（英语语言文学专业论文）论托妮·莫里森小说《爱》中爱的缺失.pdf

ii 内 容 摘 要 内 容 摘 要 美国的种族问题给美国社会尤其是黑人的生活带来了深远的影响， 一直是国内外 研究美国 的学者们关注的问题。中国社科院美国研究所副研究员姬虹就在她的种 族主义阴影下的美国黑人现状 中用一系列反映美国黑人社会生活等方面的数字证实 了美国后民权时代黑人的生存困顿。而科内尔韦斯特在种族当紧一书中探讨黑 人今日面临的危机的根源时，明确指出在美国整体的男权格局环境下，黑人妇女的生 存状况尤为悲凄。因此我们可以说尽管民权运动以及 60 年代的一系列法案的生效使 得黑人的政治及经济地位有了一定的提高，但在经济，政治和教育等多方面仍远远落 后于白人，种族主义的阴影仍旧笼罩着黑人生活的方方面面，给黑人的生存和情感带 来了很多的问题。爱的普遍缺失就是其中之一。如果说姬虹和科内尔韦斯特等人的 文章或书是一个基于实际调查的对美国社会问题的报告，那么托妮莫里森的小说 爱则是对种族和性别等问题的文学思考和表达，而且她涉及的历史时间更广，包 括了民权运动前期，中期和后期。对爱的本质的剖析和探索一直就是莫里森创作的主 题之一, 而在爱中作者更通过对爱的本质的多方位的思考，写出了黑人在无爱的 环境中的挣扎，心理的闭锁，扭曲和变态，来展现她作为一个黑人作家对当代黑人命 运和生存状态的关注的历史使命感和责任感。本文就是对爱中爱的缺失这一影响 黑人命运的重要问题的剖析。论文共分四章： 本论文第一章首先简单介绍了爱这部新小说的作者托妮莫里森的个人情况 和小说内容，写作特点和成功之处，并就国内外对该作品的评论进行了概括。论文的 第二章，笔者分 “爱的缺失”和人物命运及“爱的缺失”和人物关系两部分详细地 进行了爱中 “爱的缺失”的主题分析。第一部分中主要写了爱的缺失和主要人 物克西，梅，海德，克里斯汀和 l 的命运的关系。分析了几个主要人物一生在无爱的 世界里挣扎。第二部分主要通过写在几组重要的家庭和社会关系中的“爱的缺失”的 具体表现，包括变态的母女关系，冷淡的祖父和孙女的关系，冷漠的女性友情，和错 位的夫妻之爱等。通过分析“爱的缺失”给书中人物带来的悲惨的人生经历，和扭曲 的人物关系来看黑人社区中人与人之间的爱的缺失的普遍表现。 论文的第三章把爱的 缺失放到整个黑人社区里来讨论，来看黑人群体中，男人和女人之所以会成为爱的缺 失的牺牲品和受害者的必然性和普遍性。 这一部分阐述了无论是民权运动前还是民权 运动后，都没有彻底改变黑人在经济上得不到保障，政治上被边缘化，而文化上又在 美国资本主义种族主义和性别主义三大价值系统的侵蚀下失去了原有的“爱，关怀和 为他人服务”的社区文化的局面。同时也指出了黑人社区自身的缺陷，即它的驯服， iii 没有反抗性和盲目模仿使得它在资本主义种族主义和性别主义面前显得更加脆弱。 因 此笔者认为，在黑人社区这个在被美国白人政治经济文化侵略而又孤立的“贫穷的孤 岛”中, “爱的缺失”已经成为了黑人的生存状态。 基于上述论述，笔者在第四章得出结论：托妮莫里森通过关注黑人社会整体的 “爱的缺失”的生存状态和在此状态下的悲惨命运，来挖掘历史的真实面貌，向人们 展现了后民权时代黑人的生存环境和状态，表明在宣扬“民主自由博爱”的美国，黑 人却仍然生活在贫穷孤立的边缘状态中，这对黑人的情感发展起了很大的阻碍作用， 使得黑人丧失了爱人和自爱的能力，最终走向了无爱的悲剧。而作者托妮莫里森通 过挖掘展现历史和现实的目的除了反映黑人真实的生存状态之外， 同时也是想借此来 唤醒黑人社区甚至整个美国社会中爱的回归。 从这点意义上说作者莫里森已经超越了 黑人文化这一文化立场，转向一个更高更宽广的文化立意上来。 关键词：爱的缺失关键词：爱的缺失 爱爱 托妮莫里森托妮莫里森 iv abstract the racial problem, which brings far-reaching impact on the american society, especially on the black peoples life, has been given a lot concern by the scholars studying about the united states at home and abroad. ji hong, an associate researcher of the institute of the united states in chinese academy of social sciences, in her article the african americans status under the shadow of racism confirms the hardships faced by the black people during their survival in the post civil right movements era by giving a series of numbers. cornell west in his race matters also explores the crisis confronted by the black people today. but he emphasizes more on the living condition of black women and points out that under the overall male-dominated environment in the united states the black womens fates are especially mournful. therefore, we say that though the civil right movement as well as a series of bills in 60s entering into force improve the political and economic status of black to some extent, but in the economic, political and educational areas the black is still lagging far behind the white and the shadow of racism still covers all aspects of the blacks life, which brings a lot of problems to the survival and emotional development of the black. absence of love is one of these problems. if we say that the article of ji hong and the book of cornell west are reports based on the actual investigation about the society, then toni morrisons novel love is a literary thinking and expression on race and gender issues, and her novel involves a much broader historical time, including the time before, during and after the civil right movements. the exploration on the nature of love has always been one of the themes of morrisons novels. however, in love morrison writes more about the essence of love through the many-faceted thinking, by this way morrison conceals the struggle of blacks, their psychological atresia and distortion in the absence-of-love environment. love as a self-proclaimed favorite novel by morrison really shows her historical mission and responsibility as a black writer to the contemporary black living condition and destiny. this article is the analysis about the absence of love, which is an important topic influencing the fate of the black. the thesis is divided into four chapters: the first chapter of this dissertation is a brief introduction about the author toni morrison, including the content of her novels and her writing features. this chapter also summarizes the successful points and the comments at home and abroad about this novel v love. in chapter two, “absence of love” will be analyzed in details from two aspects: (1) absence of love in individual fates; (2) absence of love in the interpersonal relationships. the first