WOMEN: FROM ABSENCE TO PRESENCE
---A FEMINIST APPROACH TO WILLIAM GOLDING’S
LORD OF THE FLIES AND THE PYRAMID
by
Xu Yuanxue
A Thesis
Submitted to the Graduate School and College of English
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for
the Degree of Master of Arts
Under the Supervision of Professor Zhang Dingquan
Shanghai International Studies University
December 2007
Acknowledgements
I am greatly indebted to a number of people without whose help this thesis would not
have been completed.
First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Professor
Zhang Dingquan well-known for erudition and scholarly rigidity, whose inspiring lectures
on English literature and Western literary theories led me to the field of academic research.
His constructive suggestions, illuminating insights, immense patience and warm
encouragement have proved invaluable throughout the course of my writing. His
dedication to students and his strong sense of responsibility also have contributed a lot to
the completion of the thesis.
My heartfelt thanks also go to Professor Shi Zhikang, Li Weiping and Yu Jianhua and
other teachers in the Graduate School and College of English, who imparted the knowledge
on literature to me during my postgraduate study. The special thanks belong to Professor
Zhang Helong whose lectures on postwar English fiction provoked my interest in the
works of William Golding.
I feel much obliged to my classmates and friends Miss Li Hongxia, Shi Yingying,
Huang Xin and Hu Liying and Mr. Liang Baofeng for the precious friendship and kindness
they offered me. The frequent exchanges of the ideas about our study and research have
been a rewarding experience for me, and the advice they provided has been very helpful
for my thesis-writing. I am also grateful to my roommates Miss Lai Xiaochan and Wang
Juebai for the days we spent together, and for all the happiness and sadness we shared in
the process of writing.
Last but not least, I want to extend my sincere gratitude to my parents, whose selfless
and endless love and concern helped me overcome lots of difficulty at the lowest ebb of
my times. Without their love and support, it is impossible for me to finish my postgraduate
study.
Abstract
William Golding, one of the important postwar English writers, is well-known for his
concern for the evil human nature. Human nature motif in Golding’s works is also critics’
focus since the publication of Golding’s first novel, but few critics have analyzed his works
from the perspective of feminism. This thesis is designed to apply feminist theories as well
as some relative theories of deconstruction, Freudian psychoanalysis and other schools of
literary criticism, to the examination of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies and The
Pyramid in a broader critical view, probing into the hidden message conveyed by women’s
absence and presence in these two novels. The thesis firstly provides a literature review
about William Golding’s literary career and the previous critiques on his major works, and
then lays emphasis on the detailed interpretation of Lord of the Flies and The Pyramid. In
Lord of the Flies, the small male society on the island and phallocentrism it represents
experienced a process from the establishment to the fall into crisis and to the ultimate
disintegration due to the absence of women, exposing the necessity of the presence of
women from the opposite side. The interpretation of The Pyramid relies on the analysis of
the images of several chief female characters in it, crystallizing the discrepancies between
William Golding’s female protagonists and the women images created by traditional male
authors and thus evincing Golding’s distinctive attitudes towards women. In Lord of the
Flies and The Pyramid, both women’s absence and presence demonstrate the irreplaceable
female value and power in the male-dominated culture. William Golding, as a male writer,
is not a male chauvinist. Without any inclination to defile, repel or repress women, Golding
understands them, sympathizes with them, and affirms them.
