新瑞论文

摘要 《宠儿》是托妮·莫里森的第五部小说,她也是凭此获得了诺贝尔文学奖。《宠儿》自面世以来就引起了评论家的极大兴趣,被认为是“美国文学史上的里程碑”。《宠儿》也是她大的最好的作品之一,取材于一篇真实的历史文献报道。但奴隶主捕捉逃亡的玛格丽特一家时,她手刃自己的亲生女儿。莫里森被这个故事深深地打动,决心找出慈爱的母亲杀死自己的女儿,却声称这是解脱,是母爱的原因。在《宠儿》一书中,莫里森着重描写女主角,塞斯的心理状态,讲述了奴隶制下一个奴隶母亲的痛苦经历,探讨了在特定历史条件—奴隶制下的母爱及母爱遭受破坏的程度。 本论文通过分析母爱是如何在各种因素下被扭曲的。它包括三个部分：第一章对母爱扭曲的表现做了具体的描述；第二章旨在探究母爱扭曲的结果；第三章主要分析造成母爱扭曲的原因。 关键词：杀婴 母爱 奴隶制 社会环境 Abstract Beloved is the fifth novel of Toni Morrison, by which Morrison got Nobel Prize in1993. Ever since its publication, Beloved has aroused many critics’ great interests and it has been regarded as “a milestone in American literary history.” Beloved, one of her best novels is based on a real historical occurrence. According to historical documents, a slave mother, Margaret Garner, killed her daughter and tried to kill herself when the slave owner came to capture them. Morrison is stimulated by the reporting, so she determines to find why a loving mother had to kill her own child while claiming it is salvation and maternal love. In Beloved, Morrison centers on exploring the psychology of the protagonist, Sethe, to tell a slave mother’s painful experience under slavery system. She also resolves around exploring the maternal love and to what extent it was damaged under the specific circumstance—slavery. This thesis will analyze maternal love how to be distorted. It consists of three parts. Chapter one deals with manifestation of the maternal distortion. Chapter two studies the results of the distortion of maternal love. Chapter three analyzes the causes for the distortion of maternal love. Key words: Infanticide, Maternal Love, Slavery, Social Construction Introduction In October 1993, Toni Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature and became the first Afro-American black woman writer to win Nobel Prize. She is also one of the most distinguished black woman writers in American literature canon. She was praise by Swedish Academy as writer “who, in novels characterize by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality”. [1] Her success not only marks a new position of women writers in the literary world but also signals the permanent arrival of the African American literary canon onto the stage of American and world literature. Toni Morrison has gained tremendous international reputation and is no doubt the best representative of the black writer, due to her many prominent novels. Her works includes The Bluest Eye (1970), Sula (1973), Song of Solomon (1977), Tar Baby (1981), Beloved (1987), Jazz (1993), Paradise (1998) to her latest fiction love (2003). However, Beloved, published in 1987 and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988, is Toni Morrison’s fifth novel, and is viewed as her best novel. A. O. Scott states in an accompanying essay, “Any other outcome would have been startling, since Morrison’s novel has inserted itself into the American canon more completely than any of its potential rivals. With remarkable speed, Beloved has, less than twenty years after its publication, become a staple of the college literary curriculum, which is to say a classic…” (Dodson, 2006:4). The American literary world has a high praise for this novel. Nation valued it as Toni Morrison’s best work and stated it belonged to the highest shelf of our literary even if a dozen canonize wonder bread boys had to de elbowed off. Chicago Sun-Time once regarded Beloved as Toni Morrison’s finest work and stated that nothing she had written so sets her part, so display her prodigious, almost shocking talents. Beloved also won the Robert F. Kennedy Award, the Melcher Cady Stanton Award and Before Columbus American Book Award. The Elizabeth Cady Stanton Award from the national organization for woman also recognized the contribution that the novel makes to the history of the black woman. Therefore, Beloved are now being widely read and discussed in Afro-American studies, American literature, and Women’s studies. Her novels have inspired a large quantity of reviews, essay and book-length studies on various subjects with different critical methodologies. A large of scholars and doctoral candidates over the world have criticized and assessed her works. Lots of critics have made fruitful research on almost every facet of the novel, including the controversial theme, the poetic and characteristic language, the quite different and well depicted characters, the plentiful and significant symbols and the unique narrative device. However, this paper is intended for the thematic analysis of the distortion of maternal love on Beloved by slavery. In Beloved, Morrison explores a slave maternal love for children in the most dehumanizing historical circumstances-slavery. The story of Beloved comes from a true event: In 1850, Margaret Garner, a Kentucky fugitive slave woman, would rather choose death for herself and her children than being returned to slavery. But she only killed one and the rest were recaptured and sold. Later, she was tired foe stolen