with a systemic and theoretical point of view. An essay describes the oppression of the Chinese American women by patriarchy in the feudalism and backward China. It analyses the struggling process of finding self-identity. The writers said: “Under patriarchy and racial discrimination, the transformation from obedience and silence to self-consciousness of women shows the strong, independent, and intellectual nature of the modern and excellent Chinese American women (Ma & Gao, 2014:53-54).”
2.2 The Typical Studies on Feminism
With the development of society, the various aspects of human life are deeply penetrated and influenced by feminism. From the late 17th century, influenced by the French Revolution, women began to walk out of family and get involved in social revolution. With the development of women's liberation movement, many feminists as well as feminist theory emerged as the times required. The following sections will introduce some basic concepts about feminism, especially Beauvoir's feminism.
The word “feminism” originated from France in 19th century, which has now become an important guide book for women to win their own rights. Nowadays, it has become more and more popular because of its frequent usage in different fields during the last two centuries. In Oxford Advanced Learners' English-Chinese Dictionary(2004:634), feminism is defined as the belief and aim that women should have the same rights, power,and opportunities as men. More exactly, it is a movement to seek the reorganization of the world upon the basis of sex equality (Huang, 2013:11). It aims to abolish the male-dominated social system, including any kind of existing discrimination and inequality about gender among inpiduals. And it is also a mode to free all women from oppressions. 《喜福会》的中西女性文化价值观解构(3):http://www.youerw.com/yingyu/lunwen_35287.html