Key words: absence, presence, feminism, phallocentrism
摘要
威廉·戈尔丁是二战后英国重要的小说家之一，他的作品以对人性恶的探讨而著
称。这一主题也是历来评论家关注的焦点，却罕有评论家从女性主义角度切入分析戈
尔丁的作品。本文主要运用女性主义文学批评理论并融合了部分解构主义，弗洛伊德
心理分析等其他流派相关理论，在更为广阔的女性主义研究视角下对威廉·戈尔丁的
两部小说《蝇王》和《金字塔》进行解读，分别探究女性在这两部小说中缺场和在场
的状况。本文首先对威廉·戈尔丁的文学创作以及关于其作品已有的研究成果进行简
要评述，然后对《蝇王》和《金字塔》进行重点分析。在《蝇王》中，由于女性的缺
场，荒岛上的男性小社会和其代表的菲勒斯中心文化经历了从建立到面临危机直至最
后崩溃解体的过程，从反面揭示了女性的在场是必不可少的。对《金字塔》的解读则
借助小说中几名在场的主要女性人物形象的分析展开，说明了威廉·戈尔丁对女性形
象的塑造有别于传统男性作家的模式，体现了他对女性自成一家的看法和态度。在两
部小说中，女性的缺场和在场都体现出在男性中心文化中女性自身不可替代的价值和
力量。威廉·戈尔丁作为一个男性作家，并非一个男权至上主义者。在他的文学作品
中并无污蔑，排斥，压制女性的倾向，他对女性是持肯定，同情，理解态度的。
关键词：缺场，在场，女性主义，菲勒斯中心主义
Contents
Introduction............................................................................................................................1
Chapter One Previous Critiques on William Golding’s Novels.............................................4
1.1 The General Critiques on Lord of the Flies and The Pyramid... .................4
1.2 Feminist Critiques on Lord of the Flies........................................................6
1.2.1 English Feminist Critiques on Lord of the Flies................................6
1.2.2 Chinese Feminist Critiques on Lord of the Flies................................6
1.3 The Para-feminist Critiques on The Pyramid..............................................8
Chapter Two Women’s Absence in Lord of the Flies………………………………..….....11
2.1 The Foundation of the Small Male Society…………………………...….11
2.1.1 The Establishment of Phallocentrism, Logocentrism and Phallus
Worship...........................................................................................11
2.1.2 The Intrusion of the “Snake-thing”……………… …...........…...…13
2.1.3 Piggy’s Aunt---A Female Figure in Boys’ Conversation………..….14
2.2 The Crisis of the Small Male Society……………………………….…....16
2.2.1 The Revenge from Mother Nature---An Eco-feminist View…........16
2.2.2 The Slaughter of the Sow…..............................................................19
2.3 The Disintegration of Phallocentrism……………………………………21
2.3.1 Simon’s Death---The Decease of the Male God…………….…..…21
2.3.2 Piggy’s Castration Anxiety and Death---The Withering of
Logocentrism………………………………………………….…..22
2.3.3 The Final “Rescue”…………………………………… ……..……25
Chapter Three Women’s Presence in The Pyramid…………………………….………….27
3.1 Evie---the Fallen Girl…………………………………………………….27
3.1.1 Evie’s Pursuit of True Love and Her Degeneration………………..27
3.1.2 Evie’s Aspiration for Self-development……………………………31
3.1.3 Evie’s Suffering from Paternal Dictatorship……………………….32
3.2 Bounce---the Madwoman…………………………..……………….……34
3.2.1 Bounce’s Misery Imposed by Paternal Cruelty…………………….34
3.2.2 Bounce’s Frustrated Love and Madness............................................36
3.3 Imogen---Return from the Image of Goddess……………………………41
3.3.1 Imogen in Man’s Imagination………………………………...……41
3.3.2 Imogen in Reality…………………………………………………..42
3.4 Oliver’s Mother---The Common Woman in the Secular World……..…...43
Conclusion……………………………………………………..…………………………..46
Works Cited………………………………………………………….………………….…49
Introduction
Presence/absence is a pair of hierarchical binary oppositions and presence occupies the
superior position. “The authority of presence, its power of valorization, structures all our
thinking” (Culler 94). Western philosophy, which lays emphasis on logocentrism, “has been ‘a
metaphysics of presence’” (Culler 92). Jacque Derrida once wrote: “All names related to
fundamentals, to principles, or to the center have always designated the constant of a
presence”1 (qtd. in Culler 92). To illustrate this point, Derrida introduced to us the term
“phonocentrism” which
merges with the determination through history of the meaning of being in general as presence, with
all the sub-determinations that depend on this general form and organize within it their system and
their historical linkage (presence of the object to sight as eidos, presence as
substance/essence/existence (ousia), temporal presence as the point (stigme) of the now or the
instant (nun), self-presence of the cogito, consciousness, subjectivity, co-presence of the self and
the other, intersubjectivity as an intentional phenomenon of the ego, etc.). Logocentrism would thus
be bound up in the determination of the being of the existent as presence.2 (qtd. in Culler 92-93)
Absence, serving as the opposite of presence, signifies non-existence which seems of no
value in the conventional way of thinking. In the history of human development, men became
present while women became absent as patriarchal system strengthened its power step by step.
