英语本科生论文-喜福会Male images in the joy luck club.doc

河北经贸大学毕业论文Male images in the joy luck clubA Graduation Thesis Submitted byZhang HuanIn Partial Fulfillment of the RequirementsForThe Degree of Bachelor of ArtsIn the Subject of English Language and LiteratureToCollege of Foreign LanguagesOfHebei University of Economics and TradeSupervisor: Zhang HuiMarch 20, 20112AcknowledgementIn writing this paper, I have benefited from the presence of my teachers and my classmates. They generously helped me collect materials I needed and made many invaluable suggestions. I hereby extend my grateful thanks to them for their kind help, without which the paper would not have been what it is.Particularly, I am deeply indebted to Professor Zhang Hui, my supervisor, who guided me throughout my writing of this thesis. She carefully read the whole draft and offered painstaking and precious criticism. Her standards of academic excellence have made my revision and exciting and gratifying experience. I also wish to sincerely thank my classmates and friends Miss Ma Jun, whose brilliant ideas and perceptive observations have proved immensely constructive. My parents took good care of my life and gave me a lot of encouragement when I was working at this thesis. They always share my weal and woe. I feel much grateful and heartily owe my achievement to them.Furthermore, none of this would have been possible without the help of those individuals and organizations hereafter mentioned with gratitude: our school library and its staff, the library of Hebei Normal University, and the National Library of China and its staff. Zhang Huan内容摘要：从20世纪七十年代起,美国华裔作家即在美国文坛取得了不小的成绩。涌现了一批成功的女作家，如唐婷婷，谭恩美等。本文的研究对象是谭恩美的作品 喜福会。谭恩美作为美国文学界中最重要的美籍华裔作家之一,其第一部小说喜福会于1989年出版,并很快就获得了巨大成功。自出版以来，小说喜福会引起了国内外的学术界的关注，并且对其的研究也取得了可喜的成果。之前大多数关于小说喜福会的研究都将重点放在了分析由母女关系所反映出的不同文化之间的冲突。笔者认为,小说中的四对母女是小说当之无愧的主人公,但仅对女性形象进行研究，有失偏颇。因此，笔者从分析小说中出现的男性角色出发，总结出了作者笔下的男性形象的共同点，即大多以负面形象出现，并是父权的代言人。而且，在整个小说中男性角色的描绘所占很小，基本处于缺失和陪衬状态，综合以上两点的分析，得出了作者对父权思想的批判以及极力为女性争取发言权的女性主义立场。关键词：男性形象，父权思想，陪衬，女权主义Abstract: since the 1970s, Chinese American literature has gained growing attention through the endeavor of the Chinese American writers, represented by the successful writers, for instance, Maxine Hong Kingston and Amy-tan. The focus of this thesis is on the famous Chinese American writer, Amy Tan masterpiece: The Joy Luck Club (1989), which became an immediate success after publication. The Joy Luck Club has become the interest of academic circles, both domestic and overseas. Before, the studies on The Joy Luck Club are mainly from the angle of mother-daughters relationship, then to analyze the culture conflict behind it. The author of this thesis thinks that the four pair of the mother and daughters uncontroversial is the main characters, while, If just analyzes the book from the female images angle, will make the study unilaterally. Therefore, author of this thesis from the study of the male images in the book, to summaries the common characteristics of these male images, that is, they are all represented as the vicious images and the speaker of the patriarchy. Furthermore, author of the book describes little about the male characters, they are supportive role and even absence in some plots. To summarize, the above two points express authors criticize to patriarchy, endeavor for the female right to speak and her feminism view. Key words: male images, patriarchy, foil, feminismContentsIntroduction5Chapter One Introduction61.1 Biography of Amy-tan71.2 A Brief account of the joy luck club8Chapter Two Bil-angle Analysis of the Male Images in the Joy Luck Club102.1 Four Categories Male Images in the Joy Luck Club112.1.1 The “dead” Male Characters112.2.2 The incompetent Male Characters112.2.3 The Silent Male Characters122.2.4 The Selfish Male Characters122.2 From the view of male images portrayal vicious and male chauvinism142.2.1 Common features of the four categories of male-vicious142.2.2 Different relationships of husband and wife-a mirror of the inescapable sexism152.3 From the view of plots arrangement supportive role of the male characters17Chapter Three vicious and supportive role of the male characterhint of the authors feminism193.1 Inferior role of male characters and female-centered narration193.2female characters awakening- resistance to patriarchy203.3 dominant role? Submissive role?gender role of the male and female in the modern family22Conclusion24Notes:24Bibliography:26Male images in the joy luck clubIntroductionThe joy luck club, written by Amy-tan, attained great success after it was published. It remained the New York Times best-seller list for eight months and won both the national book award and the L.A. Times book award in 1989. Its popularity further helped Chinese American literature melt with into the mainstream literature and brought a new age Chinese American literature. The studies about it range from the mother-daughters relationship, culture conflicts, family education to the feminism analysis, etc. Through the story-telling writing method, Amy-tan shows readers four pairs of mother and daughters, and she sets the background of mothers in china, while the growing-up society of daughters is America. Two different social backgrounds make two different kinds of people, so the male characters they met uncontroversial are divided into two groups: Chinese male and America male. In the whole book, male characters play a inferior role, Amy-tan give the female characters priority, let themselves speak out their own thought, while in the narration of the female characters, Amy-tan leave little space for the male characters. This thesis focus on the male images in the book, in the first chapter, author of this thesis makes a brief introduction to the background information, including the history of Chinese-American literature, biography of