People and things

Abstract

AbstractAmy Tan and Virginia Woolf question the issue of space and identity in their works by means of the depiction of female characters’ interaction with things in different spatial forms. Besides this common concern, they shared an acquaintance with modern Western thought and, due to family background and relation to family and friends, they also took a keen interest in Chinese culture. This mindset not only enhances the comparability of their works, but also invites readers to consider how the subject–object relation could be rethought in their works. In Tan’s The Kitchen God’s Wife and Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, female characters actively interact with things, a concept reinterpreted by Bill Brown in his “thing theory” to decentralize human beings. Looking at the two works in terms of new materialism, spatial theories, and ecofeminism, this paper will illustrate how things affect female characters’ search for identity and their relation with their environment so as to redefine the relations between humans and things, between nature and culture, and between individuals and their environment.