Needs Deprivation, Female Madness, and the Pre-Oedipal Mother in Li Ang's "The Butcher's Wife"

Abstract

"The Butcher's Wife" is a chronicle of how an ostensibly mild, timid, "traditional" woman caught in an extreme form of patriarchal oppression can be deprived of her basic human needs to the point of committing the "inhuman", "illogical" act of butchering her husband as if he were a pig.