辛酸的母女故事
摘要
托妮·莫里森是美国文学史上第一位获得诺贝尔文学奖的黑人女作家。从1970年发表处女作《最蓝的眼睛》到2003年出版的《爱》,她一共发表了8部小说。在莫里森小说的主题里,母女关系是一以贯之的主题,母亲与女儿间的故事几乎是饱含着血和泪的辛酸史。在细读文本的基础上,本论文主要分析《秀拉》小说中扭曲和疏离的母女关系,以及在扭曲和疏离的母女关系下黑人女儿辛酸的自我追寻之旅,从而揭示出辛酸的母女故事背后深层的社会文化含义。
本论文分为五个章节。第一章和第五章分别为引言和结语。引言部分除了关于《秀拉》评论的文献综述外,着重讨论了南希·乔多罗等美国重要女性批评家有关母爱和母女关系方面的理论论述。论文的第二、三章分析《秀拉》小说中两个复杂家庭中的母女关系。第四章分析在复杂母女关系下黑人女儿们辛酸的自我追寻之旅。第五章的结论指出：在扭曲和疏离的母女关系背后有着深层的社会和文化含义；黑人母亲应该在种族歧视压迫的社会里重新确认自己的身份,传承黑人的文化纽带以发展自爱以及对子女的爱,从而避免扭曲和异化的母女关系。对黑人女儿来说,只有倾听母辈们的故事,保留黑人的文化传统,才会有一个健康的自我。
Toni Morrison, the first black woman to receive Nobel Prize in Literature, has published eight novels from The Bluest Eye in 1970 to love in 2003. For all the multiplicity and magnitude of issues that have been addressed by Morrison, the mother-daughter relationship is a recurring theme and throughout Morrison's fictions, the stories of mothers and daughters are almost always bitter ones full of blood and tears. Based on close textual analyses, this thesis intends to analyze how the mother-daughter relationship has been fractured by social factors and how the twisted and distant mother-daughter relationship affects the black daughter's self-development in Sula.
Structurally, the present thesis is divided into five chapters. Chapter One and Chapter five are introduction and conclusion. In the introduction, besides the presentation of the literature review of Sula, I focus on theoretical speculations by some representative American feminists, such as feminist Nancy Chodorow and Patricia Hill Collins, on motherhood and mother-daughter relationship. Chapter Two and Chapter Three are my analysis of the complicated mother-daughter relationships in Sula. Chapter Four explores, through the examples of Nel and Sula, black daughter's bitter journey of self-development. My conclusion underscores the fact that in the light of Morrison's fictional representation, there are deep-seated social and cultural meanings behind the twisted and distant mother-daughter relationship. Black mothers, Morrison's text seems to suggest, should reexamine their identities in a racially oppressive dominant society and pass on their African American cultural tradition to develop self-love and love for their children in order to avoid the twisted and alienated mother-daughter relationship. Black daughters, on the other hand, can arrive at a healthy self by listening to the story of the mother's generation and by retaining the African American cultural heritage vital to self emancipation and empowerment.
本论文分为五个章节。第一章和第五章分别为引言和结语。引言部分除了关于《秀拉》评论的文献综述外,着重讨论了南希·乔多罗等美国重要女性批评家有关母爱和母女关系方面的理论论述。论文的第二、三章分析《秀拉》小说中两个复杂家庭中的母女关系。第四章分析在复杂母女关系下黑人女儿们辛酸的自我追寻之旅。第五章的结论指出：在扭曲和疏离的母女关系背后有着深层的社会和文化含义；黑人母亲应该在种族歧视压迫的社会里重新确认自己的身份,传承黑人的文化纽带以发展自爱以及对子女的爱,从而避免扭曲和异化的母女关系。对黑人女儿来说,只有倾听母辈们的故事,保留黑人的文化传统,才会有一个健康的自我。
Toni Morrison, the first black woman to receive Nobel Prize in Literature, has published eight novels from The Bluest Eye in 1970 to love in 2003. For all the multiplicity and magnitude of issues that have been addressed by Morrison, the mother-daughter relationship is a recurring theme and throughout Morrison's fictions, the stories of mothers and daughters are almost always bitter ones full of blood and tears. Based on close textual analyses, this thesis intends to analyze how the mother-daughter relationship has been fractured by social factors and how the twisted and distant mother-daughter relationship affects the black daughter's self-development in Sula.
