英语论文论托尼·莫里森小说《宠儿》中的畸形母爱.doc

. contentsabstract（chinese）.2abstract（english）.31. introduction.4 1.1 background of the research.4 1.2 purpose of the research.4 2. the presentation of deformed maternal love in beloved.52.1 sethes love to beloved.52.2 beloveds love to sethe.53. the formation of deformed maternal love.53.1 deprivation of nurturing nature.63.2 abandonment of sethe by her mother.7 3.3 the slavery background on the deformed maternal love.94. the role of black community in deformed maternal love formation.9 4.1 the two-sidedness of black community.104.2 the black communitys exclusion of sethe.114.3 the significance of sisterhood in black community.124.4 mens role in black community.13 5. conclusion.14bibliography.16acknowledgments.17论托尼莫里森小说宠儿中的畸形母爱摘 要作为第一个获得诺贝尔文学奖的黑人女作家，托尼莫里森对当代文学，尤其是黑人文学做出了巨大的贡献。宠儿是托尼莫里森的第五部小说，她也是凭此获得了诺贝尔文学奖。人们从各个不同角度研究这部小说，比如女性主义、心理分析、文化研究，其中畸形母爱是人们研究较多的主题之一。本论文旨在全面研究导致畸形母爱的主要影响因素，但不同于以往学者，论文在分析其他常见的三个因素之外，着重研究黑人社区对母爱的影响。本文在全面揭示母女关系的基础上，提出并剖析造成畸形母爱的四种原因。前三个原因分别是：黑人女性养育天性的剥夺、赛思的母爱缺乏、以及奴隶制。第四个原因是社区对母爱的影响，论文特别给予重点讨论。在论述社区作用的双面性的基础之上，论文深入探讨社区对赛思的隔离，“姐妹情谊”在黑人社区的重要作用，男性对畸形母爱发展的影响。通过这些方面的论述，本文揭示了社区影响对走出畸形母爱的重要作用。关键词：宠儿；奴隶制；母性；社区deformed maternal love in toni morrisons belovedabstract as the first black woman writer who won the nobel prize for literature, toni morrison makes immensurable contributions to the contemporary literature, especially black woman literature. beloved is toni morrisons fifth novel, by which morrison got nobel prize in 1993. this novel is studied from different perspectives by researchers, such as feminism, psychoanalysis, cultural study and so on. among all the topics，the deformed maternal love is one of the most hotly discussed. this thesis is intended to analyze the causes of the deformed maternal love in beloved. different from other previous studies, this thesis places special emphasis on the influence of black community on the maternal love.this thesis will give a detailed introduction of mother-daughter relationship in the novel, and then analyzes four causes of deformed maternal love in beloved. the first three are deprivation of nurturing nature, sethes lack of mother love, and the slavery system. the fourth cause in beloved is the influence of black community on maternal love, which will be attached much importance in this paper. with talking about the two-sidedness of black community, the paper probes into the black communitys exclusion of sethe, the importance of sisterhood and the mens influence on the development of deformed maternal love. from these aspects, the thesis analyzes the black communitys influence on womens getting rid of the deformed maternal love.key words: beloved; slavery; maternal love; communitydeformed maternal love in toni morrisons beloved论托尼莫里森小说宠儿中的畸形母爱姓名：张路 班级：08英语本科2班 学号：0805111040指导老师：解燕 职称：助教1. introduction1.1 background of the research a brief introduction to these studies on morrison and her works seems to be inevitable. generally speaking, morrisons earlier novels in the 1970s often invite feminist approaches, and later deconstruction is a tool frequently used by critics with feminist or anthropological perspectives. critics often concerned themselves with morrisons use of mythic structure and the subject of female self-discovery in her novels. most notably are jacqeline de weever, cynthia davis and jane s. bakeman. psychoanalytic perspective on toni morrisons fiction developed in the mid-1980s, but it is only more recently that critics have pursued their psychoanalytic criticism within a poststructuralist framework. in the 1980s, a new development in cultural criticism of morrisons work came with an increasing focus on her characters standing at the interface of two or more cultures, just as criticism of tar baby has shown, doreatha mbalia provides a sustained marxist discussion of morrisons work in toni morrisons development of class-consciousness(1991). identifying the principal enemies of the african american as capitalism and imperialism, mbalia discovers in morrisons traditional african society positive marxist principles: humanism, collectivism and egalitarianism. later preoccupations of anthropological and cultural critical approaches to morrisons work have been her use of black community, myth, jazz and blues aesthetics. during the 1990s, narratology, feminism and cultural critical approaches to morrisons fiction focus on narrative strategies and female discourses. just as linden peach summaries in his revised edition of toni morrison (2000), the latest development in morrison criticism is the tendency to stress the interconnection of history, memory and trauma in morrisons work.1.2 purpose of the researchas the first african american nobel prize laureate in literature, toni morrison has exerted great influence on the literary world. her achievement in fiction and literary criticism has created much space for black and feminist literature. her novels have inspired a large quantity of reviews, essays and studies on various subjects.beloved is toni morrisons fifth novel, which was published in 1987 in new york. it is by this novel that morrison got nobel prize in 1993. this novel is studied from different perspectives. among all the topics, the deformed maternal love is hotly discussed from perspectives such as feminism, psychoanalysis, cultural study