(最终稿)从芭芭拉____史密斯的黑人女性主义批评视角看《宠儿》的弑婴母题

南京晓庄学院本科生学士学位论文从芭芭拉·史密斯的黑人女性主义批评视角看《宠儿》的弑婴母题ON THE MOTIF OF INFANTICIDE IN BELOVED FROM PERSPECTIVE OF BARBARA SMITH’SBLACK FEMINIST CRITICISM所在院（系）：行知学院学生：张林枫指导老师：陈永研究起止日期：2010年6月至2011年4月二○一一年四月Abstract and Key WordsAbstract:Beloved by Toni Morrison is taken as the best of Morrison’s works. Based on the real story of Margaret Garner, a black woman, Morrison has presented a full picture of the miserable situation ofthe black women under the oppression of slavery. The present thesis attempts to make a tentative study on infanticide from perspective of Babara Smith’s black feminism theory. It mainly analyzes Sethe’s infanticide and presents what prompts her to kill her baby. Sethe is constantly exposed to the traumas under the oppression of slavery, racism and sexism, and her infanticide indicates her self-consciousness and resistance to these oppressions.Key words: infanticide; black feminism; Sethe摘要：托尼·莫里森的《宠儿》被誉为莫里森的最杰出的著作。

小说的原型来源于玛格丽特·加纳，一个女黑奴的真实经历。

本文试图从芭芭拉史密斯的黑人女性主义理论角度探究这部小说的弑婴主题。

本文着重分析塞丝的弑婴经历，并剖析其原因。

在奴隶制、种族主义以及性别歧视三重压迫下，塞丝身心遭受巨大的折磨。

塞丝的弑婴意味着她的觉醒和反抗。

关键词：弑婴；黑人女性主义；塞丝CONTENTS1. Introduction.................................................................................... 错误！未定义书签。

1.1 Introduction to Beloved1.2 Introduction to Toni Morrison and Black Feminism1.3 Literature Review2. Analysis of Infanticide in Beloved from the Feminist Perspective 错误！未定义书签。