Amy-tan and brief account of the joy luck club. Chapter two mainly from two different angles, culture and plots arrangement, to conclude that the vicious and absent male images which Amy-tan endowed to the male characters. Chapter three uses the conclusion of the chapter two, besides, through authors endeavor for females power of discourse, to gain authors view of feminism. Chapter One IntroductionChinese-American literature refers to fictions written in English by Americans of Chinese origin. The Chinese-American literature did not gain attention when at its early age. The Civil Rights Movement and the following campaigns of Womens Movement, Anti-Vietnam War and Minority Rights, in addition to the improvement in Sino-US relation, helped the mainstream of American society pay more attention to the Chinese image. The flourishing stage of Chinese American literature came since the middle of the 1970s. It was in 1976 when Maxine Hong Kingston published The Woman Warrior that Chinese American literature began to draw American readers attention. Later, more and more Chinese American writers show their talent in the American literary world and have gained recognition for the excellence and importance of their works. A good case in point is Amy Tan. Her maiden work, The Joy Luck Club, was published in 1989. As Maxine Hong Kingston, Tan attained great success. It remained on the New York Times best-seller list for eight months and won both the National Book Award and the L.A. Times Book Award in 1989. Its popularity further helped Chinese American literature melt into the mainstream Literature and brought a new age of Chinese American literature with her The Joy Luck Club.1.1 Biography of Amy-tan Amy Tan, also known as An-Mei Tan, was born in Oakland, California, in 1952. She was the second of three children and the only daughter born to John and Daisy Tan. During her early years, Amys family moved from place to place, finally settling down in Santa Clara, California. Amys parents were quiet people, who kept largely to themselves. Amy, however, eagerly sought to mix and merge with the American society around her. She learned to resent her Chinese appearance, heritage, and customs, for she felt they kept her from being in mainstream America. Throughout her youth, she struggled to erase her Chinese identity. Life grew even more difficult for her when her father and her brother, Peter, died of brain tumors when she was only fifteen years old. Her mother moved her and her remaining brother, John, to Switzerland. The move simply made Amy more rebellious. Amy was always a good student. When she was eight years old, she won an essay contest, which marked the beginning of her desire to become a writer. Her mother, however, wanted her to become a concert pianist or a neurosurgeon. The independent Amy followed her own desires. After graduating from high school in 1969, Amy enrolled in Linfield College in Oregon to study medicine. The next year she returned to California and pursued her studies at San Jose City College, where she changed her major to English and linguistics and began to write in earnest. She later transferred to San Jose State University and received a Bachelors degree in English and a Masters degree in Linguistics. Amy went on complete a doctoral program in Linguistics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. While still a student, she married Louis De Mattie, a tax attorney. In 1976, Amy became a language-development consultant for the Alameda County Association for Retarded Citizens. Although she also spent time writing business publications, she wanted to write fiction. In 1986, after her mother was hospitalized following a heart attack, Amy wrote a short story called “End Game”. The story deals with a child prodigy and her strained relationship with her mother. Later, Amy expanded the story into a collection of tales and named it The Joy Luck Club. In May 1986, the book was published and was received with overwhelming response, including rave reviews; it was soon on the best-seller list. For the book, Amy was nominated for the National Book Award for fiction and National Book Critics Circle Award. She was honored with the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award for fiction and the Commonwealth Club Gold Award. After the resounding success of her first novel, in 1991 Amy wrote The Kitchen Gods Wife, which is based on the life of her mother. In 1992, Amy published The Moon Lady, a childrens book expanding on an episode from The Joy Luck Club. Amy next wrote Chinas Boxer Rebellion; and The Hundred Secret Senses is her latest offering. Today she is acknowledged as one of the most successful writers in blending the old world and the new world into effective fiction. 1.2 A Brief account of the joy luck clubThe Joy Luck Club is Amy Tans first and most successful novel. The book comprises a series of short-story like vignettes that move back and forth in time and space, between the lives of four Chinese women in pre-1949 China and their American-born daughters in California. It tells stories about four pairs of mothers and daughters - Suyuan Woo and Jin-mei (June); Ammei Hsu and Rose; Lindo Jong and Waverly; Yin-ying St. Clair and Lena. These stories are told by seven voices, those of the mothers and daughters except for Suyuan Woo, who is dead when the story begins in the book. The different points of view enable the reader to look at the bittersweet mother-daughter relations from different angles. The mothers and daughters treat one another cautiously, playing a game of love and fear, need and rejection. The older women, who suffered in Old China and immigrated to the United States with new hopes, are ambitious for their daughters, but while they expect them to succeed in America, they want them to remain Chinese. The daughters consider