Engels once said: “The overthrow of matriarchy is women’s fiasco in the sense of the world
history” (马克思，恩格斯 69). History from then on became “his story”, not “her story”.
Although women played an indispensable part in history, they have been ignored as if they
were completely absent from the world.
However, from the perspective of Derria’s deconstruction, presence is not necessarily
superior to absence. The American scholar Jonathan Culler stated,
a deconstruction would involve the demonstration that for presence to function as it is said to, it
must have the qualities that supposedly belong to its opposite, absence. Thus, instead of defining
absence in terms of presence, as its negation, we can treat “presence” as the effect of a generalized
absence or, as we shall see shortly, of différance. (Culler 95)
Presence and absence are inseparable and interchangeable. To heighten the status of
presence and lower that of absence is not the correct way to deal with this pair of binary
1
Jacque Derrida, L’Ecriture et la différance. Paris: Seuil, 1967. English trans.: Writing and Difference. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1978. p. 411/279
2
Jacque Derrida, De la grammatologie. Paris: Minuit, 1967. English trans.: Of Grammatology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1976. p. 23/32
1
oppositions. Women’s seeming absence in history, which resulted from the suppression of the
male-dominated system, can achieve a kind of omnipresence, demonstrating their female
power and value no less than men’s. Men’s presence sometimes may be overwhelmed by the
efficacy of women’s absence.
The famous English writer William Golding’s two novels Lord of the Flies and The
Pyramid respectively display women’s absence and presence. There is no female character in
Lord of the Flies while there were some in The Pyramid. Whether there are female characters
in these novels or not, we can interpret them from the angel of feminism. The absence of
women in Lord of the Flies is phenomenal, and it deserves our critical attention. The novel is
about a group of boys who “proceed to set up a pragmatic system based on a ‘grown-up’
model: government, laws, shelters, plumbing facilities, and food supplies. Quickly, however,
the society disintegrates” (Tiger 25) in the absence of women. By probing into the process in
which the small male society was established, developed and destroyed, we can bring to light
what effect the absence of women takes in Lord of the Flies. As regards The Pyramid, “this not
unconventional bildungsroman, which described growing up in middle-class rural English in
the first third of the twentieth century” (Tiger 3), we can examine the features of the female
characters in this novel to make clear what William Golding tried to convey to us through the
presence of these women.
We would like to carry out our tentative study on William Golding’s two novels by
dividing our thesis into three main chapters. The first chapter serves as the literature review
concerning William Golding’s life, his achievements in literature, the criticism on his major
works and previous critiques on the absence and presence of women in Golding’s novels. The
second chapter concentrates on the absence of women in Lord of the Flies. The foundation of
the small male society and phallocentrism, the crises they met and their expiry will all be
discussed in the condition of women’s absence. Besides feminism running through our thesis,
the theories applied in this chapter consist of deconstruction and Freudian psychoanalysis
closely related to feminism. The third chapter deals with four female characters in The
Pyramid, two of whom took debauchery and madness as their respective means to resist the
oppression of the male-dominated world. The two heroines, namely Evie and Bounce, will be
the focus in our analysis. Through their unusual experiences and distinctive disposition, we
can know what kind of women they are and what views the author held on them. Other two
minor female characters also reveal the value of their presence and William Golding’s
attitudes towards women. After the careful examination of the two novels, we would like to
2
make a conclusion regarding women’s absence and presence in these novels and crystallize the
message William Golding conveyed to us---his views on women.