part mainly focuses on the absence of love in the tragic life struggles and experiences of the five protagonists: cosey, may, heed, christine and l. the second part displays “absence of love” in several important family and social relationships, including the abnormal mother-daughter relationships, the cold grandfather-granddaughter relationship, the indifferent female friendship, and the misplaced marital relationships. the analysis of the miserable life experiences and the distorted relationships caused by the absence of love show us a usual phenomenon in the black community: love is absent in the relationships among the black people. chapter three of the thesis put “absence of love” in the entire black community for discussion to give a close look to the inevitability and universality of the black men and women to become the victims of the absence of love. this part shows us that the civil right movements never changed the fate of the black people thoroughly. they are still economically non-guaranteed and politically marginalized. moreover, they lost their traditional community culture of “love, care and being ready to serve others” under sexism, racism and capitalism the three value systems of the united states. at the same time, this part also points out that the black communitys own shortcomings, especially the tameness or docility; no resistance and blind imitation of capitalism make it weaker at the face of racism sexism and capitalism. so the author of this dissertation thinks that in the black community which was an island of poverty, intruded and meanwhile isolated by the white in the economic, political and cultural scales, absence of love has always been the existential condition of blacks. based on the above discussion, in chapter four the author comes to a conclusion that tony morrisons aim of writing love is to dig up the truth of history, to show the real living condition of the black people in the post civil right movements era by focusing on the “absence of love” as a state of being for the whole black community and the tragic fates under such a condition. the author also wants to conceal a fact that even in united states, where “freedom, democracy, and fraternity” is promoted as the social virtue, the black people are still the marginalized group living a poor and isolated life. this absence of love has brought a great hamper for the emotional development of the black and causes the lost of the ability to love others and themselves and finally leads to different tragedies. besides exploiting the truth of the history and reflecting the real living state, toni morrison also wants to awaken the black community and call for the return of love back to the black vi community even to the whole american society. so from this point, we say that morrisons standpoint has gone beyond the black culture and comes to a broader and a higher one. key word: absence of love love toni morrison i 三峡大学学位论文原创性声明三峡大学学位论文原创性声明 本人郑重声明：所呈交的学位论文，是本人在导师的指导下，独立进行研究工作所 取得的成果，除文中已经注明引用的内容外，本论文不含任何其他个人或集体已经发 表或撰写过的作品成果。对本文的研究做出重要贡献的个人和集体均已在文中以明确 方式标明，本人完全意识到本声明的法律后果由本人承担。 学位论文作者签名： 日 期： 1 1. introduction 1.1 present study on toni morrison and her works toni morrison, the first black american woman who has been awarded the nobel prize for literature in 1993, is now goheen professor of humanities at princeton university. she is a member of the american academy institute of arts and letters and a presidential appointee to the national council on the arts. in addition to her position as senior editor at random house, she teaches, lectures nationally and internationally. she now occupies an important position in the mainstream american literary organizations and is often the principal speaker at major literary conferences. toni morrison is a prolific writer. until now, she has created 9 novels: the bluest eye in 1970, sula in 1973, song of solomon in 1977, tar baby in 1981, beloved in 1987, jazz in 1992, paradise in 1998, love in 2003 and a mercy in 2008. her first novel, the bluest eye printed by 1974, received mixed reviews, didnt sell well. critical recognition and praise for toni morrison grew with her later novels. she received the national book critics circle award for her third novel song of solomon and the pulitzer prize for beloved. in 1993 she received the nobel prize for literature for, in the words of the swedish