2.1 Sethe’s Suffering fr om Slavery, Racism and Sexism2.2 Sethe’s Awakening of Self-consciousness2.3 Sethe’s Infanticide3. Conclusion (6)Bibliography (7)Acknowledgements (8)On the Motif of Infanticide in Beloved from the Perspective of Barbara Smith’s Black Feminist Criticism1. Introduction1.1 Introduction to Beloved and Toni MorrisonBeloved presents the truths that even history sometimes fails to deliver. Morrison dedicates the novel to “Sixty Million and More” slaves and acknowledges the freedom that all the slaves yearned for (Therese, 2001). The publication of Belove d in 1987 shakes the American literary world, and is heralded as a milestone in American literary history.Set in the Reconstruction era (1870-90) after the Civil War and emancipation, the novel revolves around a child murder case committed by a desperate slave mother in Cincinnati, Ohio for protecting her daughter from the potential sufferings of slavery. It is inspired by a true story of Margaret Garner, an escaped slave from Kentucky who chose death for herself and her children rather than suffering from the misery and indignity of slavery. However, she succeeded only in killing one and the rest were recaptured and sold. Morrison transplants the true story into the novel and creates the mother infanticide Sethe, and the dead baby Beloved (Andrews, 1999). This novel penetrates deeply into the hearts of black women and reveals their agonies and distorted maternal love under the multiple oppressions of sexism, racism and class prejudices imposed on black women.Toni Morison is the first black female writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. She is hailed as a remarkable representative of black female writers. She believes that she is a “black woman novelist”, as she says, “As a black and a woman, I have access to a range of emotions and perceptions that were unavailable to p eople who were neither.” (Caldwell, 1994: 243)Throughout her life, Toni Morrison has contributed to the study and development of black and women literature. In addition to Beloved, she has written even more novels. As a matter of fact, Morrison’s novels are closely associated with two notions: “black” and “female”. Seven out of her eight novels are drawn from women’s unique experiences. In her writings, Morrison is dedicated to breaking the stereotyped black female figures portrayed in the canon of American literature,vividly creates a wide range of new images of black women, and presents the black women’s subjectivity. Besides, Morrison is also engaged in the description of black men and their relationship with women. Morrison’s great concern over the i ssues of black men exerts profound influence on other black women writers and stimulates the shift of the focus in black feminist criticism. Toni Morrison clearlyknows her responsibility as an American black woman writer. She takes presenting the American social realities and destinies of common Americans as her major tasks. In Toni Morrison’s works, it is easy to perceive her sensitive insight, elegant language, talented writing and her honesty and outspokenness, with which she is able to reexamine the bl ack people’s experiences, especially the black women’s struggling against sexism, racism and classism.1.2 Introduction to Black FeminismBlack feminism is deep-rooted in the struggles of black women for generations. The introduction of black feminism into literature is of great importance. Among the black feminism critics, Barbara Smith is a forerunner. In her landmark essay “Toward a Black Feminist Criticism” published in 1977, Barbara Smith names black feminist criticism and explicitly states the three points: first, feminist criticism must recognize the long literary history of black women because “black women writers constitute an identifiable literary tradition which parallels the tradition of Black men and white women”.(Showalter, 1985:174) Second, black feminist critics should “look first for precedents and insights in interpretation within works of other Black women.” (Showalter, 1985:175) Third, the politics of sex and the politics of race and gender are critically interlocked in the writings of Black women writers. Beloved reveals Barbara Smith’s two basic principles that black feminist criticism is expected to follow. Morrison agrees with the notion that “the politics of sex as well as the politics of race and class are crucially interlocking fac tors” (Showalter, 1985:170). Therefore, she makes an intensive analysis of how complexities of class, race, and sex affect black women and the whole Afro-American ethnic group.1.3 Literature ReviewEver since its publication, Beloved has drawn attention from critics and scholars, who attempt to interpret it from as many different perspectives as possible.Some critics take the novel as an expression of ideology. Some critics focus on mothering and motherhood. To Margaret Atwood, the focus is on Sethe. Beloved should be interpreted as a tale of thick maternal love seeking for an ultimate way out for liberation of the black women. Jan Furman takes the novel as a song for Sethe’s maternal love and sacrifice. Stephanie A. Demetrakopoulous explores how slav ery denies Sethe’s maternal love and twists it into a terrible infanticide. Ashraf H. A. Rushdy, based on Sigmund Freud’s theory, analyzes the characters from perspective of psychology. Feminists attempt to interpret the novel from a feminist perspective b y analyzing the nature of woman slave’s oppression (Tian Wei, 2008).In China, the critical studies of Beloved mainly focus on the analysis of the novel’s narrative characteristics, theme, mother-daughter relationship,symbolism and imagery.Zhao Na (2006) interprets the main characters in the novel and how they suffer from the traumas based on Freud’s psychological theory. She concludes in her MA thesis, based on history, represents the history of the black’s being oppressed and seeking for identity. Hao Xianfeng (2010) explores the hardships that Sethe experiences in the journey of gaining freedom and liberation. According to Hao, it is the genuine love that overthrows the cruel slavery. Zhao Yan (2010) explores the employment of symbolism in the novel. He points out that the employment of symbolism plays an important role in presenting human beings’ mentality, promoting the development of plot, deepening the theme of the novel and expanding the readers’ imagination.The findings of critics indicate that