3
Chapter One
Previous Critiques on William Golding’s Novels
William Golding, whose literary achievements are mainly in the field of novels, was born
in Cornwall in 1911. His father was Alec Golding, the Senior Master of Marborough Grammar
School, and Alec’s wife was Midred Golding, a radical feminist working for women’s suffrage.
William Golding received good education during his childhood and adolescence, and became
a headmaster of a boys’ school after his graduation from Oxford University. A few years later
he joined the Royal Navy on account of the outbreak of the Second World War. “Through his
hard naval service against the Nazis, Golding gradually developed the insight that the cruel
deeds one does is due more to the evil nature in man than the social pressure he receives”
(Zhang Dingquan and Wu Gang 449). “He recognized that in the past he had been naïve and
adolescent, that the war had demonstrated all the horrendous cruelties of which man was
capable” (Gindin, William Golding 4). Thus, “Heart of Darkness” became William Golding’s
major concern after he began his literary career. His first novel Lord of the Flies published in
1954，a parody of Ballantyne’s The Coral Island, won wide acclaim among the readers and
great interest of critics, and established his reputation as an extraordinary post-war English
novelist. From 1955 to 1964, William Golding successively published several novels such as
The Inheritors, Pincher Martin, Free Fall and The Spire, which increased his popularity
among English-speaking countries. However, his The Pyramid published in 1967 became “at
first a disappointment to anyone who had acquired the taste for Strong Golding” (Medcalf 37).
After more than a decade, Golding’s next novel Darkness Visible, which was granted the
James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1980, came into existence, regaining Golding’s fame as
an outstanding writer. His later works consist of Rites of Passage, The Paper Men, Close
Quarters, and Fire down Below, among which Rites of Passage published in 1980 received the
Booker Prize, the most prestigious literary award in Great Britain. The following Noble Prize
for Literature was bestowed on William Golding in 1983 as a worldwide approval of his
literary achievements. Ten years later, Golding died of a heart attack, leaving an unfinished
novel known as The Double Tongue.
1.1 The General Critiques on Lord of the Flies and The Pyramid
William Golding’s works, owing to their distinctive personal style, have aroused many
literary critics’ interest ever since the publication of his first novel. He was awarded the Nobel
4
Prize because “his novels…with the perspicuity of realistic narrative art and the diversity and
universality of myth, illuminate the human condition in the world of today”3 (qtd. in Zhang
Dingquan and Wu Gang 449). Golding’s novels are discussed by a great number of books,
monographs and essays, most of which concern the theme of the evil human nature, namely
the original sin and the darkness of man’s heart running through his literary creation. Critics’
favorite novel, of course, is Lord of the Flies, a modern classic from which both the critics and
the public began to know William Golding. The academic research on Lord of the Flies has
touched upon the human nature motif, the narrative techniques, the study of myth and
archetype, the study of symbolism, metaphors or allegory, the interpretations from the angle of
Bakhtin’s poetics of the carnivalization, and a feminist understanding.
Unlike Lord of the Flies enjoying enviable reputation and careful examination, The
Pyramid born during the mid-period of Golding’s literary career, became the least favored
child for the critics on William Golding. It has often been considered a failure. “Howard Babb
finds the social comedy ‘colorless’ compared to Golding’s earlier fiction. S. J. Boyd sees it at
‘the dead centre’ or occupying ‘a kind of no man’s land between the first group of five novels
and the late novels beginning with Darkness Visible’” (Crawford 129-130). However, The
Pyramid is not as bad as they stated. The critics had accustomed themselves to Golding’s
works rich in allusions, metaphors, and symbolism, while The Pyramid emerged as a more
“secular”, or “common” novel, lacking the constant writing style William Golding had stuck
to. James Gindin considered The Pyramid the condition of England novel, implying its
realistic flavor would overwhelm the mythical elements and making this novel of no inferior
quality seem to be a bit “superficial”. That was why The Pyramid met so much indifference
and ignorance from the critics. As a matter of fact, one can find that this work, in which the
realistic style replaced Golding’s previous fable-like style, is of profundity if he gives it an
attentive analysis. The unfair treatment The Pyramid had received need to be changed. We
would like to put together Lord of the Flies and The Pyramid, the most and the least favored
novels of William Golding, to examine from the point of view of feminism. It is interesting to
carry out this tentative study the previous critics seldom did.
