Construction of Female Identity in Elizabeth Strout’s Novel Olive Kitteridge

Abstract

Elizabeth Strout (1956—) is a famous American contemporary writer who is famous for her plain writing style and sincere emotion. Olive Kitteridge is her masterpiece, which won the Pulitzer Prize for literature. Olive, the heroine of the novel, gives women power to free themselves and save themselves. Olive Kitteridge tells that a school teacher becomes a strong and brave woman through the self-salvation. Starting from the construction of female identity, this paper analyzes the construction of the heroine Olive’s female identity, and discusses how the novel successfully portrayed a strong, brave and life loving female image, and encouraged the women in the new era to free themselves and to save themselves.

To achieve the purpose of the study, this article from three chapters analyzes how Strout has successfully created a strong, brave, life loving female image. Chapter One demonstrates how Strout’s life experience make an influence on Olive Kitteridg’s female identity by analyzing the Strout’s life experience and the expression of adamancy in the novel. The second chapter analyzes the complex of Olive’s characteristics and the change of Olive’s psychology process to discuss the conflicts in Olive’s female identity. The third chapter researches the writing strategies for the construction of female identity by analyzing the novel narrative techniques and the unexpected ending of the novel. Based on the analysis of Olive Kitteridge, the conclusion of this thesis is that Elizabeth Strout has successfully created a strong, brave and life loving female image, which enables readers to gain a self-emancipation power after reading. Thus, to a great extent, this novel promotes women’s self-salvation and self-development.

Keynote: Elizabeth Strout; Olive Kitteridge; construction of identity; conflicts