从女性主义角度论紫色中西莉的解放过程毕业论文.doc

从女性主义角度论紫色中西莉的解放过程毕业论文Contents摘 要.iAbstract .iiIntroduction.1Chapter1 Feminism and Womanism. .31.1 The Background of Womanism: Feminism in America.31.1.1 The First Wave of American Feminism: 1840s to 1920s.31.1.2 The Second Wave of American Feminism: 1960s.41.2 Walkers Definition of Womanism.7Chapter2 Double Oppression on the Black Women in The ColorPurple.152.1 As Women: Sexual and Violent Oppression from the Black Men.152.2 As Black People: Racial Oppression from the White People.19Chapter 3 Black Womens Approach to Emancipation.23 3.1 Sisterhood and Its Role in Celies Emancipation Process23 3.1.1 The Role of Nettie .23 3.1.2 The Role of Sofia.24 3.1.3 The Role of Shug.26 3.2 The Road of Emancipation.273.2.1 Physical and Sexual Freedom.273.2.2 Spiritual Freedom.293.2.3 Economic Freedom.31Conclusion.33Bibliography.36AcknowledgementsiiB.A. Thesis IntroductionIntroductionThroughout the ages, women have always been part of literature. They have inspired many writers, whether dramatists, novelists, poets or essayists. Unfortunately most works often depicted women as the inferior gender, a passive object that could not survive on its own and that could do nothing for itself. Women, in literature, could only exist through the eyes, minds and lives of men but never for themselves. Many of Walkers works are inseparable from her life experience. She is very proud of her origins and she believes that the grace with which we embrace life, in spite of pain, the sorrow, is always measure of what has gone before. She was born in Eatonton, Georgia on February 9, 1944. Her father was a sharecropper and she is the youngest of the eight children in her family. At the age of eight, Walker was accidentally injured by a BB gun shot to her eye by her brother. Then she set out to learn to write poetry in order to ease the loneliness.Alice Walkers epistolary novel, The Color Purple, is one of the best literary works that vividly depict the sufferings of African-American women from patriarchy sexism and racism. The Color Purple does not only describe but goes beyond that purpose. In fact, Alice Walkers true intention from writing this novel is not only to give voice to black women but also to provide them with a path to follow in order to emancipate themselves and get their freedom. Walker shows us the evolution of her major character, Celie, from being a sexually abused child to a passive wife and finally to an emancipated woman.36B.A. Thesis Chapter 1 Feminism and WomanismChapter 1Feminism and Womanism1.1 The Background of Womanism: Feminism in AmericaFeminism in America has a long history and it is not an invention of a singleperiod of time. Here, this thesis just focuses on the 19th and the 20th centuries to give a very general account of American feminism from the perspective of history time and different types of schools.1.1.1 The First Wave of American Feminism: 1840s to 1920sIn 1848, the first Womens Rights Convention, organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and other women who had been denied a place at the international anti-slavery convention in London in 1840, was held in Seneca Falls, which marked the beginning of the first wave of American Feminism. The convention passed the Declaration of Sentiments, which was primarily drafted by Elizabeth Cady Stanton. “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equalThe history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on thepart of man toward woman ” (Schneir 77).In 1869, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony established the National Womens Suffrage Association . In the same year, Lucy Stone founded the American Womans Suffrage Association. Both of the two associations were devoted to promote a suffrage amendment of women to the Constitution. In 1890, the two organizations merged into the National American Womans Suffrage Association, which later became the League of Women Voters. The first wave of American feminism focused on the suffrage right for women but was not very successful. However, there was some progress in the reform of property laws and educational opportunities and “it did lay some of the intellectual groundwork for the second wave of American feminism ” (Madsen 6).1.1.2 The Second Wave of American Feminism: 1960sThe second wave of American feminism began with Betty Friedans The Feminine Mystique, which was published in 1963. Later, Friedan founded the National Organization of Women (NOW) in 1966, marking the formal beginning of the second movement of American Feminism. The main concern of the movement was against different kinds of discrimination, especially sex-based, of women in a patriarchy society. With the development of feminist activism, feminist theories in the areas of literature, politics, philosophy and history also began to rise. Many womens study programmes emerged in America. “The first full Womens programme was set up at San Diego State College in 1970” (Leitch 325). The intended aim of the organization was “to change the sexist bias of traditional education and social practices” (Madsen 15). In literary critical field, traditional criticism became the target of feminist theory because of its blindness to gender. The pioneer in this field was Kate Miller, the author of Sexual Politics (1971). Other critics working in this field included Ellen Moers, Elaine Showalter, Patricia Meyer Spacks, Sandra Gilbert, Susan Gubar, Nina Baym and so on. They aimed to help people recognize womens value by criticizing the images of women in literary works and “define a tradition of womens writing by finding and publishing the work of neglected writers ” (Madsen 15-16). Different schools of feminism also appeared during the two periods of feminist movements, such