3
Quoted from the speech in the celebration when the Noble Prize for Literature was bestowed on William Golding.
5
1.2 Feminist Critiques on Lord of the Flies
1.2.1 English Feminist Critiques on Lord of the Flies
As we have mentioned before, there are a lot of essays with respect to Lord of the Flies,
most of which adhered to the topic of human nature. Not many people would like to have a
feminist approach to this novel, perhaps because no female characters appeared in this story
and some critics felt not quite sure whether it was feasible to apply feminist theories to this
story. But the absence of women itself is an extraordinary phenomenon worth discussion.
Some scholars have been sensitive enough to notice it, one of whom is Bernard. F. Dick. He
discovered that the only female-like figure was a sow slaughtered by the boy hunters and
expounded its symbolic significance. “The sow in Lord of the Flies symbolizes
matriarchy….The sow suggests family, without which society, culture, and civilization are
impossible” (Dick 22). In Dick’s opinion, the absence of women played an important role in
the development of the plot in this novel and the final disintegration of the male society was to
a high degree due to the boys’ failure to keep their normal family life. Patrick Reilly is another
scholar who paid attention to the absence of women in Lord of the Flies. He writes in his Lord
of the Flies: Fathers and Sons,
Where---even to ask the question is a prodigy---where are the women, that indispensable half of
humanity without whom there could be no life at all? Lord of the Flies has fathers and sons, but no
mothers or daughters. It is a striking omission---the sow-mother, so hideously slaughtered, is the
sole female representative in the text. Here is fall of man in the most literal sense of the word.
(Reilly 57)
Reilly posed the question, but failed to provide a plausible answer. In this sense, he
walked no further than Dick. Neither of them made their studies explicit. Some other critics,
for example, Arnold Johnston did not particularly point out the absence of women in Lord of
the Flies, but he also discerned in his Of Earth and Darkness: The Novels of William Golding
that the boys’ pig-hunting was a sort of sexual combat between men and women. This
statement still reveals a trace of feminist view, although it didn’t probe into this topic, either.
1.2.2 Chinese Feminist Critiques on Lord of the Flies
Chinese critics began their research on William Golding in 1980s. About one hundred
essays on Lord of the Flies were published in Chinese academic journals, only a few of which
examined the novel from the perspective of feminism. Yu Haiqing’s essay published in 1996
6
lays emphasis on the pig-hunting episode in Chapter Eight, attributing the sow’s miserable
death and the absence of women to William Golding’s male chauvinism. According to Yu
Haiqing’s view, “Lord of the Flies was published in the 1950s when the post-modernists after
the Second World War began their Masculine Revolt and revive the male authority” (于海青
32), so the sow-hunting episode in the novel vented men’s anxiety of the female intrusion and
demonstrated men’s invincible power in the conquest of women. By butchering the sow with
“mask plus knife and sharpened stick” (于海青 32), the boys repelled women as the male
chauvinists repressed the feminists with “mask plus penis” during the postwar period. Yu
Haiqing criticized Golding’s intention of restoring manhood and reestablishing the
male-dominated culture by sacrificing the presence of women in Lord of the Flies, and further
pointed out that the same male chauvinism permeated his other novels such as The Inheritors
and Pincher Martin. Yu Haiqing’s opinions sound reasonable if we only consider Chapter
Eight as an independent part in Lord of the Flies. It is not so convincing when we think of the
development of the whole plot. If William Golding really wanted to retain the male
domination, why did he let Lord of the Flies end with the collapse of the male society? What is
Golding’s true intention in the absence of women? These questions need more careful
reflection.