Beloved is loaded with implications. Although these studies have touched upon infanticide, no intensive study has been made on the topic from the feminist perspective. The introduction of feminist criticism into literature actually provides us with a totally new perspective to interpret the novel.2. Analysis of Infanticide in Beloved from the Feminist PerspectiveThe woman protagonist, Sethe, is a typical American black woman slave in a society controlled by slavery. She constantly rebels against the traditional mold imposed on black women and explores freedom and independence. Therefore, she stands far apart from other Negroes. Despite her resolution and boldness, Sethe leads an unhappy life as she is haunted by the past experience of infanticide.2.1 Sethe’s Suffering from Slavery, Racism and SexismSlavery, racism and sexism are the common themes in black literature. In Beloved, Morrison explores the issues through portraying a series of female characters. Description of Sethe best manifests the themes. Sethe lives under the triple oppressions of slavery, racism and sexism.The formation of slavery is based on the notion that slaves are the legal property of slave owners, which indicates that the slaves are not treated as human beings but objects. Under the slavery system, black women are suffering from the poor economic conditions;thus, they have to work outside their homes, which makes it hardly possible for them to offer proper care to their children. The slavery system not only erodes the black physically, but also destroys them spiritually. Slavery fetters them in that the slaves cannot lift themselves out of their miserable life. In Beloved, Sethe, as a capable black woman and mother, is suffering from loss of motherhood under slavery. She cannot protect her children from being persecuted by slavery in a normal way.Thus, she unwillingly kills her daughter. When the ghost of the killed baby returns, Sethe feels obliged to provide Beloved, whether her daughter or not, “a bed to sleep in and som ebody there not worrying you to death about what you gotto do each day to deserve it” (Morrison, 2000: 67- 68). The slavery once leads to the loss if motherhood, as Kubitschek notes, “On the plantations...black women’s nurturance—from the physical (nursing milk) to the metaphysical (energy and patience)—is used up primarily in working fields and tending white children” (1998:166). Therefore, when the ghost returns, Sethe has her responsibility as a mother. But for Sethe, who was able to have her children w ith her, “the major means of protecting children from slavery is to value them” (Kubitschek, 1998: 166). All in all, slave women are worthless unless they have the capacity of producing children like animals.Persecuted by racism, Africans were forced to abandon their African language and culture. Instead, they were forced to accept a new language and culture of whites. In Beloved, Morrison displays the picture of Sethe’s childhood in a manner similar to montage. In the picture, Black men and women sing songs and dance. Sethe recalls her childhood back in Africa. “sometimes they danced the antelope. The men as well as the ma’ams, one of whom was certainly her own. They shifted shapes and became something other. Some unchained, demanding others whose feet knew her pulse better than she did” (Morrison, 2000: 31). When she is at early age, Sethe could understand the language, but several years later she cannot remember or recall her native language. The imposition of language and culture displays how deliberately a ruling group of white people maintains a social hierarchy to retain their own privileges, to exploit black people and to ultimately put them at the maximum disadvantage.Besides, sexism is another shackle imposed on the black woman. The black women are taken as a “natural thing” to provide labor and to give birth to new laborers. Their basic emotion of love is suppressed and ignored, and they are even deprived of the right to be a wife and woman. “Slaves not supposed to have pleasure feelings on their own; their bodies not supposed to be like that, but they have to have as many children as they can to please whoever owned them” (Morrison, 2000: 209). Sethe comes to Sweet Home simply because Baby Sugg is too old to work For Sethe, she is deprived of the maternal love. She has a vague memory of her mother. Nor does Sethe can remember what language her mother speaks. Besides, Sethe suffers from loss of names. Naming is a critical means of keeping track of identity, place of origin and family bloodline. In an interview with Thomas LeClair (1994), Morrison states the significance of names and naming: “If you come from Africa, your name is gone. It is particularly problematic because it is not just your name but your family, your tribe. When you die, how can y ou connect with your ancestors if you have lost your name? That’s a huge psychological scar” (cited in Peach, 1998: 57). Sethe has no idea of what her original American name is. As a result, she suffers from a serious identity crisis and the distorted mentality. As a salve woman, she has nothing. Sethe is nothing but a subhuman. She once believes that she has “animal characteristics.”2.2 Sethe’s Awakening of Self-consciousnessSethe is a victim to slavery. Living in a society rampant with racism and sexual discrimination, she is forced to lose the self-hood but accept the existing social order and patriarchal ideas. As Sethe was born to a slave mother, she is doomed to have the doomed identity---a slave. The deprivation of her mother’s love makes Sethe completely live in a world with shackles. It is impossible for a black child like Sethe to gain self-identity.Seth lives in Sweet Home, where the owner Mr. Garner claims that he treats his slaves as human beings. The men of Sweet Home have the rights of “buy [ing] a mother, choose a horse or a wife, handle guns, even learn reading if they wanted to” (Morrison 125), they were allowed to do so only as Garners’ property and within th e bounds of his property. During the time when Mr. Garner is in charge of the Sweet Home, Sethe has the fantasy for something unrealistic-living as the precocious child of benevolent white parents has. When Halle asks her to be his wife, Sethe happily agrees and then at a loss as to what to do next. Therefore, she turns to Mrs. Garner for help as she regards. Mrs. Garner as her loving parent. When Mr. Garner’s brother-in-law, the