as Liberal Feminism, Marxist Feminism, Psychoanalytic Feminism, Ecofeminism, Socialist Feminism, Feminism of Color and so on. And it was the Feminism of Color that shaped the real backbone of Alice Walkers womanism.American feminism continued, more and more colored women gradually realized that they had been excluded from the mainstream white feminism, which only paid attention to white middle class women. Therefore, different kinds of colored feminism appeared. They were Black Feminism, Chicana/Latina Feminism, Native Feminism and Asian Feminism (Madsen 216). Each group of them had a distinctive historical experience in America. From the first wave of American feminism, the white leaders did not pay any attention to the relationship between racial prejudice and gender discrimination. Angela Y. Davis, a black feminist, quoted Elizabeth Cady Stantons letter to the New York Standard in 1865 in her book Women, Race and Class (1981): “in fact, it is better for black women to be the slave of an educated white man, than of a degraded, ignorant black one” (70). The second wave of American feminism still did little “to recognize the interdependence of racism and sexism as symptomatic of a culture of oppression” (Madsen 215). In her book Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (1984), bell hooks (sic) criticized the blindness of color in Betty Friedans The Feminine Mystique (1963): Friedans famous phrase, “the problem that has no name”, actually referred to the plight of a selected group of college-educated, middle and upper class, married white women- housewives bored leisure, who wanted more out of life. That “more” she defined as careers. She did not discuss who would be called in to take care of the children and maintain the home. She did not speak of the needs of women without men, without children, without homes. She ignored the existence of all non-white women and poor white women. She did not tell readers whether it was more fulfilling to be a maid, a babysitter, a factory worker, a clerk, or a prostitute, than to be a leisure housewife.In 1973, a special Black Feminist group, the National Black Feminist Organization (NBFO), was founded in New York. In 1977, the Combahee River Collective, a Black Feminist group in Boston, announced in the famous A Black Feminist Statement “Above all else, our politics initially sprang from the shared belief that black women are inherently valuable, that our liberation is a necessity not as an adjunct to somebody elses but because of our need as human persons for autonomy. We realized that only people who care enough about us to work consistently for our liberation is us. Our politics evolve from a healthy love for ourselves, our sisters and our community which allows us to continue our struggle and work”.Other female black writers and critics, like Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Huston, Audre Lorde, Maya Angelou, Patricia Hill Collins, promoted the development of Black Feminism greatly by their vigorous participation and works. Alice Walker especially stood out among them. In her book In Search of Our Mothers Gardens: Womanist Prose (1983), she put forward a very important icon for black feminist: womanism, which will be discussed in detail in the next part.1.2 Walkers Definition of WomanismDefinitely, a womanist should be a woman; however, the point is for which sex a womanist should serve. First, Walker indicates that a womanist should love other women, sexually and nonsexually, which means both lesbians and non-lesbians can be the womanist. It also emphasizes sisterhood. In Walkers works, the good relationship among women can be found everywhere. As in Meridian, the protagonist, Meridian, helps “Wile Chile” when she hears that “Wile Chile” is pregnant. In The Color Purple, the lesbian love between Celie and Shug, and the friendships among Celie, Shug, Sophie, Nettie and etc. which will be discussed in detail later in this thesis, illustrate the important effect of sisterhood on the liberation of black women. She also emphasizes womens culture and womens emotion. When she wrote The Color Purple, Walker lived a very simple life in a mountainous village, but she still did not forget to make the quilt. “I bought a quilt pattern my mama swore was easy. I worked on my quilt . My quilt began to grow” (Walker 1983, 358). Making the quilt also gives some help for her to finish the novel. In The Color Purple, Celie, Shug and Sophie also make a quilt named “sisters choice”, which symbolizes their friendships. Despite womens good relationship, Walker never forgets men. The womanist should also love individual men, sexually and/or nonsexually, for the womanist should commit themselves to the entire people, whether they are male or female. The womanist should also be the universalist, which means that they should not work only for the liberation of black people or their own race, but also for all the human beings in spite of their skin color. People with white, beige, black, brown, pink, yellow and any other skin color are all brothers and sisters. Thus although the womanist are the colored women, they should work for all human beings, male and female with all kinds of skin color. The last part of the second interpretation means that the womanist should be brave and be an activist. She is brave and capable enough to fight for and protect her people. “It wouldnt be the first time”, for the ancestors have fought for many years and it would not be the last time until everyone gets his/her liberation. Walker once stated in one of her essays Silver Writes that: although she valued the Civil Rights Movement deeply, she has never liked the term itself because it had no music and no poetry (336). Therefore, the womanist must be full