Chen Fengyan’s essay published in 2005 held the same view as Yu Haiqing did. She
thought that “William Golding…intended to determine and reinforce the cultural domination
of the male through the cultural creations, and evince the male authority by stressing the male
presence. He dreamed of a world with the absence of women, expecting to once again oppress
and imprison women’s awakening and self-liberation” (陈枫艳 64). Chen Fengyan inherited
the general idea presented by Yu Haiqing, labeling Golding as a male chauvinist and attacking
his backward ideology. However, she had the same deficiencies like Yu Haiqing. That is to say,
she only examined the absence of women from the surface, paid too much attention to the
pig-hunting episode and failed to put this plot in a broader context. Thus, Chen Fengyan’s
essay was not qualified as an academic breakthrough in the feminist studies of Lord of the
Flies.
Duan Hanwu in his essay published in 2006 compared the absence of women in Robinson
Crusoe and Lord of the Flies, exposing the different views on women of Daniel Defoe and
William Golding. Duan Hanwu clearly expressed his disagreement with Yu Haiqing’s opinions,
negating the statement that William Golding was male chauvinistic. According to Duan
7
Hanwu’s research, Robinson Crusoe and Lord of the Flies are two important representative
works in English Island Literature. The former one unveils Defoe’s male-centered ideology, or
we may say the historical limitation of Defoe’s attitudes towards women while the latter
reveals no inclination of William Golding to despise or suppress women. “What reigns the
isolated island with the women’s absence is anarchy, barbarity and slaughter, proving from the
opposite side the necessity and reasonableness of women’s presence” (段汉武 36). William
Golding actually informed us of the importance of women through the absence of them. This
new view on William Golding’s attitudes towards women put forward by Duan Hanwu is more
convincing and inspiring than the opposite view raised by Yu Haiqing and Chen Fengyan.
Nevertheless, Duan Hanwu’s essay touched upon the comparison between two novels, so he
failed to provide a detailed analysis of Lord of the Flies due to the limited length of his essay.
In short, it is a crude feminist approach to Lord of the Flies.
Wang Weixin’s essay published in 2006, a fairly exhaustive study of Lord of the Flies,
presents the same view as Duan Hanwu held. Through the examination of the process in which
the male society was founded, developed and destroyed, Wang Weixin elucidated that Lord of
the Flies was a typical feminist text affirming women’s infinite power. He noticed some parts
neglected by other critics with his sharp insight, offering the persuasive explanations from a
feminist point of view. However, there is still some room for us to go further on the road of the
studies of women’s absence in Lord of the Flies. For instance, Wang Weixin only spent several
sentences discussing the relationship between women and the snake, but this topic deserves a
deeper probe in the fields of both ancient mythology and modern feminism. He also missed
some valuable details such as Piggy’s aunt, a female image in the boys’ conversation and
Piggy’s castration anxiety while encountering the forthcoming disintegration of the male
society. As for the description of the natural environment, Wang Weixin would have made his
essay more profound if he had applied some eco-feminist theories to Lord of the Flies. We
appreciate his method of dividing the plot of the novel into three main parts which we can use
for reference, but we can improve his study of women’s absence with a more careful analysis
of the details.