schoolteacher, takes over Sweet Home after Mr. Garner’s death, Sweet Home chan ges to a horrible black slave community. Schoolteacher attempts to instill into the pupils’ minds that the black are properties and animals. The school teacher’s teaching wakens Sethe, who gains the strength to plan an escape. Early, Sethe and other slaves plan to escape under the guidance of two men, because “only Sixo, who has been stealing away to see his woman, and Halle, who has been hired away for years, know what lies outside Sweet Home and how to get there (Morrison, 2000: 223).” However, their plan fails. Without men’s help and guidance, the six-month pregnant Sethe manages her harsh escape owing to her strong desire for life and freedom. “I did it. 1 got us all out. Without Halle too. Up till then it was the only thing I ever did on my own. Decided. And it came off right, like it was supposed to…” (Morrison, 2000: 162).The journey of escape indicates Sethe’s awakening of self-consciousness. Having been persecuted for a long period of time, Sethe is finally awakened that she should bravely struggle for freedom and identity. Sethe’s successful escape is kindled by her strong desire for maternal right and the bright future of her children. For the first time, she comes to realize that it is important to reclaim for maternal love and self-identity by freeing her from the slavery oppression.2.3 Sethe’s InfanticideThe event of infanticide runs throughout the novel. What is noteworthy is that the white people have nothing to do with the death of the baby, but that it is caused by the black and by the baby’s mother, a black woman. The elaboration on the infanticide helps reveal the forceful destruction that slavery has brought about to the black people both physically and spiritually.Sethe’s struggle for identity is highlighted when she kills her baby. When her milk for the baby is taken away, she decides to send her children away to construct the new identity for herself and herchildren as well.To protect her children from the cruel slavery, she courageously ends their lives. She will never allow her children to be persecuted by slavery and sexism. “And though she and the others lived through and got over it, she could never let it happen to her own. The best thing she was, was her children. Whites might dirty her all right, but not her best thing, her beautiful, magical best thing-the part of her that was clean.” (Morrison, 2000:251) She herself has suffered from the loss of her own mother and deprivation of the maternal love. Therefore, she knows well that her children would never belong to her as she is a slave mother. However, as a free woman, she believes that she has the right to love her children, so Sethe tries to “hurt the hurter” (Morrison, 2000:234) in the form of a handsaw. It is morally wrong. However, she should not be blamed for the deed. As a slave mother, she has no choice. The black women’s killing their infants can be justified when we take an in-depth look into what Elizabeth Fox-Genovese explains. For Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, children are the properties of their owners;thus, some slave women hold that “by killing an infant they loved, they would be in some wav reclaiming it as their own” (Fox-Genovese, 1998: 324). Infanticide is cruel, an action that human beings are ashamed of. However, it is the most consummate way to resist the notorious slavery in the most helpless situation. This extreme behavior to resist slavery clearly reveals she has realized that self-identity is inviolable. However, after an eighteen-year reflection on infanticide, Sethe gradually realizes that it is better to find an active way to protect children and her dignity as a human being.Infanticide is immoral and kind of crime. By presenting the miserable experiences of a slave mother, Morrison intends to arouse sympathy for Sethe. However, Morrison does not advocate infanticide as the act runs counter to the traditional African principle of survival. In Morrison’s mind, infanticide is “absolutely the right thing to do ...but also the thing you have no right to do” (Peach, 1998: 17). By describing Sethe, Morrison demonstrates the racial oppression poses threat to the humanity of both the oppressors and the oppressed.3. ConclusionToni Morrison, as the first black woman writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, makes immeasurable contributions to the contemporary literature, especially black women literature. The present thesis has made a tentative study on Sethe’s infanticide in her novel Beloved from the feminist perspective. Sethe is constantly exposed to the traumas as a result of slavery, racism and sexism, and her infanticide indicates her self-consciousness and resistance to the oppressions. The vivid portrait of Sethe makes Beloved become the manifesto of black feminism. Although Morrison breaks the stereotyped mother images---- all-nurturing, caring and devoted Great Mothers, the mother image represented by Sethe is more real. Although Sethe immorally kills her baby, she does that for helping her children gain freedom. It is expected that this study has contributed to Feminist studies and African A merican studies,and will help deepen readers’ understanding of the female protagonist in the novel.Bibliography[1] Andrews, William L.& Nellie Y Mckay. Toni Morrison’s Beloved: A Casebook [M]. New York: Oxford UniversityPress. 1999.[2] Caldwell, Gail. Author Toni Morrison Discusses Her Latest Novel Beloved [A], in Dandle Peach, [3] Fox-Genovese,Elizabeth. Within the Plantation Household [M]. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,1988.[4] Linden. Toni Morrison [M]. Palgrave Macmillan, 1998.[5] Morrison, Toni. Beloved [M]. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2000.[6] Kubitschek, Missy Gehn. Toni Morrison: a Critical Companion[M]. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press,1998.[7] Showalter, Elaine, eds. The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature, and Theory[M]. New York:Random House, 1985.[8]Taylor-Guthrie (eds) Conversation with Toni Morrison [C]. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1994.[9] Therese, E. Higgins. Studies in African American History [M]. New York: Routledge, 2001.[10] 郝险峰. 《宠儿》黑人农奴制最后的复仇与解体[J]. 长城.2010 (6).[11] 田巍. 破茧重生—对《宠儿》的女性哥特解读[D]. 华北电力大学硕士学位论文, 2008.[12] 赵娜. 伤痛与愈合: 托尼莫里森小说《宠儿》中癔症的精神分析研究[D]. 西北大学硕士学位论文, 2006.[13] 赵燕. 《宠儿》中象征意蕴的多重解读[J]. 考试周刊, 2010 (43).。