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1、合肥师范学院 2012 届本科生毕业论文(设计)1.1 Significance of the ResearchThis thesis analyzes Toni Morrison nso vel Beloved, in which the black woman Sethe kills her daughter by sawing her head with a handsaw, and for this reason years later the little ghost comes back to revenge Sethe.In recent years, scholars have
2、 concentrated on analyzingB eloved s literary featurest,hemes and its contents. Every generation has its own understanding about the novel and its value. This thesis focuses on illustrating Sethe rse sentments against slavery. To a large extent, black women s psychology, human nature and maternal lo
3、ve are distorted because of the long-term persecution of slavery, such as Sethe, who even kills her daughter. This thesis is digging out the different form and expression of maternal love in the novel Beloved by comparing it with normal maternal love. Under the oppression of cruel slavery and other
4、factors aroused by it, black women have no choice but to do something seeming cruel.1.2 Organization of the PaperThis thesis mainly analyzes the protagonist abnso rmal maternal love and its reasons. After an overall introduction, I will briefly present studies of this novel by scholars coming from h
5、ome and abroad. The main part focuses on the motherhood of the black woman Sethe, especially stating the reasons of Sethe s abnormal maternal love, includicnrgu ethltey of slavery, lacking of maternal love in her childhood and Schoolteacher opps ression. At last, a conclusion will be given to termin
6、ate the thesis.Chapter 2 Literature Review1合肥师范学院 2012 届本科生毕业论文(设计)Toni Morrison (1931- ) is one of the most famous contemporary black writers. Morrison pays great attention to black people and has written a series of novels concerning black people miserable fate. Toni Morrison s novels are famou sv
7、 ifvoird dialogue, special themes and typical characters. In her novels, Morrison profoundly explores the inner world of black people, including love, race, religious belief, alienation, friendship, and betrayal, sex, and even supernatural, especially African American women s privileged and sensitiv
8、e observation. In her novels, she shows people, language, and society concepts of value, places, politics, and cultural traditions that have influenced African American people as well as herself.In 1993, Morrison won Nobel Prize for Literature. As the first African American who reached the honor, sh
9、e has gained reputation all over the world and has been famous as one of the major figures in American national literature.Beloved is published in 1987 and is viewed as Morrison s best novel. The heroine of this novSethe, who fled from the Sweet Homethe plantation in Kentucky. While a posse arrives
10、in Ohio andtries to capture her back, she kills her daughter and tries to kill the other three children. Filled with suspense and bitter poetry,B eloved is an extraordinary achievement. Glaring at the abyss of slavery, this excellent novel portrays history in the form of a story, which is as meaning
11、ful as Exodus and as smooth as a lullaby.After publishing, this novel has gained a critical success. It won the many prizes. Moreover, it has been adapted into film in 1998. Nowadays, the literary world still has a high praise for this novel, for example, Chicago Sun-Time once regarded Beloved as To
12、ni Morrison s best work and that this novel excellently displays her prodigious. Los Angeles Times considered “iti s even deemed to be such a masterwork that I can t imagine American literature can without it” .However, there still are some controversial about the novel. On the one hand, critics con
13、sider it is melodramatic even self-indulgent to some extent. On the other hand, admirers of the novel say these criticis ms fail to appreciate Morrison ims aginative risks are necessitated in her magnitude topic. Based on so much argumentation, scholars from home and abroad are increasingly more. Co
14、nsequently, I would like to illustrate a few of them as follows.To begin with, domestic scholars also attach much attention to this novel. Qi Jixiang, an instructor in Hebei Foreign Language Professional School, published an article on the interpretation of Beloved合肥师范学院 2012 届本科生毕业论文(设计)identity. X
15、ie Juan Memosr y, Storytelling and Survival in Beloved focuses on discussing the battered survivors of slavery and their offspring who grow up in the shadow. Another Chinese scholar, Jiang Jiuhong studies the contradiction between maternal love and self-construction as well as the Lacanian psychoana
16、lysis of Beloved. Based on Lacantsh eory of three-dimensional world, she analyzed the psychological activities of Sethe when she killed her child and how did Sethe overcome her psychogenic disorder. Wang Xiaogang and Huang Zhen interpreted the multiple identities of Beloved and claimed that the dive
17、rsity and openness of Beloved sid entity was naturally showed under the influence of postmodernism.When it comes to overseas scholars, studies on the novel are more diversified. Take Tadd Ruetenik, an instructor in philosophy at Pennsylvania State University, for instance, wrote a thesis nameAdn ima
18、l Liberation or Human Redemption: Racism and Specialism in Toni Morrisons Beloved. He abstracted:Toni Morrisons Beloved is a morally sophisticated slave narrative that (among many otherthings) deals with the topic of racism in American historical consciousness. It also implicitly addresses the issue
19、 of specialism. Morrison s novel is a poignant example of human meliorism, and yet is also a useful illustration of how the issue of human well-being cannot be cleanly separated from consideration of animal exploitation. To be sure, Beloved does little to promote the interests of exploited animals,
20、focusing instead on exploited humans. Morrison s masterpiece seems to justify animal exploitation as a condition for the liberatio n of human slaves (22).Besides, Lars Eckstein A sl ove supreme: jazz-thetic strategies in Toni Morrisons Beloved pays attention to the importance of music, not only conc
