摘要
托尼·莫尔森是当代美国文坛最著名、最杰出的作家之一。在1993年,由于她“在小说中以丰富的想象力和富有诗意的表达方式使美国现实的一个极其重要的方面充满活力”而荣获诺贝尔文学奖。她是世界第八位获此殊荣的女性作家,同时也是美国唯一一位获得诺贝尔文学奖的黑人女性作家。其小说以鲜明的形象、丰富的感情和深刻的思想而著名,她的作品总是代表着黑人女性并充满了悲剧色彩。莫尔森以一个黑人作家特有的敏感,着重审视了白人社会的价值观对黑人文化发展的阻碍和对黑人人性的扭曲。她同时也揭示了黑人社会内部对自己同胞的排斥和伤害,展现了黑人在种族歧视社会里所承受的心理折磨。她的代表作--普利策获奖小说《宠儿》最为震撼人心,现已成为当代文学史上不朽的经典。该书的主要情节取材于一个真实的历史事件,主要讲述了女黑奴塞丝怀着身孕只身从肯塔基的奴隶庄园逃到俄亥俄的辛辛那提,奴隶主追踪而至。为了不使儿女重复自己做奴隶的悲惨命运,她毅然杀死了自己刚刚会爬的幼女宠儿。18年后,被她杀死的女婴还魂归来,以自己的出现日夜惩罚母亲当年的行为,加倍向母亲索取着爱。小说发表后在美国文学界、文化界引起强烈震动,各大报刊纷纷刊文给予最高规格的赞语,认为它是美国黑人历史的一座纪念碑。
在《宠儿》这本书中,主人公塞斯通过极端的方式斗争与反抗,将她的全部生命奉献给她的孩子。小说通过对这个令人触目惊心的弑婴惨剧的讲述,揭示美国奴隶制度废除前黑人悲惨的厄运,向读者展示了一种另类的母爱:那就是在万恶的反人类的奴隶制度下处于性别和种族双重劣势下的黑奴母亲的爱,一种非凡的充满创痛的母爱。虽然塞丝深爱着自己的孩子,但面对母性的剥夺,她却不得不亲手杀死自己的女儿。这种近似疯狂的畸形母爱浸透了塞丝的血泪和无奈,充满了对黑奴制度的无言控诉。《宠儿》挑战了传统的母爱价值观,通过毁灭的方式对母爱进行诠释和解读。自《宠儿》问世以来,国内外许多的专家学者纷纷对它进行分析研究,剖析小说中所体现的黑人文化、种族残害、女性主义等主题,本文旨在通过对《宠儿》中母爱的解读,分析主人公的母爱的不同发展阶段,及其在各个阶段不同的表现形式,这些不同的表现形式反应出了在当时特定的历史时期和社会环境下母爱的复杂性。
Toni Morrison is one of the most famous and prominent writers in contemporary American literature. In 1993, she was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature for she "gives life to an essential aspect of American reality" through "novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import." Morrison is the eighth woman and the first black woman to do so, and her works are well-known for vivid images, copious emotions and profound thoughts. Her works are always presented on behalf of the black women and full of tragedies. With a special sensitivity of a black writer, Morrison examines the obstacle that the value of white society imposed on the development of black culture and the distortion of black humanity. Meanwhile, she also reveals the exclusion and harm caused by the black community and the blacks suffering psychological torture in racial discrimination society vividly and incisively. It discloses the tragic adversity of American black people before the abolishment of the slavery. Her masterpiece—the Pulitzer-awarded novel Beloved which has become the enduring classic in contemporary literature is the most shocking one. The main plot of the novel is based on a true historical event. It narrates a stunning story: Nineteen-year-old Sethe, a pregnant slave mother escaped from Sweet Home—the plantation in Kentucky to seek asylum in Cincinnati, and she had sent her three children safely with their grandmother in advance. But unfortunately, the pursuers wanted to capture them a few days later. She decided to kill all her children so that they would not have to suffer the way she had as a slave. She succeeded in slashing the throat of the two- year-old baby girl and was caught and serves a prison sentence. Eighteen years later, Beloved as a baby ghost came to haunt her mother’s house at 124 Bluestone Road to take revenge and obtain love from her mother.
Sethe, the protagonist of novel, struggling and resisting by exceeding and ambivalent way, devoted all her life to her children. Although Sethe loves her children deeply, she has to kill her daughter faced with the deprivation of maternal love. This approximate crazy abnormal maternity is immersed in a mother’s tears and helplessness, full of muted complaint to the slavery system. Beloved challenged the traditional values of maternal love and gives a good interpretation of maternal love through destruction. Many experts and scholars began to analyze and research the novel since it was published, some focused on black culture, some focused on feminism or racial mutilation. However, this paper tries to analyze the five stages of the protagonist’s maternal love and explore the different forms of representation which reflect the complexity of maternal love in a specific historical period and social setting.