1.3 The Para-feminist Critiques on The Pyramid
The Pyramid, we have said before, receives little favoritism from critics. In Virginia
Tiger’s monograph William Golding: the Unmoved Target, there is no independent chapter
8
about this novel, and the author only mentioned a few words on The Pyramid in the part of
Introduction. Other books on William Golding set independent chapters for the novel, but
didn’t show the same enthusiasm they held towards Golding’s other works. Some critics
regarded it as a conventional bildungsroman while some classified it as the Condition of
England novel. Some continued the discussion of its human nature motif, the constant concern
of Golding, some made comments on its narrative structure and writing techniques and some
took notice of the metaphors and symbolism. But we can hardly find the chapters talking about
this novel in a feminist way. Bernard. F. Dick once declared Evie, the heroine in The Pyramid,
was Golding’s most realistic female image, taking this true-to-life figure as a piece of evidence
to refute the accusation of Golding’s indifference to women. This simple evaluation of Evie
can be deemed as Dick’s attempt to study Golding’s attitudes towards women, but this attempt
did not turn into a thorough study of this subject. S. J. Boyd affirmed Evie’s aspiration in his
The Novels of William Golding, extending sympathy for her dreams hit by the harsh reality. Ian
Gregor and Mark Kinkead-Weekes, in their William Golding: A Critical Study of the Novels,
spent a number of words on the two female characters Evie and Bounce in The Pyramid,
showing solicitude for the different tragic destinies of the two women. Gregor and
Kinkead-Weekes pointed out that Evie’s “potential for music and self-improvement hampered
by lack of opportunity” (Gregor and Kinkead-Weekes 225), and Bounce died as “a
post-menopausal spinster in a decaying house among cats and budgies” (Gregor and
Kinkead-Weekes 235). Although Gregor and Kinkead-Weekes’ gave more detailed
examination of the two main heroines than other scholars, they still confined their studies on
Evie and Bounce to common character analysis. That is to say, they lacked the feminist
sensitivity to their research, seeing Evie and Bounce more as people, not as women in a
male-dominated world. Thus, Gregor and Kinkead-Weekes did not go deep enough to explore
what really to a great extent caused the tragedy of the two women. The criticism on the
patriarchal society and environment has been weakened as well.
Chinese scholars also ignored The Pyramid. Unlike Lord of the Flies about which around
one hundred essays were published, there is only one essay on The Pyramid in Chinese
academic journals. It is Peng Yanghui’s Hopeless Life discussing the narrative techniques,
human nature motif and hierarchal relationships, having nothing to do with a feminist
approach.
With little material about the feminist studies on The Pyramid to refer to, it is not easy for
us to carry on our research on women’s presence in this novel. However, it is not so awful
9
because we can enjoy the happiness from the originality of our tentative studies.
10
Chapter Two
Women’s Absence in Lord of the Flies
Lord of the Flies, which enjoys high reputation in the literary field after the Second World
War, is William Golding’s world-famous representative work. Presenting a fable-like story
taking place on an alienated island, Golding exposed the evil in human nature in great detail
by portraying a group of boys lapsing from civilization to barbarity. What needs attention is
that there were no girls appearing in this novel. This strange and notable phenomenon, namely
the absence of women, can be interpreted from the perspective of feminism to probe into
William Golding’s views on women.
2.1 The Foundation of the Small Male Society
2.1.1 The Establishment of Phallocentrism, Logocentrism and Phallus
Worship
Lord of the Flies can be regarded as an epitomized “history of human development in
which brutality finally conquered gentility” (王卫新 103). It reflects William Golding’s
disappointment with human nature since he had witnessed the cruelty and absurdity of the war.
If we take account of the absence of women, Lord of the Flies also can be understood as a
metaphor about the destiny of phallocentrism and the male-dominated society.
It is not difficult for us to recognize that it was not William Golding’s negligence to let
women stay aloof from this story. In Chapter One The Sound of the Shell when Ralph met
Piggy for the first time, Piggy wanted to talk about his aunt, but Ralph interrupted Piggy’s
topic rudely. Ralph, the male protagonist in this novel, intentionally dodged mentioning the
existence of women. As a young representative of phallocentrism, Ralph tried to reject women
from their life by self-deception. He never mentioned his mother who had granted life to him
as if she never existed. Instead, he always boasted that he had a father in the Navy who was
powerful enough to rescue them from this isolated island sooner or later. Believing that before
the adults' rescue he was capable of protecting the phallocentric culture and leading the group
of boys to a life of brilliance, Ralph shouldered the main responsibility to build up a small
society of order and reason. Order and reason are supposed to be male advantages, the
important components of phallocentrism.
If we say Ralph was a representative of the phallocentric culture, then “Piggy could be
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