21、erning Beloved, but also with regard to the predicament of black Diaspora. Eckstein said:“ WBeitlho vredg ainr dp atort icular, her musical scopehas received little critical attention. While Morrisons subsequent novel Jazz has been acand praised for its use of musical technique, Beloved has rarely b
22、een read under similar premises (Eckstein 2006). ”合肥师范学院 2012 届本科生毕业论文(设计)Chapter 3 Analysis of Maternal Love3.1 Maternal Love in Common SenseLove is not to be constrained in the aridness and simplicity of biology, but is to be left floating delicate and innocent of any material reality. The relatio
23、nship between a mother and her child is different from other human beings relationships mboetchaeurse as love for her child is irreplaceable.合肥师范学院 2012 届本科生毕业论文(设计)This is referred to be the wonder of maternal love. Although it cannot be defined or explained, it is universally regarded as one of th
24、e strongest and greatest forms of love that existing all over the world. It is proven to be the strongest form of love because of the fact that it is the first kind of love that everyone experience after he is born. The levels of maternal love may be different from one to another. Maternal love is t
25、he primary and visible love in the world. It is holy and is the earliest love created by progression.Mother-children relationship is devout and it is a special part in motherly love. It flows naturally between mother and children and there is not any intention in maternal love. Mo ther fese lings ar
26、e honest and generous. Maternal love teaches babies to be strong and prepares them the necessary abilities to survive in the malicious and complicated world. Maternal love always inspires children to be excellent in doing their task. In aw ord, mother s love is invaluable.In a family, the relationsh
27、ip between mother and children is most important because the relationship between mother and children has crucial and significant influences in the whole life of children. Only with enough maternal love, can children be able to grow up strongly. It is proven that if children can not be provided with
28、 enough love in the initial stages, they will end up being weaker when attempting to make it in the harsh world. The mother-children bond develops as soon as the mother becomes impregnated.According to scientific study, the rudiment of children s personality has been formed wfive years old. How the
29、mother fosters and treats children will deeply affect the form of children s personality. To each infant, mother is the person who is not only the primary emotional attachment but also the teacher of cultural attitudes and concepts of value. (Sharp 2003:25).Motherhood is a permanent theme in the lit
30、erary world at any times and any places. As we all know, almost every mother tends to impart all of her love to her children. Mother is full of love and devotion and every mother can have the patience of saints. Mother wish is her children can grow healthily and happily. A great number of mothers ha
31、ve fostered a maternal awareness,t hat is, they would like to devote themselves to their children with all respect. Nevertheless,i n Beloved, the representation of protagonist s maternal love to her children is different and monstrous.3.2 Sethe s Exmtree Love to Her Children合肥师范学院 2012 届本科生毕业论文(设计)T
32、he baby Beloved, not more than two years old, was killed with the head sawed off by her own mother using a handsaw. In this novel, Sethes maternal love is so“ thick ” that she kiand destroys herself. The incarnation of her daughter seems to testify strength of maternal love and the necessity of pass
33、ing on mother sst ories of love and resistance. As the only female slave in Sweet Home, Sethe has been torn not only from the Schoolteachers recor-dli koef thraeirt sa,n simucahl ashis pupils milking and his wiping, but also torn from her own infanticide of Beloved. She kills her infant daughter so
34、as to prevent her from being defined as racially inferior and animalistic when she grows up as well as from being dirtied in the future. As a slave, the infanticide and brutality she suffered infused her everyday life and convinced the fact that past trauma can never be eradicated. Shelives in the s
35、hadow of the past; whats more, she is unable to find a way out omf tehme opraiesst .Eighteen years later, the dead baby reincarnates and appears in Bluestone Road to ask for love fromSethe, which makes her exhausted under the torture of the past.Morrison has said that “I think, every time I write, I
36、m writing about love or its absence, although I dont start out in that way.Morrison ”B se loved is about maternal love as well as its distortion and loss, and also about slaughter with the bloodThen what are the causes for the distortion or loss of Sethe maternal love?Chapter 4 Reasons of Sethes Ext
37、reme Love4.1 Social Background Cruelty of SlaveryThe social background of the novel and the protagonists twisted maternal love is slavery.United States, slavery is a kind of cheap labor power which existed as a legal institution in North America for more than a century. It exists in the South until
38、the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment合肥师范学院 2012 届本科生毕业论文(设计)coming to the United States Constitution in 1865 after the American Civil War. A large amount of slaves are black people and their freedom is held by the white, moreover, some Native Americans and free blacks also hold some slaves. Befor
39、e the establishment of chattel slavery (outright ownership of a person as well as his/her descendants), black slavery labor was controlled under a system of bonded labor known as indentured servitude. This system lasted for many years. People paid with their labor for the costs of transport to colon
