Analyzing escalating Feminist Voices against Patriarchy in Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres

Abstract

This research focuses on Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres, which depicts the bitter and tragic reality of an American Midwestern family. Along with the unpleasant female situation, it also declares for the growing consciousness in women in the decades after the mid-twentieth century. This research explores the psychological and physical exploitation of women by challenging male superiority. To accomplish the goal of the research, the feminist perspective of analysis plays a significant role. Feminist literary theory problematizes the whole human history as male history. The works and ideas of the feminist critics and theorists like Virginia Woolf, Simon de Beauvoir, Kate Millet, Mary Ellman, Elaine Showalter, Mary Wollstonecraft, and others are included in the theoretical modality. Whatever the different feminists argue, in common, they are concerned with the issues of gender, equality, and freedom of women. Feminism tries to dismantle the long-established patriarchal system that subordinates and suppresses women.