property instead of murder because she was assumed that she had no responsibility over her own children. Morrison was deeply moved by the nature of this story, for the horrible incident proved not only the horror of slavery in denying the rights of motherhood but also the inability of slavery to deny black mothers their own moral code. In beloved, the fate of Sethe is like that of Margaret Garner. The protagonist Sethe who was an ex -slave killed her toddler daughter in 1865 when slavery had not been abolished. Under slavery, life for slaves did not mean a life to enjoy, rather a life to suffer, a life hardly to bear. Those who had been slaves endured the cruelty brought by slavery: to work day and night which made them overloaded, to have no self identity (always be sold to some other white masters and be devalued not as a human being), to be badly maltreated (be whipped with all scars left on the body). Apart suffer pains of losing their children and pains of not seeing them grow to adulthood. They had to suffer indignity and humiliation of being raped by white masters, being forced to bear children of those who have raped them. Even life was like this; they bit their lips and stood this inhumane cruelty. But Sethe thought that the best thing she posses was her children, she did not allow whites to deprive of her mother rights. In order to give her protection to her children, and more importantly, to give her full love to her children, her could not stand her children to re-experience her hard life. So Sethe killed her two years old daughter and destroy herself. Thus, the infanticide seems to testify the intense maternal love in abnormal way under slavery. Beloved, the daughter that killed by Sethe eighteen years ago, the girl that shoes magically in their life, is one of the key characters in the novel, and very essential to our understanding. Moreover, with her multiple incarnations, Beloved also represents the complex, multi-layered treatment given to maternal experience in the novel. The distortion of the maternal love in Beloved consists of the social and historical realities that list the text. The thesis also focuses on the crucial mothering characters in Toni Morrison’s Beloved, with relevant slavery historical background that provides important perspectives on mothering in racial and cultural contents. Morrison shows mothers who are very willing to be soft and hard, loving and cruel, moral and unmoral for the sake of generation in Beloved, where the crucial mothers are Sethe’s mother, Sethe, Baby Suggs. Although the thesis emphasis on the abnormal motherhood, the thesis would argue further, basing on the distortion of motherhood of the Sethe that profoundly pondering the evil slavery. ChapterⅠ The Manifestation of the Distortion of maternal love The manifestation of maternal distortion is the eruption of motherhood under the slavery. Sethe is the typical character. Due to her previous experience, she does not stand her children to re-experience her hard life as a slave. Under this circumstance, Sethe choose to kill her toddle daughter so as to protect her baby. After the slavery system has been abolished, the nightmare of slavery is still haunting Sethe and her children. Although Sethe’s mother and Baby Suggs express intense maternal love less than the motherhood of Sethe, their motherhood also manifest abnormal under the slavery. In this novel, it is state in three aspects. The first part states Sethe’s infanticide and the second part shows two types of motherhood in the novel. The final part emphasizes on the relationship of the mother and the daughters. A.​ Sethe’s Infanticide Sethe’s motherhood is, to a large extent, disable and consequently abnormal as well. The recording of her animal characteristics and the brutal robbery of her milk impel Sethe into the utter horror of her situation as a slave mother. Infanticide, shown in the novel is of many forms. It is not just a murder in literal sense but also murdering an infant mentally or psychologically by curbing the desires and rights. Although Sethe has been freedom, she would never forget the scene of infanticide. The scene of infanticide is also dreadful and bloody, from which manifest the bloody and deranged of Sethe. “A nigger woman holed a blood-soak child to her chest with one hand and an infant by the heels in the other. She did not look at them; she simply swung the baby toward the wall planks, missed and tired to connect a second time…the old nigger boy, still mewing, ran through the door behind them and snatched the baby form the arch of its mother’s swing.”(149) At that time, Sethe had gone thoroughly wild. She would be unwilling to let the dead baby go and was aiming a bloody nipple into the live baby’s mouth. Since from eighteen years, the scene that she would never remember has haunted her. In order to her baby’s headstone, she sells ten minutes to the engraver. “Ten minutes for seven letters. With another ten could she have gotten ‘Dearly’ too?”