academy, her “visionary force and poetic import” which give “life to an essential aspect of american reality.” (furman, 1996: 2). her novels have inspired a large quantity of reviews, essays and book-length studies on various subjects with different critical methodologies. and every year many dissertations of english literature on the study of morrisons works come out. the study about her works has been through a process from traditional critical methodology in the earlier period to later multi analysis with various perspectives. many monographs have been come out and the most representative ones include the identifying fictions of toni morrison: modernist authenticity and postmodern blackness, by john n. duvall, the aesthetics of toni morrison: speaking the unspeakable by marc c. conner and at home we also have the study of toni morrisons fiction: sex race and culture by wang shouren and wu xinyun and so on. according to the research the studies about toni morrisons works are mainly from these perspectives since the 1970s: feminism, psychoanalysis, post-modernism, reader-response criticism and cultural approaches. speaking of the characteristics of morrisons works, morrison said more than once that she writes for black people especially for the black females. so her novels bear witness 2 to the experience of the black community and blacks in the community. she writes about the black peoples lost of their sense of community, their connection to the past, and their culture. she thinks that blacks lack of roots and this disconnection from the community and the past cause that the individuals become alienated and struggle unsuccessfully to identify self. all her works reveal an evident fact that “the white view of blacks as the other and the blacks experience of themselves as other.”1 besides the characters and the themes about black people, she also uses many ways of writing which are typical of black culture, such as magic realism, african folklore black music and so on. but during her writing process there are also some changes and developments. after reading some of her books we can easily find that her cultural standpoint has been changing from criticizing the hegemonic white culture and evil slavery to inspecting inside the black peoples living condition and thinking the problems raised from blacks imitation of the white culture at a higher level. after her latest novel a mercy published, morrison was interviewed on a npr show and said that “she wrote the novel in an effort to remove race from slavery.”2 for she thinks that though slavery is universal phenomenon, black slavery is different from the slavery in other places of the world. so she chooses to write that book far long ago from now. if we say that morrison wants a mercy to be set in a time far long before the slavery to inspect the black community, then we say that love is a book morrison wants to be set far away from the white world to inspect the black community. the former shows the reason why slavery as a common phenomenon in the development of human civilization which was not based on race can not be removed from black race. and the latter shows the reason why love as a common emotion of human being was deprived from black race. from the differences between her earlier works and later ones, we can see toni morrisons concern about the black community becomes more and more mature and comprehensive. 1.2 brief introduction about love from ancient until present days, myths, poems, plays, novels, songs, folklores, fairy tales, films, advertising and popular cultures in general all reflect peoples preoccupation with love and its dizzying impact on the human psyche; both lover and beloved are equally 1 /english/melani/cs6/morrison.html 2009-2-21 2 /templates/story/story.php?storyid=95961382 2009-02-2 3 bewildered by its bewitching spell. love is an everlasting topic for all the writers, toni morrison is no exception. in an interview with danille taylor-gruthrie, morrison responded in this way to the question about her basic theme: “all the time that i write, im writing about love or its absence which is how people relate to one another and miss it or hang on to it or are tenacious about loveabout love and how to survive not to make a living but how to survive whole in a world where we are all of us, in some measure, victims of something.” (taylor-guthrie, 