Construct Women’s Subjectivity during the Quest-Gender Writing in Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49

Abstract

Since its publication in 1966, Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 has aroused widespread concerns and discussions in both China and abroad. This book being regarded as the pioneer work of the post-modernism and masterpiece of black humour, relevant research serves to figure out its post-modern features from uncertainty, entropy, linguistic games to narrative traps. The present study is concerned about politics, history, law, religion, race, and racial oppression contained in the novel, as well as the author’s innovation of the quest mode, while ignoring how the heroine Oedipa strove to construct her subjectivity during her quest for the secret of Tristero System. This paper will focus on gender writing in The Crying of Lot 49 with the assistance of feminist criticism, Jacques Lacan’s psychological analysis as well as the concept of cultural hegemony by Antonio Gramsci, which together point out that the main achievement of Oedipa’s seemingly absurd quest is to break away from the constraints of patriarchy and gradually construct her own subjectivity as a woman.