Structurally, the present thesis is divided into five chapters. Chapter One and Chapter five are introduction and conclusion. In the introduction, besides the presentation of the literature review of Sula, I focus on theoretical speculations by some representative American feminists, such as feminist Nancy Chodorow and Patricia Hill Collins, on motherhood and mother-daughter relationship. Chapter Two and Chapter Three are my analysis of the complicated mother-daughter relationships in Sula. Chapter Four explores, through the examples of Nel and Sula, black daughter's bitter journey of self-development. My conclusion underscores the fact that in the light of Morrison's fictional representation, there are deep-seated social and cultural meanings behind the twisted and distant mother-daughter relationship. Black mothers, Morrison's text seems to suggest, should reexamine their identities in a racially oppressive dominant society and pass on their African American cultural tradition to develop self-love and love for their children in order to avoid the twisted and alienated mother-daughter relationship. Black daughters, on the other hand, can arrive at a healthy self by listening to the story of the mother's generation and by retaining the African American cultural heritage vital to self emancipation and empowerment.
引文
Bakerman,Jane.1994. "The Seams Can't Show:An Interview with Toni Morrison". In Taylor-Guthrie, Danille. (ed). Conversations with Toni Morrison. Jackson:University Press of Mississippi.32,40.
Brown-Guillory, Elizerbeth.1996. "Disrupted Motherlines:Mothers and Daughters in a Genderized, Sexualized, and Racialized World." In Elizabeth Brown-Guillory. (ed).Women of Color: Mother-Daughter Relationships in 20th-century Literature. Austin:University of Texas Press.188-201.
Chodorow, Nancy.1978.The Reproduction of Mothering:Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender. Berkeley:University of California Press.
Christian,Barbara.1985.Bacck:Feminist Criticism:Perspectives on Black women Writers.University of California, Berkley:Pergamon Press.
Collins, Patricia Hill.1990. Black Feminist Thought:Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment. Boston:Unwin Hyman.
Collins, Patricia Hill.1994. "Shifting the Center:Race, Class and Feminist Theorizing about Motherhood".In Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Grace Chang, and Linda Rennie Forcey.(eds). Mothering:Ideology, Experience, and Agency. New York and London:Routledge.53-54.
Davis, Cynthia A.1998. "Self, Society and Myth in Toni Morrison's Fiction". In Linden Peach.(ed.) Toni Morrison. New York:St. Martin's Press.8-9.
Du Bois, W. E. B.1903. The Souls of Black Folk(Rpt.1990). New York:Vintage Books/The Library of America.
Dubey, Madhu.1998. "'No Bottom and No Top':Opposition in Sula." In Linden Peach.(ed). Toni Morrison. New York:St. Martin's Press.74.
Furman, Jan.2005 "Black girlhood and Black womanhood:The Bluest Eye and Sula." In Jeffery W. Hunter.(ed).Contemporary Literary Criticism. Detroit:Gale Research Inc.165-169.
Gerald, Carolyn F.1974. "The Negro Woman in American Literature," in Pat Crutchfield Exum (ed).Keeping the Faith:Writing by Cotemporary Black American Women. Greenwich:Fawcett Publications, Inc.32.
Gillespie, Diane, and Kubitscheck, Missy Dehn.1997. "Who Cares? Women-Centered Psychology in Sula ". In Middleton, David L..(ed).Toni Morrison's Fiction Contemporary Criticism. New York:Garland Publishing, Inc.62.
Gilligan,Carol.1982. In a different voice:Psychological Theory and Women's (moral)Development. Cambridge: Harvard UP.
Hirsch, Marianne.1989.The Mother/Daughter Plot-Narrative, Psychoanalysis, Feminism. Bloomington Indiana University Press.
Jones, Bessie W., and Vinson, Audrey.1994. "An Interview with Toni Morrison". In Taylor-Guthrie, Danille. (ed). Conversations with Toni Morrison. Jackson:University Press of Mississippi.102,184.
Karen F., Stein.1984. "Toni Morrison's Sula:A Black Woman's Epic". Black American Literature Forum 18,4:147.
Koenen, Anne.1994. "The One Out of Sequence". In Taylor-Guthrie, Danille. (ed). Conversations with Toni Morrison. Jackson:University Press of Mississippi.69-70.