1997: 40) toni morrisons words are most obviously embodied in love, which is an exploration into the deepest regions of these most complicated of human emotions. love is a complicated story, the kind of multi-themed, multi-layered, multi-generational novel morrison is known for. the story of love covering the years from the 1940s to the 1990s was set in a town in the eastern coast of america. bill cosey was a wealthy black man who owned a hotel on the eastern coast and became an idol for many blacks men and women. the book tells the fights among bills young wife heed, his daughter-in-law may and his granddaughter christine for coseys affection when he was alive and for the claim of his property after his death. coseys first wife julia, who gave birth to a son named billy cosey for him, died young. when cosey was 52 years old he took heed who was his granddaughters childhood playmate and who was no more than 11 years old as his second wife. since then, the struggles for coseys property among the three women may, christine and heed had never ended. bill cosey was embittered and disappointed by this so in his will he left all his property to a prostitute celestial, who had been his favorite woman. l, the cook and housekeeper in coseys family thought of this unfair, and in order to protect the cosey women she changed coseys will on a menu of the restaurant and made it ambiguous. but the will created by l brought more storms to cosey family. the three women continued their struggle for the claim of the property, with none of them coming out as the final winner. may ended up insane. christine was sent to the aboard school by cosey after several conflicts with heed and roamed for almost 30 years outside including spending days in the prostitute house and in the army and ended as a forlorn wife. and finding herself could go nowhere; she went home and continued to fight for her share of the cosey property with her childhood playmate. heed hired a young girl named junior as a maid to help her in an attempt to change the will created by l, trying to make it more favorable to her. but her scheme was discovered by christine and was fatally injured after she fell down the attic in her fight with christine. none of them got 4 things going their own way. from the story frame above, we can see that all the characters love is shadowed by greedy, jealousy and hatred. toni morrison pushes us readers to think about all kinds of love people experience and how that love is destroyed; she expounds on the changeable nature of love and how it can both nourish and poison. so absence and distortion of love is the key point of this book. paternal love, maternal love, love between opposite sexes, sisterly love between black women all these essential and sacred emotions in human beings seem to be lost or distorted in the life of the main characters and then make the relationships between them alienated. love, this basic and universal human emotion， which was considered to be the basic ethic principle of a country where christian is a national wide belief, disappears. we can not help asking how and why. thats the task of my dissertation. love has many literary characteristics of morrisons novel such as special narration, which interweaves the past, present and future and flexible shift from different point of view of different protagonists, strong sense of racial problem and so on. in love morrison never forgets to take an artists responsibility to explore the truth and clarity, the hegemonism and its effects, the contradictions between black and white. her great concern about black people, especially black womens destiny and position inside the black community has become the focus within the theme of love. this dissertation attempts to clarify how morrisons project “to speak the unspeakable” of african-american history is related to her ideas of love as a way to survive and the devastating consequence of losing the ability to love. what makes morrison aware of the mechanism of love is what i think could be called her psychoanalytic insight, especially when this is understood in light of the philosophy of love as well as ethic evaluation. 1.3 literature review at home and abroad on love as a comparative newer novel, love has been received warmly in america since its publication in 2003. many scholars have given literary remarks and rev