of love, loving music, loving dance, loving all the creatures and mostly important, loving oneself. In her prose, “In Search of Our Mothers Gardens”, Walker depicts the lives of many black women, who must be her mothers and grandmothers. They are the sexual objects of men. “They stumbled blindly through their lives: creatures so abused and mutilated in body, so dimmed and confused by pain, that they considered themselves unworthy even of hope” (2374). Under such living condition, however, their creativity still enabled them to be artists. They wanted to paint watercolors of the sunsets or model heroic figures of rebellion in stone or clay, though their time was full occupied with baking biscuits for lazy backwater tramp and their bodies were broken because of bearing so many children (Walker 1985, 2375). The quilt made by an anonymous black woman in Alabama a hundred years ago, hanging in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D. C., was the best example of black womens artistic creation (Walker 1985, 2379). Thus, for black and other colored women, their cultural uniqueness lies in the heritage of a11 love and food and roundness. Loves struggle. Loves the Folk. Loves herself(sic). Womanist is to feminist as purple to lavender. (Walker 1983, 1) The first interpretation delimits the scope of the womanist, which means that only the black or colored feminist can be called the womanist. This proposition is set against the main-stream white feminism which “has alienated working class and colored women from the liberation struggle” (Madsen 216). As a black woman, Walker is mainly concerned about the condition of black women, but she does not forget other oppressed colored women. Thus the womanist can not be simply called the black feminist. Walker also gives the origin of the womanist in the first interpretation, i.e. womanish. Thus a womanist must have the characters which the word “womanish” suggests, such as outrageous, audacious, courageous, willful, serious, responsible, grown-up. As a womanist, Walker herself demonstrates these characters thoroughly. At a very young age, she was confident with herself and knew how to “show up”. Girl as she was, she could cry out “Im the prettiest” in front of her brothers (Walker 1983, 385). When she studied in college, she actively took part in the Civil Rights Movement and the Womens Movement. She was also the pioneer who opened the course of black women literature in college. Walker devotes herself to the liberation of black women and connects her destiny with all the black womens. Walker herself illustrates what a womanist should be like and be responsible for. In the first interpretation, Walker marks the womanist from race, i.e. the colored, love of beauty and a respect for strength (Walker 1985, 2379-2382). Walkers last definition of the womanist may be the most misunderstanding one. “Womanist is to feminist as purple to lavender.” This interpretation contains two meanings. One is that womanism and feminism are not two totally different schools. They have something in common. Both of them, for example, serve for womens liberation. Anyhow, as lavender is much lighter than purple, feminism has less connotations than womanism. One of the reasons is that the main-stream white feminism usually ignores the existence of black women and other colored women. In the prologue to her book, The Female Imagination, Patricia Meyer Spacks attempts to explain why her book deals solely with white women in the “Anglo-American literary tradition”.She said so because she did not have such experience of Third World female psychology in America. As a white woman, she would rather choose to describe familiar experience which belonged to a familiar culture setting. While Walkers answer to her explanation is that “yet Spacks never lived in nineteenth-century Yorkshine, so why theorize the Bronts?” (Walker 1983, 372). It is not her experiences that stop her doing so, but it is she herself that does not want to. On an exhibition of women painters at the Brooklyn Museum, there is such a dialogue: “Are there no black women painters represented here? one asked a white woman feminist. Its a wormens exhibit! she replied” (Walker 1985, 378). It is apparently that the white feminists are reluctant to regard the black women as “women”, for “women” is the name they call themselves, and themselves alone. “Racism decrees that if they are now women (years ago they were ladies, but fashions change) then black women must, perforce, be something else. (While they were ladies, black women could be women, and so on.)” (Walker 1985, 376).16 No more word is needed to describe the white feminists ignorance of black women. However, are black women really inferior to white women and should not be called “women”? Lets listen to Sojourner Truths answer:“Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or ever mud-puddles, or gives me any best places! And aint I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And aint I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man . And aint I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen them most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mothers grief, none but Jesus heard me! And aint I a woman? ” Truths statement strongly expresses that black women are not only “women”, but even much stronger women than white women. Then how can black women still work with the white women who even do not know their existence? Barbara Smith has also noticed that “black women have known that their lives in some ways incorporated goals that white middle-class women were striving for, but race and class privilege, of course, reshaped the meaning of those goals profoundly” (1998, 179). There comes the biggest difference between