and so on. researchers try to find the origin of this maternal love and justify it. this thesis is intended to probe into the deformed maternal love and the influence of black community on it. different from other previous studies, this thesis will mainly study black community and the positive and negative influence of the absence of black community on maternal love. in the following, i will first give you an analysis of deformed maternal love in beloved.2. the presentation of deformed maternal love in beloved in one family, the relationship between mother and child is most significant because it plays a crucial role in the whole life of the child. the rudiment of the personality of the child has formed when she/he is five years old. how the mother treats and fosters the child will deeply affect the form of personality of the child. for each infant, the mother is the figure who is both the primary object of emotional attachment and the transmitter of cultural attitudes and values.in the black families in beloved, because of the pressure of slavery, there exists abnormal and deformed mother-child relationship and maternal love. mother-daughter relationship in this novel is complex and paradoxical. 2.1 sethes love to belovedsethe has poured too much love to her children. this leads to destructive results. in sethes mind, it is better to die in the cradle than to live out ones full life span with dead soul. the child as the adults fantasy of the future is obviously central to sethes murder of beloved. sethes love is too thick. for sethe, “what she had done was right because it came from true love.” she killed her children in order to save her humanity.2.2 beloveds love to sethe as a kind of return of love, beloved also shows excessive love to sethe in an abnormal way that is regarded as revenge. the infantile rage in the novel is a form of frustrated, murderous love. the power of beloveds rage is directly linked to the power of sethes love. if the infant is frustrated in its first love relationship and fails to receive the affirmation and recognition it craves, the intense neediness of the infants own love becomes dangerous and threatening. the writer will make an exploration into the reasons of sethes deformed maternal love.3. the formation of deformed maternal lovethere are many causes leading to deformed maternal love. this thesis will talk about four causes: deprivation of the nurturing nature, abandonment of sethe by her mother, the slavery background, and the role of black community. as the focus of my essay is on the role of black community, this point will be probed into in details later. in the following, this thesis will first discuss the first three causes.3.1 deprivation of nurturing nature 3.1.1 the bitterness of pregnancyfor a normal woman, nursing is a very important aspect of maternal love. however, under slavery background, neither can pregnancy be a mothers enjoyment, nor does mother milk belong to a mother and her children.in discussing maternal love in slavery, barbara christian reveals that “the african emphasis on woman as mother was drastically affected by the institution of slavery, since slave women and men were denied their natural right to their children”. being an individual member limited in the environment of the whole slave black community, the slave mother has no choice to choose. the influence of slavery begins from slave mothers pregnancy. while pregnancy creates for many women the illusion of an undifferentiated and relatively fusion between mother and child, slavery makes the ideal experience of mothering impossible in pregnancy. the fugitive sethe, pregnant with denver, and carrying beloved on her back, defines her experience of maternity as one of a splitting self: “beloved asleep on my back. denver sleeps in my stomach. felt like i was split in two”. 3.1.2 deprivation of mothers milkbesides pregnancy, mother milk is another significant factor of mother nurturing. as an expression of love, milk is symbolized as mothers love. so the absence of mothers milk can be viewed as a symbol of maternal abandonment. milk is a preservation of ones life. it represents the ability to grow up. nursing is the arch of the circle that harbors the mother and child bond. the mother produces and expels milk in order to satisfy and sustain her children, as well as to reaffirm her maternal position as a caretaker. in beloved, neither sethe nor her children can be the real owner of mothers milk. this also leads to sethes splitting maternal love.in beloved, sethe expresses her maternal love metaphorically as bringing milk for her children, interpreting her relationship to her children as a physical nursing bond “she had milk enough for all.” “i had milk”, she said, “i was pregnant with denver but i had milk for my baby girl”. sethe repeatedly asserts that the worst aspect of the rape was that the white boys “took my milk!” she feels robbed of her essence, of her most precious substance, which is her maternal milk. when finally sethe tells paul d about the beating which “opens up her back”, she emphasizes what was intolerable was not the pain of the beating, but the loss of her babys nursing milk. her statement brings together the issues of sexual abuse and racist control of black maternal love. since breast milk is sethes only