本論文旨在探討楚門‧卡波特在他三個短篇小說：〈美利安〉、〈悲慘大師〉、〈天堂之路〉中對美國二次戰期間與戰後父權社會的批評。序論中介紹身為一個同志，楚門‧卡波特的作品對社會/文化邊緣人關注的傾向。以往的批評家多半對其作品做較自傳性的閱讀，認為他作品中較陰鬱的部分反映其童年的焦慮經驗。本論文欲自女性主義的觀點重新閱讀其〈美利安〉、〈悲慘大師〉、〈天堂之路〉三個短篇小說，闡明其作品中對美國四O至六O年代初父權社會批判的深刻寓意，進一步賦予其作品更大的社會價值。
    第一章〈美利安〉剖析四零年代中，一個父權文化社會下的女性：米勒太太在其先生過世後，與其被壓抑的自我間的內在衝突。第二章探討〈悲慘大師〉中，一個初出社會的年輕女孩在面對主流父權文化的龐大包圍，其缺乏選擇與被剝奪夢想的窘境。第三章〈天堂之路〉記述一生都奉獻、支持父權體系的瑪麗的墓園覓夫記，探討卡波特如何以此故事對父權社會做最嚴厲的嘲諷與批評。
    綜觀比較這三個短篇故事中的女性處境，呼應了貝蒂‧傅瑞丹在《女性迷思》一書中所闡述的美國二次大戰後，婦女面對社會對女性角色的刻板教誨所產生的影響與考驗。一向處於文化上弱勢的地位，傅瑞丹鑒於當時婦女受苦於此困境卻不自知，因此將之名為「無名的難題」。相較於以往的批評家多半視卡波特作品為對個別受害者的描寫，本論文自女性的角度重新閱讀卡波特此三個短篇小說，則可發現其中具時代性與批判性的觀察與洞見。

After the Second World War, an ideal image of woman as a “happy housewife” was widely emphasized.  In TV dramas or the stories in women’s magazines, women were inculcated to pursue a feminine fulfillment in marriage rather than to pursue higher education, independence or equality.  Betty Friedan observes, in her The Feminine Mystique, that many housewives, influenced by the feminine mystique, suffered from an unnamable discontentedness and identity crisis.  She names this unnamable distress as “the problem that has no name.”  The mystique lasted for decades.  Housewives began to fill up psychiatrists’ offices.  Emotional breakdown and suicide were found among these women.  About twenty years before Friedan published her book; there was already someone who noted the same problem she was concerned about: Truman Capote.  The writer, furthermore, noted that housewives were not the only victims of this false belief system. In a society where “the housewife was the only dream” for a woman, those who failed to settle down in marriage faced a more difficult situation.  They became misfits to society and their bitterness was even more unnamable.  Capote’s “Miriam” (1945), “Master Misery” (1949) and “Among the Paths to Eden” (1960) tell three different stories about how social confinement of women and the prevalent feminine mystique ideology challenge the three heroines’ lives.  This thesis expands Friedan’s term, “the problem that has no name,” to describe and point out the unnamable distaff distress of the three heroines when confronting the overwhelming feminine mystique.  This thesis also explores a critique of patriarchy that Capote implies in these three short stories.

Table of Contents

Introduction                                              1

Chapter One: "Miriam”: The Return of the Repressed                                                20

Chapter Two: Who is the “Master Misery”?                                                36

Chapter Three: “Among the Paths to Eden”: An Irony                                                    61

Conclusion                                               72

Work Cited                                                    77

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