Mbalia, Dorcatha Drummond.2004.Toni/Morrison's Developing Class Consciousness. Massachusetts: Rosemont Publishing & Printing Crop.
McDowell, Deborah E.1988. "'The Self and the Other':Reading Toni Morrison's Sula and the Black Female Text". In McKay, Nellie Y..(ed). Critical Essays on Toni Morrison. Boston:Hall.83.
Morrison, Toni.1990. Beloved. New York:Knopf. .1972. The Bluest Eye. New York:Washington Square Press. .1973. Sula. New York:Knopf.
Moynihan, Daniel Patrick comp.1965.The Negro Family:The case for National Action. Washington DC: United States Department of Labor.
O'Reilly, Andrea.2004. Toni Morrison and Motherhood:A Politics of the Heart. New York:State University of New York Press.
Page, Philip.1999.Reclaiming Community in Cotemporary African American Fiction. Jackson:University Press of Mississippi.
Pree, Maria Lena du.2006. The Mother/Daughter relationship in Toni Morrison's Sula and Army Tan's The joy Luck Club. Unpublished. MA. Dissertation, DSpace at Utrecht University, Netherlands.
Rich, Adrienne.1976. Of Women Born:Motherhood as Experience and Institution. New York:W. W. Norton.
Ruas, Charles.1994. "From Conversations with American Writers". In Taylor-Guthrie, Danille. (ed). Conversations with Toni Morrison. Jackson:University Press of Mississippi.102.
Smith,Barbara.1982. "Toward a Black Feminist Criticism".In Gloria T. Hull, Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith, (eds). All the Women Are Wliite, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave:Black Women's Studies. New York:The Feminist Press.265.
Staples, Robert.1973. The Black Woman In America. Chicago:Nelson-Hall Publishers.
Stepto, Robert.1994. "Intimate Things in Place:A Conversation with Toni Morrison" In Taylor-Guthrie, Danille. (ed). Conversations with Toni Morrison. Jackson:University Press of Mississippi.16.
Walker, Alice.1983. In Search Our Mothers'Gardens. New York:A Harvest Book Harcourt, Inc.
Wayne, Carolyn Ann.1976. The Mother Image in Selected Fiction of Alice Walker and Toni Morrison. Columbus:The Ohio State University/OhioLINK.
Wilson, Judith.1994. "A Conversation with Toni Morrison". In Taylor-Guthrie, Danille. (ed). Conversations with Toni Morrison. Jackson:University Press of Mississippi.135.
Zhu, Rongjie [朱荣杰].2004.Pain and Healing:A Study of Maternal love in Toni Morrison's Fiction from a Cultural Perspective.开封：河南大学出版社.
Wang, Shouren、Wu Xingyun[王守仁]、[吴新云],1995,性别·种族·文化：托尼·莫里森与二十世纪美国黑人文学,北京：北京大学出版社。
Brown-Guillory, Elizerbeth.1996. "Disrupted Motherlines:Mothers and Daughters in a Genderized, Sexualized, and Racialized World." In Elizabeth Brown-Guillory. (ed).Women of Color: Mother-Daughter Relationships in 20th-century Literature. Austin:University of Texas Press.188-201.
Chodorow, Nancy.1978.The Reproduction of Mothering:Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender. Berkeley:University of California Press.
Christian,Barbara.1985.Bacck:Feminist Criticism:Perspectives on Black women Writers.University of California, Berkley:Pergamon Press.
Collins, Patricia Hill.1990. Black Feminist Thought:Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment. Boston:Unwin Hyman.
Collins, Patricia Hill.1994. "Shifting the Center:Race, Class and Feminist Theorizing about Motherhood".In Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Grace Chang, and Linda Rennie Forcey.(eds). Mothering:Ideology, Experience, and Agency. New York and London:Routledge.53-54.
Davis, Cynthia A.1998. "Self, Society and Myth in Toni Morrison's Fiction". In Linden Peach.(ed.) Toni Morrison. New York:St. Martin's Press.8-9.
Du Bois, W. E. B.1903. The Souls of Black Folk(Rpt.1990). New York:Vintage Books/The Library of America.
Dubey, Madhu.1998. "'No Bottom and No Top':Opposition in Sula." In Linden Peach.(ed). Toni Morrison. New York:St. Martin's Press.74.