(5) Sethe still thought that for twenty minutes, a half hour and even more, she would be willing to pay, because she could have had every word on her baby’s headstone. “She thought it would be it enough, rutting among the headstones with the engraver, his young son looking on, the anger in his face so old; the appetite in it quit new. That should certainly be enough.”(5) Only the small headstone, she betrays her body. This is what kind of love? This shows her maternal love in a distorted way. After infanticide, her dead baby’s ghost always haunt in her house. So her two sons can not stand this and her, they leave their mother and their house. That’s say, she only have a daughter-Denver she pour her all love to her only little daughter. She wants to make up for the incomplete maternal love. Thick maternal love makes the Denver become self-isolation. At the same time, after her daughter does not go to school, she always has been in her home and no more than communicates with others out the house. Until Beloved returns in the flesh, heavily stricken with guilt for having killed her daughter and looking for a way to make up for it, Sethe warmly welcomes the “resurrection” of Beloved. She pours her maternal love into the named Beloved who has the same name with her killed daughter. After the departure of Paul D, Sethe blames herself why she is unable to realize Beloved, is her killed daughter early. In fact, from the view of the manifestation of Sethe’s motherhood love, she always lives the shadow of infanticide. B.​ Two Types of Motherhood in the Novel Under the slavery system, the women slavers are regarded as the breeder. Their children only belong to slave masters and their have no right of nurture. The slave masters at any time take their children, but they only bear the loss of their children. Therefore, the women slaves do not show the thick of love, they dare to suffer from the loss of their children. However, the nature of motherhood love is not lost. The thesis shows two types of motherhood in the novel. The first kind is represented by Sethe, Sethe’s mother and Ella. In order to save her children from the brutality of slavery, Sethe has no choice but to kill her daughter. Because she hates to the white men who rape her, she neither allow the white men to rob her daughter nor want to let her daughter suffer this pain. Sethe’s mother is pregnant after being raped by the white sailors on the ship which brings her to American as a slave. Out of resentment toward the white men, she discards all the children she has with white sailors and only leaves Sethe. Those children she throw away without the name, she abandons them. The Sethe is the only one given the name by her. Because the father of Sethe is a black man who she only loves. As for Ella, she was locked in a house and shared by a pair of white father and son when she was young. Ella calls the father and son “the lowest yet” (256), whose atrocities make her disgust sex. When she gives birth to “a hairy white thing”, she refuses to it, because she hates her baby’s father who is called by the lowest yet. Sethe’s mother and Ella refused to fulfill a mother’s duty because these babies are the result of sexual enslavement. Although their action is not as furious and bloody as Sethe’s, they are the same in essence. Against slavery background, infanticide is not an incidental occasion. It often occurs, but in different forms. This is a violent and abnormal of mother love. Another type of mother love, which is passive and resigned, is represented by Sethe’s mother-in-law. Baby Suggs is a slave for most of her life until her son Halle manages to buy her freedom at the cost of his future and life. Baby Suggs has eight children, but they are taken away from her. She does not even bother to examine her last child, “to try to learn features she would never see change into adulthood anyway”, (139) and this one, Halle, is the one she was allowed to keep. This is atypical mothering in the traditional sense as women stare at babies simply for enjoyment. This is not the case in slavery; not so for Baby Suggs. She is never given that luxury. But in not examining her last child, she is also not examining herself. Moreover, in order to let her child stay with her, she has three months sex with a white owns, but her child was sold by the white owns. So when she talks about her children, apart form her hatred to the white men and slavery, what remains is only her impotence and resignation as a mother. Although her maternal love is less intense than Sethe’s, her maternal love is universal. Because when Sethe suggests moving away after discovering the ghost, Baby Suggs considers it unnecessary and asks her to be contented. She says: “Not a house in the country ain’t Packed to its after with some dead Negro’s grief. We lucky this ghost is a baby. My husband’s spirit was to come back in here? Or yours? Do not talk to me. You lucky. You go three left. Three pulling at your skirts and just one raising hell from the other side. Be thankful, why do not you? I had eight. Every one of them gone away from me. Four taken, four chased, and all, I expect, worrying somebody’s house into evil. My first-born. All I can remember of her is how she loved the burned bottom of bread. Can you beat that? Eight children and that’s all I remember.”