means of keeping her babies alive which is why she is so angry with the white mens robbery of her milk. in fact, sethes emphasis on breast milk represents her strong maternal love. black womens maternal love is always associated with nurturing characteristics. actually, the last look of her husband halle, whose face is smeared with butter and the clabber, tells us that halle is struck crazily after watching helplessly the violation of sethes body and robbery of her milk. paul d is painfully aware that it is the sense of importance that drives halle insane: “it broke him. a man aint a goddam ax. things get to him. things he cannot chop down because they are inside.” the recording of her animal characteristics and the brutal robbery of her milk drives sethe to the utter horror and hopelessness as a slave mother. we learn from the text that her abhorrence of slavery underlies her instinctive decision to kill her children rather than have them fall back into the hands of schoolteacher.3.2 abandonment of sethe by her mother3.2.1 physical abandonmentanother important reason leading to sethes deformed maternal love is her mothers abandonment of her during her childhood. sethe abhors slavery, so she explains to paul d that killing her child is a benevolent act. sethes split psyche is not just a reason of her ruptured mother-bond with her daughter beloved, but has something to do with her own mother. her thought and action reflect what her mother has done when she was young. when her mother was shipped to america, she was taken up many times by the crew. she threw all the children away but sethe.” without names, she threw them. because sethes father put sethes arms around him, sethe was not thrown away. this can be seen as female slaves ultimate resistance to his brutal system, which functions as origin of sethes choice of infanticide. this seems to be a repetition of history and fate. however, sethes maternal love is more deformed. according to the novel, after giving birth to child, the mother is required to return to fields, so it is not unnatural that she often shows little attachment to her children. and the slave mothers absence greatly impairs the development of the childs subjectivity. sethe “didnt see her own mother but a few times out in the field and once when she was working indigo”. what she seems to remember most about her mother is the womans absence. although living with sethe, her mother was unable to nurture and love her, which is in fact another form of abandonment that leaves a shadow in sethes mind.3.2.2 emotional abandonmentsethes mother is granted two or three weeks to nurse the infant sethe, long enough to guarantee the survival of the child. it is mercilessly brief time. sethes mother is then forced to return to the rice field, thus preventing her from enjoying maternal love. this emotional abandonment has disastrous influence on sethe and her own maternal love.in sethes memory, her mother is mainly an image of a woman with a stooped back in a cloth hat. sethe feels personally affronted by her missing mother. she never fixed my hair or nothing, sethe tells denver and beloved, “she didnt even sleep in the same cabin most nights i remember”. sethe guesses that her mother has to sleep closer to the line-up. she suspects that her mother merely wants to sleep everywhere and intentionally deserts her daughter at night. even though sethe is familiar with the conditions of slavery, she cant help but resent her mothers incessant unavailability. denied her mothers care and love when she is alive, sethe lives with an even greater deprivation when her mother is hanged. she feels not only the absolute loss of her mothers continuing concern and love, but the terrible knowledge of her mothers apparently choice to leave sethe behind. sethe may assume that her mother was hanged for running away. but if her mother ran, then at least on some level, she chose to leave sethe behind, to abandon her. mother plays a critical role in the development of the childs identity. obviously, as a child, sethe is denied to have the maternal love. being an african american daughter in slavery, they are denied the subjectivity and continuity of inner experience that should be everyones birthright. being an african american daughter, sethe has to suffer from the deprivation of maternal love. so sethes determination to beat back the past is not simply an attempt to deny her knowledge of beloveds murder but also her knowledge of maternal abandonment and the absence of maternal love.in fact, to some extent, it is sethe who wills beloveds return because she associates the chance to be a mother with the longed-for opportunity to be a mothers child. sethes wish is not merely to gain absolution from beloved but to re-experience herself as a cared-for child and to be mothered herself, which is proved in the latter part of the novel when sethe becomes more and more dependent on beloved. beloveds ravenousness is a parody of sethes own possessive love.3.3 the slavery background on the deformed maternal loveactually, what leads to these two points above is slavery. poor economic conditions of many african american women require their working outside their homes. they spend many hours away from their children, which makes it impossible to provide proper care for their children d