Dramatic Representation of the Gendered Other in Harold Pinter’s The Room

• 발행기관: 한국영미어문학회
• 저자명: Ruofei Diao 박희본(Heebon Park)
• 간행물 정보: 『영미어문학』영미어문학 제144호, 225~245쪽, 전체 21쪽
• 주제분류: 어문학 > 영어와문학
• 파일형태: PDF
• 발행일자: 2022.03.30

영문 초록

This paper examines Harold Pinter’s first play The Room (1957) focusing on an immured heroine (Rose), who becomes the gendered Other without female subjectivity. She is marginalized and trapped, literally and metaphorically, in the precarious domestic location of the room while her space is successively intruded by visitors. The Other is an important philosophical concept in existentialism and has well been applied to the feminist criticism. Drawing on the existential theories of the Other, including Simone de Beauvoir’s pioneering articulation in The Second Sex (1949), the study contextualizes Pinter’s play and analyses the dramatic discourses and ambiguous interactions between Rose and other characters - her domineering husband, the talkative landlord, the mysterious black visitor, and a young married couple hunting to rent the room of the play’s title. In doing so, the paper argues that The Room serves as a disconcerting metaphor to demonstrate how men try to disempower and control women as a means to consolidate their dominant position in the territorial room and, by extension, in the society dominated by white, patriarchal ideology.

목차

1. Introduction

2. The Other as an Existential and Feminist Concept

3. Rose as the Other Trapped in the Domestic Space

4. Conclusion

Works Cited

키워드

Harold Pinter The Room domestic space Rose the Other feminism patriarchy