(5) Later when receiving Sethe who escapes from the south, she has been fully prepared for her son Halle’s death. If his son is not dead, it would be more surprise than the news that he is dead. Those years of lives as a slave have framed his thought. So compared with daughter-in-law Sethe’s love, Baby Suggs is common. C.​ The Relationship of Mother and Daughters in the Novel The period since the mid-1970s has seen an outpouring of scholarship on mother-daughter relations, very recently including mother-daughter relations in literature. First, the mother-daughter bond is fraught with paradox or antithesis. Adrienne Rich says: “The daughter views her mother both as herself and as the other from whom she must split to define her own sense of self. Despite this antipathy for her mother, though, the strong pre-oedipal bonds, her need for nurture, draw the daughter to her mother, making it much more difficult for her to break away than for the son. The result is a life long tension, a shifting back and forth from love to ‘matrophobia’, a rejection of the mother.”(Rich, 1976:238) The relationship of mother and daughters mainly give expression to the relationship of Sethe and her daughters. Morrison has shown many angles of mother-daughter relationship in the novel. The first relationship is that Sethe’s mother and Sethe. Their relationship is special. Sethe is nursed by named Nan who is not her mother, while her mother nurse her two or three weeks. Her mother never fixed her hair or nothing. In other words, their relationship is very indifferent. However, when the Sethe asks her mother to give her mark, her mother slaps her face. Not until does she have a mark of her own, she understand the mean of her mother’s mark. To a certain extent, her mother loves her. In fact, the relationship of her mother and her has also effect on that of her and her daughters. The relationship of her and her daughter, Beloved, is the most unique. Here a mother is the killer of her own blood. Sethe had enough reasons to prove that her act was just not crime but a mercy killing. She was perplexed with the horrific side of slavery and could not bear her daughter in a similar condition as hers. Therefore, she decides to free her from the impious birth of being black. “I took and put my babies where they’d be safe” (201). Though the act of infanticide is the most monstrous act for a mother to even think of but Sethe was too reluctant to turn towards slavery again with her children. As a mother Sethe’s act can never be justified. She attempted the most unnatural thing. Killing was not the only alternative. Frankly, “Sethe’s greatest sin believes her children are hers.” (Payant, 1993:196) When Stamp Paid later approaches 124 Bluestone Road after Paul D’s leaving; he hears confused voices, from which he can make out only the word mine”. “I am Beloved and she is mine.…I am not separate from her there is no place where I stop her face is my own and I want to be there in the place where her face is and to be looking into it too a hot thing…she is the laugh I am the laughter I see her face which is mine…she knows I want to join she chews and swallows me I am gone now I am her face my own face has left me I see me swim away a hot thing I see the bottoms of my feet I am alone I want to be the two of us I want to join…a hot thing now we can join a hot thing”.(210-213) The murder of a child takes maternal possessiveness, the unwillingness of mothers to allow their children autonomy to the extreme. Even slave owners could not legally kill their slaves. Unable to see herself as autonomous because of her lack of mothering-she has not been allowed to go through the process of healthy bonding and then breaking away-she tries to keep her children with her any way she can, even to the point of destroying them. After the appearance of Beloved, the relationship of the Beloved and Sethe has a subtle change. Because this girl has the same name with her killed daughter, she pours her maternal love to Beloved. Sethe defends her actions when Paul D tells her love is “too thick,” saying, “love is or it ain’t. Thin love ain’t love at all” (164). Sethe shares a similar relation with her other daughter Denver. She is the eye witness of the bloodshed of her sister. She also drank her mother milk mixed with Beloved’s blood. She is the only permanent member of 124 Bluestone apart from Sethe. Both of them share an unspoken relationship. Due to her killing a daughter, she makes up for the other daughter- Denver with the thick maternal love. The abnormal motherhood love makes Denver isolates herself from the comm