doi: 10.18178/IJLLL.2024.10.4.544
From Sex Prisoners to Female Revolters: Feminist Narrative in Norman Mailer’s Novels
Xirong Liu
- School of Foreign Studies, East China University of Political Science and Law, Shanghai, China
- Manuscript received March 20, 2024
- revised April 10, 2024
- accepted May 16, 2024
- published August 20, 2024
Abstract
Norman Mailer, a Pulitzer Prize winner and a chronicler of his time, devoted his literary career to the representation of the western culture and the reality of America by putting his trust in sex and illustrating the gender relationship. In his writings, male are often created as robust, violent and powerful while female are often being bullied, humiliated, and defeated. Thus, Mailer has become one of the prime targets of feminist literary critics, being accused as a “prototypical male chauvinist”, a “warrior for male supremacy”, and a “militarist”. However, what these feminists fail to trace are Mailer’s development of feminist thoughts in his writings: <em>The Naked and The Dead</em> models women as prisoners of sex, having no chance to air their voice; <em>The Deer Park</em> exhibits female as passive angry fighters, trying to be heard but failed; finally, <em>Tough Guys Don’t Dance</em> constructs the dynamic female revolters, claiming the initial feminism success. Thereby, Mailer exhibits his positive exploration of feminism thoughts, his view that reality is not sex but personality and individuality, and his desire for a balance between man and woman. This paper is grounded theoretically on psychoanalysis and feminism with textual analysis of the female characters in Mailer’s three novels, progressing from <em>The Naked and The Dead</em>, through <em>The Deer Park</em>, to finally <em>Tough Guys Don’t Dance</em>.
Keywords
- Norman Mailer
- feminist
- psychoanalysis
How to Cite
Xirong Liu, "From Sex Prisoners to Female Revolters: Feminist Narrative in Norman Mailer’s Novels," International Journal of Languages, Literature and Linguistics, vol. 10, no. 4, pp. 363-371, 2024. https://doi.org/10.18178/IJLLL.2024.10.4.544
Copyright & License
Copyright © 2024 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).