Feminist Novels in a "Non-Feminist" Age

Pearl S. Buck on Asian and American Women

Bibliographic Data

ID12977017
AuthorsRobert Shaffer (0000-0002-2081-2407, Shippensburg University, corresponding author)
Year2016
Volume7
Issue1
Publication date2016-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Transnational American Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1940-0764 • E-ISSN: 1940-0764
PublisherCalifornia Digital Library (CDL) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.5070/t871017965
OpenAlexW2765349931
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited33

Nobel Prize–winning author Pearl S. Buck articulated a feminist sensibility in her best-selling novels and short stories from the 1930s to the 1960s about Asian and American women, showing both victimization and strength. This study demonstrates that Buck and her colleagues—female reviewers, readers, and other authors—in these non-feminist years not only helped keep a feminist perspective in the public eye but helped set the stage for the feminist revival of the 1960s. Moreover, Buck used her experiences growing up in China and her credibility in the US as an expert on Asia, not to bolster a sense of superiority among Americans with regard to others, but to show similarities in the social conditions of Asian and American women—an outlook that Shaffer calls “critical internationalism.” Moreover, as her career developed, Buck increasingly portrayed the strength of Asian women in their societies, even when relegated to the “private sphere.” This essay explores what appears to be a paradoxical approach in Buck’s fiction, that over time she maintained her critique of “separate spheres” in American society while she came to appreciate the potential for women of “separate spheres” in Asian societies

Asian americans · China · Credibility · Ethnic group · Feminism · Internationalism (politics · Masculinity · Political science · Public sphere · Separate spheres · Sociology · Anthropology · French Historical and Cultural Studies · Gender Studies · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · History · Law

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