引文
1. Claudia Dreifus, "CHLOE WOFFORD Talks about TONI MORRISON", The New York Times, September 11, 1994, P.5
2. Allen Paula Gunn, The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Tradition, Boston, MA: Beacon, 1986, P.16
3. Toni Morrison, "Rootedness: The Ancestor as Foundation." Black Women Writers, P.345
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5. Zhu Rongjie, Pain and Healing: A Study of Maternal Love in Toni Morrison’s Fiction from a Cultural Perspective, Henan:河南大学出版社, 2004,P.144
6. Toni Morrison, Beloved, Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2005, P.1
7. Ibid., P.1
8. Carmean Karen, Toni Morrlson's World of Fiction, Troy, NY: Whitson, 1993, P.85
9. Angela P Dodson,“Beloved beloved”, Black Issues Book Review, 2006, P.10
10. Kimberly Chabot Davis, "Postmodern blackness": Toni Morrison's 'Beloved' and the end of history. Twentieth Century Literature, September 1998, P.45
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16. Alain Locke, Negro Art: Past and Present [M]. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Press, 1978, P.8
17. Boyd Carol J, "Mothers and Daughters: A Discussion of Theory and Researc", Journal of Marriage and the Family, May, 1989, P. 291-301
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19. Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark:Whiteness and the Literary Imagination[M], New York: Vintage Books. p. X. of Preface, 1992, P.55
20. Toni Morrison, Beloved, Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2005, P.139
21. Ibid., P.30
22. Nortar, Margaret and Susan A. McDaniel. "Feminist Attitudes and Mother-Daughter Relationships in Adolescence," Adolescence, 21.81, 1986, P.11-21
23. Deborah Horvitz, "Nameless Ghosts: Possession and Dispossession in Beloved," in Studies in American Fiction, Vol. 17, No. 2, Autumn, 1989, P.157-67
24. Toni Morrison, Beloved, Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2005, P.159
25. Ibid., P.197
26. Ibid., P. 16-17
27. Jan Furman, Toni Morrison's Fiction (Understanding Contemporary American Literature), University of South Carolina Pr 1996, P34
28. Toni Morrison, Beloved, Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2005, P.251
29. Ibid., P.31
30. Ibid., P.90
31. Ibid., P.162
32. Ibid., P.163
33. Ibid., P.163-164
34. Ibid., P.149
35. Ibid., P.164
36. Brereton Geoffrey, Principles of Tragedy: A Rational Examination of the Tragic Concept in Life and Literature. Coral Gables, Florida: University of Miami Press, 1968, P.11
37. Toni Morrison, Beloved, Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2005, P.193
38. Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon [M]. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2005, P.306
39. Toni Morrison, Beloved, Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2005, P.45
40. Ibid., P.258
41. Ibid., P.259
42. Ibid., P.163
43. Wang Shouren and Wu Xinyun. Gender, Race and Class: Toni Morrison and Twentieth-Century Afro-American Literature [M]. Beijing:北京大学出版社, 1999, P.167
44. Li Dan and Tong Bing, The Slaved Mother-The Analysis on the Image of Sethe in beloved,长春师范学院学报, 2007, No.4. P.104
45. Toni Morrison, Beloved,Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2005, P.193
46. Ibid., P.39
47. Ibid., P.73
48. Ibid., P.35-36
49. Ibid., P.38
50. Ibid., P.36
51. Ibid., P.45
52. Ibid., P.145
53. Ibid., P.165
54. Ibid., P.164
55. Ibid., P.203
56. Ibid., P.57
57. Ibid., P.76
58. Ibid., P.174
59. Ibid., P.239-240
60. Kubitschek Missy Dehn,Claiming the Heritage: African-American Women Novelists and History, Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1991, P.23
61. Toni Morrison, Beloved,Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2005, P.183
62. Ibid., P.242
63. Ibid., P.241-242
64. Deborah Horvitz, "Nameless Ghosts: Possession and Dispossession in Beloved," in Studies in American Fiction, Vol. 17, No. 2, Autumn, 1989, P. 157-67.
65. Toni Morrison, Beloved,Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2005, P.241
66. Ibid., P.203
67. Ibid., P.250
68. Ibid., P.176
69. Ibid., P.273
70. Catherine M Catt, "Ancient Myth in Modern America: The Trickster in the Fiction of Louise Erdrich" ,The Platte Valley Review 19 (Winter 1991), P.71-81
71. Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark:Whiteness and the Literary Imagination[M],New York:Vintage Books.p.X.of Preface, 1992, P87
72. Kubitschek Missy Dehn,Claiming the Heritage: African-American Women Novelists and History,Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1991, P29
73. Miao Xiaoyu,“Oppression and Love under the Slavery System”.湖北教育学院学报. Jan, 2007, P.30
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