themselves American and regard their mothers a source of embarrassment, for they speak fractured English, behave with Chinese manners, and wear funny looking dresses with high, stiff collars and slits up the sides. They want to be different from their mothers, and break loose from their mothers cultural gravity. They yearn to leave tradition behind. The mother-daughter relationships are a mixture of love and hostility, expectations and disappointments, conflicts and reconciliation. When the daughters become older and more mature, they begin to reconsider their identity and reevaluate their cultural heritage. They discover that their mothers are in their bones, and that heritage is not something they can ignore and shake off easily. After Suyuan Woos death, her daughter Jing Mei (June), is invited to sit in her mothers seat at the mah-jongg table. At first she feels uncomfortably out of place in this world from which she has struggled to distance herself. As the aunts talk over the mah-jongg game about themselves and their daughters, she begins to see her mothers generation in a different light. Finally the aunts inform Jing-mei that the two half sisters her mother had been forced to abandon during the war are still alive and are living in Shanghai. In the last section of the book Jing-mei tells about her trip to China to be united with the two sisters. “The minute our train leaves the Hong Kong border and enters Shenzhen, China, I feel different. I can feel the skin on my forehead tingling, my blood rushing through a new course, my bones aching with a familiar old pain. And I think my mother was right. I am becoming Chinese. ”1 The themes of the joy luck club rang from the intercultural communication to the generational love and the way to educate child in family, ect. Such verities point of view, prove that the book embodies much content and deserve to explore. Author of this paper try to from multi-angle analysis of the male images to put forward valuable view.Chapter Two Bil-angle Analysis of the Male Images in the Joy Luck ClubThe female characters in the joy luck club is in the leading position, the image of them is vivid, thoughtful and lively, while the male characters play a inferior role in the book, they are silent, wordless ,even only the name is present. In accordance with the authors understanding, the male characters are divided into four categories in this thesis as flow.2.1 Four Categories Male Images in the Joy Luck Club 2.1.1 The “dead” Male Characters They do not appear in the book, just the name is mentioned by others. They like a sign, also because their absence, the female characters experience a more miserable life. Suyun first husband is a Chinese Kuomintang officer. He does not appear in the book, but his existence is very ironical, in that turbulent period，though he is a man, a officer，but he even can not protect his own families. Before the Guilin was invasion by Japanese, Suyuan wanted to find him with their little twin daughters, suffered a lot on the way and finally got heave sick and reluctantly dropped her twin daughters with the will that the kind-hearted people can adapt them. Then she was saved by her second husband, canning woo, and latter got the news that her husband has scarified two weeks before. An-meis father is only a photo in the book. “The whole impression of father for me is the photo in the wall” 2 he dead when an-mei is very young, thus directly made an-meis mothers unfortunate life. An-meis mother was a strong but sorrowful woman, after being widowed while still young, was tricked into becoming the fourth wife of Wu Tsing. 2.2.2 The incompetent Male Characters This kind of male images are represented by Huang Tyan-yu. Tyan-yu is lindo jongs first husband, in china. His mother is Huang Taitai .when Tyan-yu and lindo are one and two, respectively, a matchmaker arranges for their marriage. Pampered and self-concerned, Tyan-yu makes lindos life extremely unpleasant when she comes to live with his family at the age of twelve. When lindo is sixteen, they get married, but tyan-yu remains very much a boy. He has no desire for lindo, The image of Lindo Jongs first husband, Huang Tyan-yu is an attempt for Amy Tan to destroy the stereotype of traditional men as tall and big, brave and fierce. In the eyes of Lindo, her little husband was just an incompetent man. Although they had married, they still slept in separate beds. Finally, Lindo gradually found “He had no desire for me, but it was his fear that made me think he had no desire for any women. He was like a little boy who had never grown up.” 3 Because of Huang Tyan-yus ignorance of sex, it was unlikely for him to exercise the function of reproduction as a man. Thus, both his natural property and his social property were impotent. That is to say, he didnt have the characteristics of traditional “men”. 2.2.3 The Silent Male Characters This kind of male characters have a common feature: in whatever circumstance, they are always silent, don not arise their voice, and also nobody notice their existence. In traditional Chinese culture norms, “father is to blame for his sons faults.” While in this book, author seems to advocate that “mother is to blame for her daughters faults.” In the four families, mother is the core of every family, when the daughters meet any difficulties; it is the mothers time to perform. When Rose marriage is in danger, she wants to approach the psychology doctors, her mother An-mei told her, “A mother is best, A mother knows what is inside you.” “A psyche-tricks will only make you hulihutu(糊里糊涂), make you see heimongmong（黑蒙蒙）” when Rose comes back to home, she thinks that “she is right.” Jing-mei woo reconsidered the meaning of her life, “she is the only one to consult, the only one to tell me the meaning of life; the only one can undertake my sorrows.”