In 1931, The Good Earth was published and wan the Nobel Prize for Literature seven years later. The Good Earth is a novel about Chinese peasant’s life. Buck shows us the real scenes of rural peasants’ life in early 1900s by the description of Wang Lung from his wedding day to his agedness. In addition to this, The Good Earth plays a greater role in shaping Western attitudes toward China than any other book.
There are a lot of researches about The Good Earth which can be pided into two aspects, Chinese farmers and culture. These researches analyze the industrious, kind, obedient and cowardly Chinese peasants as well as the Chinese culture in Buck’s eyes. As a female writer who grows up in male-dominated society, Buck cares about female’s fates. There are many people researching the image of O-lan from different aspects such as power discourse theory, silent struggle and feminist consciousness. These researches to some degree reveal that as a typical model of traditional woman, the image of o-lan embodies Buck’s feminism.   This thesis aims to analyze the image of O-lan in The Good Earth from O-lan’s tragic fate. In chapter one, the thesis will analyze the miserable fate of O-lan. O-lan’s fate will be pided into three parts, tragic childhood, unhappy marriage life and painful death, to depict the miserable fate and experience of O-lan. In chapter two, the thesis will analyze the internal cause and external cause of O-lan’s miserable fate. The internal cause is O-lan’s dual character and the external is the traditional culture in patriarchal society. At last we can get the conclusion that women can’t escape from miserable fate in early 1900s’ patriarchal society. 赛珍珠《大地》阿兰悲惨命运(2):http://www.751com.cn/yingyu/lunwen_28650.html