40、ies. They make arrangements for poor economies in their countries. From the 16th centuries to 19th centuries, almost 12 million Africans were shipped to the Americas as slaves, among which almost 645,000 were shipped to where is known as the United States nowadays.There is no doubt that slavery is t
41、he cruelest system in human society. Slaves were the property of the slave owners and slave owners can buy or sell them with the land they worked in. Even after the southern laws were extended to cancel the prohibition against allowing slaves to testify, the court still found it very difficult to de
42、termine the line between cruelty and correction. However, beating slaves couldn bte prosecuted as crime. Even though white slaver owners killed a slave would not be considered as guilty because they have right to dispose their property. The legal right of property left it no doubt of the slaves utte
43、r dependence on their master. They had no right in things and whatever thmight acquire belonged to their masters. The description of the slavery system by Morrison is historically true.In discussing motherhood in slavery, Barbara Christian reveals that the African emphasis on woman as mother was dra
44、stically 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 community,“ the slave mother has no choice to choose” .As an African American writer, Toni Morrison f
45、ully realizes the bitterness of black people. She centers on exploring the miserable slavery period, especially slave women bear the destruction at that time, in order to reveal the harm which slavery brought to the mothers. Here is a paragraph from which we can see their tragedy:It made sense for a
46、 lot of reasons because in all of Baby s life, as well as Sethe s own, men and women were moved around like checkers. Anybody Baby Suggs knew, let alone loved, who hadn t run off or been hanged, got rented out, loaned out, bought up, brought back, stored up, mortgaged, won, stolen or seized. So Baby
47、 s eight children had six fathers. What she called the nastiness of life was the shock she received upon learning that nobody stopped playing checkers just because the pieces included her children (23).合肥师范学院 2012 届本科生毕业论文(设计)Morrison reflects the sorrow that slavery bring to black people, especiall
48、y on the slave mothersAlmost every black person in Beloved is suffered by the shadow of slavery. Their memory is full of bloody wounds and hurt. They are eager to forget the past and they dare not to touch the terrible memory. However, they have to live in the circle of sorrow because it is very har
49、d to avoid the terrible memory that always flows out in their minds.Being not willing to see the little girl follow the same disastrous road with her, that is, sufferingfrom the tragic life under the oppression of slavery, the protagonist has no choice but to kill the baby.4.2 Lack of Maternal Love
50、in Her ChildhoodAnother important reason lies in Sethes lack of nurture and maternal love in her childhood. Sethemother is a one of survivors of the Middle Passage, who is often raped by the ghost without skin” i“n the ship, what ms ore, white men throws away all her children far away. When Sethe ms
51、 other is shipped to America and is sold to work in the plantations, she is still often raped by slave owners; at last, she is hanged. Although Sethe has her fathers name, she has no ideal about her father and her family ancestors. Like other children in the big plantation, baby Sethe is nursed by a
52、 one-armed slave woman, who is called Nan.When it comes to Sethes mother s maternal love, we can trace back tBoe tlhoev endo: vel“Your woman she never fix up your hair?” was clearlyfo ar Sqeutehseti,o snince that s who she was looking at.“My woman? You mean my mother? If she did, I dont remember. I
53、didnt see her but a fewtimes out in the fields and once when she was working indigo. By the time I woke up in the morning, she was in line. If the moon was bright they worked by its light. Sunday she slept like a stick. She must of nursed me two or three weeks thats the way the others did. Then she
54、went back in rice and I sucked from another woman whose job it was. So to answer you, no. I reckon not. She never fixed my hair nor nothing. She didn evt en sleep in the same cabin most nights I remember. Too far from the line-up, I guess. One thing she did do. She picked me up and carried me behind
55、 the smokehouse. Back there she opened up her dress front and lifted her breast and pointed under it. Right on her rib was a circle and a cross burnt right in the skin. She said,This is your amnad she poianmte.d T. his, I am the onlyone got this mark now. The rest dead. If something happens to me an
56、d y ou can t tell me by my face, you can know me by this mark. Sc ared me so. All I could think of was how important this was and how I needed to have something important to say back, but I couldnthink of anything so I just said what I thought.Yes, Ma am, I said.But how will y 合肥师范学院 2012 届本科生毕业论文(设
57、计)me? How will you know me? Mark me, too, I said.Mark the mark on me too.” Sethechuckled. “Did she? ” asked Denver.“She slapped my face.”“What for? ”“I didn t understand it then. Not till I had a mark of my own.” Whahtappened to her? ”“ Hung. By the time they cut her down nobody could tell whether s
58、he had a circle and a cross or not, least of all me and I did look. (61). ”The quotation above indicates that Sethes mother has never fixed up Sethetion s hair,nurtured her as a mother usually does. But we can still have an insight into her love by the words that she slapped Sethe s face.Milk is sym
59、bolized as an expression of mothers love. Therefore, lacking of motherviewed as symbolic of maternal abandonment. Sethe s mother is only allowed two or three weeks to nurse the infant Sethe, which is long enough to guarantee the survival of the baby. This kind of situation is common. It is a mercilessly brief ti
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