Vol. 1, Issue 13, Part L (2015)

Abstract
Women have been found caged in rigid boundaries of traditions and social norms in almost all societies of the world. They, demanding for equal social, political and economic rights have been the mouthpiece of many English writers. Similarly China had a more than five-thousand-year history and Chinese culture has been passed down through generations. Some rigid traditions still can be found in the twenty-first century. One of them was the oppression and subjugation of women in a patriarchal Chinese society. Chinese women experienced a bitter history of oppression, degradation and abasement in semi colonial and semi feudal dynasty which lasted for several millennia. There had been a profound influence of Confucianism, an ethical and philosophical system developed from the teaching of Confucius and Taoism on the lives of women in China since last several decades. Pearl S. Buck, a humanitarian, philanthropist and advocate of women’s rights was one of the prominent American writers who also got most coveted Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938. She explores the position of women in Chinese society during late 19th C. and early 20th C. and given voice to the oppression, subjugation, submissiveness, slavery and inferior position of women through her major novels. The present paper aims at bringing out the subjugation of women being harnessed in rigid social boundaries in Chinese society during early 20th C. through the application of research methods such as close reading of texts, critical study. For that purpose I have selected Pearl S. Buck’s major novels - ‘East wind and West wind’, ‘The Good Earth’, The Mother’, ‘Pavilion of women’.