Furman, Jan.2005 "Black girlhood and Black womanhood:The Bluest Eye and Sula." In Jeffery W. Hunter.(ed).Contemporary Literary Criticism. Detroit:Gale Research Inc.165-169.
Gerald, Carolyn F.1974. "The Negro Woman in American Literature," in Pat Crutchfield Exum (ed).Keeping the Faith:Writing by Cotemporary Black American Women. Greenwich:Fawcett Publications, Inc.32.
Gillespie, Diane, and Kubitscheck, Missy Dehn.1997. "Who Cares? Women-Centered Psychology in Sula ". In Middleton, David L..(ed).Toni Morrison's Fiction Contemporary Criticism. New York:Garland Publishing, Inc.62.
Gilligan,Carol.1982. In a different voice:Psychological Theory and Women's (moral)Development. Cambridge: Harvard UP.
Hirsch, Marianne.1989.The Mother/Daughter Plot-Narrative, Psychoanalysis, Feminism. Bloomington Indiana University Press.
Jones, Bessie W., and Vinson, Audrey.1994. "An Interview with Toni Morrison". In Taylor-Guthrie, Danille. (ed). Conversations with Toni Morrison. Jackson:University Press of Mississippi.102,184.
Karen F., Stein.1984. "Toni Morrison's Sula:A Black Woman's Epic". Black American Literature Forum 18,4:147.
Koenen, Anne.1994. "The One Out of Sequence". In Taylor-Guthrie, Danille. (ed). Conversations with Toni Morrison. Jackson:University Press of Mississippi.69-70.
Mbalia, Dorcatha Drummond.2004.Toni/Morrison's Developing Class Consciousness. Massachusetts: Rosemont Publishing & Printing Crop.
McDowell, Deborah E.1988. "'The Self and the Other':Reading Toni Morrison's Sula and the Black Female Text". In McKay, Nellie Y..(ed). Critical Essays on Toni Morrison. Boston:Hall.83.
Morrison, Toni.1990. Beloved. New York:Knopf. .1972. The Bluest Eye. New York:Washington Square Press. .1973. Sula. New York:Knopf.
Moynihan, Daniel Patrick comp.1965.The Negro Family:The case for National Action. Washington DC: United States Department of Labor.
O'Reilly, Andrea.2004. Toni Morrison and Motherhood:A Politics of the Heart. New York:State University of New York Press.
Page, Philip.1999.Reclaiming Community in Cotemporary African American Fiction. Jackson:University Press of Mississippi.
Pree, Maria Lena du.2006. The Mother/Daughter relationship in Toni Morrison's Sula and Army Tan's The joy Luck Club. Unpublished. MA. Dissertation, DSpace at Utrecht University, Netherlands.
Rich, Adrienne.1976. Of Women Born:Motherhood as Experience and Institution. New York:W. W. Norton.
Ruas, Charles.1994. "From Conversations with American Writers". In Taylor-Guthrie, Danille. (ed). Conversations with Toni Morrison. Jackson:University Press of Mississippi.102.
Smith,Barbara.1982. "Toward a Black Feminist Criticism".In Gloria T. Hull, Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith, (eds). All the Women Are Wliite, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave:Black Women's Studies. New York:The Feminist Press.265.
Staples, Robert.1973. The Black Woman In America. Chicago:Nelson-Hall Publishers.
Stepto, Robert.1994. "Intimate Things in Place:A Conversation with Toni Morrison" In Taylor-Guthrie, Danille. (ed). Conversations with Toni Morrison. Jackson:University Press of Mississippi.16.
Walker, Alice.1983. In Search Our Mothers'Gardens. New York:A Harvest Book Harcourt, Inc.
Wayne, Carolyn Ann.1976. The Mother Image in Selected Fiction of Alice Walker and Toni Morrison. Columbus:The Ohio State University/OhioLINK.
Wilson, Judith.1994. "A Conversation with Toni Morrison". In Taylor-Guthrie, Danille. (ed). Conversations with Toni Morrison. Jackson:University Press of Mississippi.135.
Zhu, Rongjie [朱荣杰].2004.Pain and Healing:A Study of Maternal love in Toni Morrison's Fiction from a Cultural Perspective.开封：河南大学出版社.
Wang, Shouren、Wu Xingyun[王守仁]、[吴新云],1995,性别·种族·文化：托尼·莫里森与二十世纪美国黑人文学,北京：北京大学出版社。