토니 모리슨 소설에 나타난 흑인모성 연구 = A study of black motherhood in Toni Morrison's Novels
저자
발행사항
화성: 수원대학교 대학원, 2002
학위논문사항
학위논문(박사)-- 수원대학교 대학원: 영어영문학과 2002
발행연도
2002
작성언어
한국어
KDC
843.09 판사항(4)
발행국(도시)
경기도
형태사항
195 p.; 26 cm.
일반주기명
참고문헌 : p.177-189
소장기관
This thesis deals with black motherhood in Toni Morrison's novels. Morrison retains a firm position as a great novelist in the history of American literature by representing the life and history of African-American people with a new perspective. Morrison has been especially concerned with African-American women, who have so often been omitted or considered as not so important in American literature. In her novels Morrison reveals and criticizes racial and sexual suppression afflicted on African-American women throughout history.
While representing African-American women's struggle to survive under slavery and poverty, Morrison shows her deep concerns about what kinds of experiences African-American women have had as mothers. It is imagined that it has not been an easy thing for African-American women even to be mothers, let alone good mothers, under slavery or in poverty. Morrison represents various distorted aspects of black motherhood and ultimately argues the slavery system and the white-dominated society is to blame.
Just as motherhood has been beautified and even worshipped in part as an ideology concocted historically and politically in order to support the patriarchal system, the concept of black motherhood has been distorted by white slave owners who needed some kind of ideology in order to continue the setup of the slavery system. The whites contend that African-American women don't have noble motherhood which distinguishes human beings from animals. African-American women have been regarded as being well satisfied with the role of mammies of white babies and concubines of white men. This false myth has prevailed for a long time and still reappears in American literature and in popular culture. Blalck nationalists have had a tendency to emphasize the noble and dedicated African-American women in order to reject these false stereotypes.
Morrison tries to face up to the realities and represents the real situation of African-American women as mothers. Ultimately she criticizes the one-sided history written by the whites and rewrites the new herstory. Morrison deals with a considerable period of time in her novels and shows that black motherhood appears to differ with each period, according to economic and social situations. This thesis deals with the changes in black motherhood from the period of slavery to the present age.
Prior to observing Morrison's work, this thesis intends to research the definition of motherhood and how black motherhood appears in slave narratives such as the autobiography of Frederick Douglass which shows the African-American man's perspective on black motherhood, and the portrayals of black motherhood by an African-American woman Herriet Jacobs, as well as black motherhood depicted by a white woman author Herriet Beecher Stowe.
This thesis divides black motherhood in Morrison's novels into four categories: motherhood as resistance, authoritative or overly indulgent mothers, motherhood distorted by the white values, and desirable mothers in the black community.
Motherhood as resistance deals with the novel Beloved, which tells about a run-away slave Sethe who killed her own daughter in order to save her from being a slave. This thesis argues that the act of killing her own child might have been an unavoidable choice and the only way of resisting for an African-American woman who tries to retain her right as a mother under slavery in which black motherhood is totally crushed.
The chapter on authoritative and overly indulgent motherhood deals with the dilemma of black mothers who have been liberated from slavery but are still struggling for survival under extremely poor situations without their husband. Morrison criticizes that though some of these women succeed in surviving their poverty, they in turn become overly authoritative or overly indulgent laissez-faire mothers. These mothers fail to give full love to their children and, in turn, fail to gain confidence from their children.
After her husband left home, Eva in Sula shows herself to be very strong in her will to overcome the realities of life, to the extent that she would sacrifice even one of her legs in order to receive insurance money as a living means. In the meantime, Eva shows herself to be like a goddess who tries to decide the life and death of her children. She burns and kills her son Plum, who became a zombie due to his drug abuse. On the other hand, Hannah in Sula and Reva in Song of Solomon lose even their voice, being veiled by their mother's strong force. Hannah and Reva are careless and indifferent to their daughters and become overly indulgent mothers who give no help to their daughters' growth.
The next chapter deals with Morrison's criticism of African-American women who let themselves be dominated and manipulated by white values. They try hard to resemble the whites as the perfect models and, as a result, lose their identities as African-American women, and, in the end, become mothers who neglect their children's desires and identities by only teaching white values. Pauline and Geraldine in The Bluest Eye, Helene in Sula, and Ruth in Song of Solomon are representatives who have been colonized by the white culture.
Pauline, being attracted by Hollywood movies which represent and advertize the white value, loses her identity and becomes a perfect model of a black mammy, the legacy of slavery. Geraldine and Helene, experiencing cultural discord in the effort of imitating an image of a model "domestic wife" and "good mother," lose their identities, and give negative influences to their children. Ruth also doesn't act as a proper mother to her children because she has been oppressed by her father and her husband who have imprudently accepted the value of the white bourgeois.
Though she mostly criticizes black motherhood which has been distorted, Morrison does not ignore the fact that the distortion has been concocted purposely by the white dominated society. At the same time she does not overlook the positive side of black motherhood. Therefore, this thesis deals lastly with the positive and desirable black motherhood which plays a very important role in African-American community in Morrison's novels. Through Baby Suggs in Beloved, Pilate in Song of Solomon, and Mrs. McTeer in The Bluest Eye, Morrison suggests the possibility of a healthy and desirable black motherhood.
This thesis concludes that motherhood is not an instinctively determined virtue but a historically and politically invented ideology. This thesis also argues that black motherhood has been forced to be regarded as having negative images. Morrison destroys and subverts false myth of black motherhood and stereotypes of African-American women by successfully arguing that black motherhood has been distorted under the white dominated value system.
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