武夷学院学期论文

Black Girls’ Consciousness Awakening in

White Culture

---A Comparative Analysis of the Heroines in

The Bluest Eye and Sula

白人文化冲击下黑人女孩的觉醒

——小说《最蓝的眼睛》与《秀拉》中主人公形

象的对比分析

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专业（班级）： 姓 名 ： 学 号 : 课程名称： 完成日期：

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摘 要 丹尼尔·笛福(1660年－1731年4月24日 )英国小说家,英国18世纪启蒙时期现实主义小说的奠基人,被后人誉为“英国小说之父”。1719年,年近60岁的笛福发表了他的第一部小说《鲁宾逊漂流记》。笛福的其他主要小说作品有1720年完成的《辛格尔顿船长》和1722年的《摩尔·弗兰德斯》。笛福还写了大量小册子与新闻报道，1722年法国马赛发生瘟疫，笛福出版以1665年伦敦大瘟疫为内容的《大疫年纪事》，迎合了当时市民的关注，颇受欢迎。从鲁滨逊在面对人生困境，鲁滨孙的所作所为，显示了一个硬汉子的坚毅性格和英雄本色，体现了资产阶级上升时期的创造精神和开拓精神。特别是鲁滨逊作为一个中产阶级的代表，体现了中产阶级对财富的渴望和冒险精神，不受宗教的束缚和对自由的渴望。虽然鲁滨逊遭遇海难漂流到荒岛上以后，不是悲叹命运对自己的不公，而是充分利用自己的头脑和双手，修建房子、种植庄稼、养殖动物、制造工具、在绝望和无助中用自己的顽强和毅力与饥饿、疾病等作斗争，最后终于胜利的获救。这正体现当时资产阶级对外殖民统治向往。

关键词: 鲁滨逊克鲁索；现实主义；启蒙思想；冒险精神；

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Abstract

Toni Morrison (1931—) is one of the major black women writers of the twentieth century. As the first black novelist to be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, Toni Morrison has caught more and more attention and recognition all around the world. After publication of her first novel The Bluest Eye in 1970, it attracts a large number of readers. In the following year, she published her second novel, Sula, in 1973, and it is more successful, which earns a nomination for the National Book Award. With the improvement of black women’s status, the literary critics are apt to focus on the issue of the status of black female. Therefore, this thesis attempts to contrast and analyze the heroines—Pecola and Sula in the two novels from the similar and different perspectives to reveal black female’s consciousness awakening. By analyzing from four aspects—family background, personality, friends surrounding and social impact, it comes to the conclusion that the black women who pursue personal liberation and self-realization should not abandon the excellent tradition of Black Nationalism. Besides, it will do great help to evoke the reader’s awareness of black female’s consciousness awakening. In the meanwhile, it will offer a new angle of studying these two novels.

Keywords: Toni Morrison; Consciousness Awakening; Silence; Revolt

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Black Girls’ Consciousness Awakening in White Culture

---A Comparative Analysis of the Heroines in The Bluest Eye and Sula

Black Girls’ Consciousness Awakening in White

Culture

---A Comparative Analysis of the Heroines in The

Bluest Eye and Sula

1 Introduction

1.1 Toni Morrison as a black writer and influence

Toni Morrison is one of the most outstanding and influential contemporary African American women writers who receive the Nobel Prize in literature (1993). She is also the winner of the National Book Critic Circle Award (1977), the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1988) and many other literary awards. As a writer, she is fully aware of her responsibility. She knows why and what she writes. For her, the African American writing has “an obligation to bear witness” and “would take her people through the pain and denial of their racially haunted history to a healing zone.” (David Ron, 2000, p.32) This is clearly reflected in the novels; in particular in The Bluest Eye. Morrison shows the distorted image of blacks under the control of white culture by her own experience. As a black woman writer, Toni Morrison pays much more attention to the destiny of black women, and tries to call on the black people to boycott the invasion of white culture. She would like to regain the traditional image of the blacks—natural and pure, cure the blacks from the emotional, psychological and culture aspects, and then reconstruct the national consciousness. Her works are usually based on the traditional history and lives of African Americans. She uses her influence to encourage other writers to pay attention to the blacks’ issues and pushes African American novels to a newer and higher standard. After awarding the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993, the Swedish Academy, Danille Tailor-Guthrie praised Morrison for giving “life to an essential aspect of American reality” in novels “characterized by visionary force and poetic import” (Tailor-Guthrie, 1994, p.6).

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武夷学院本科学期论文

1.2 Literary accomplishment and features

1.2.1 A brief introduction to literary accomplishment

Toni Morrison has published 9 novels, a libretto, and a collection of critical essays. The impacts of her novels about black people living in the bottom American are not only in the America, but also around the world in literary history. Morrison’s first novel The Bluest Eye was published in 1970, and then she published her second novel Sula in 1973. During the following years, Morrison wrote the following six novels: Song of Solomon (1977), Tar Baby (1981), Beloved (1987), Jazz (1992), Paradise (1998), Love (2003) and A Mercy (2008). She was also appointed to write the play for a new opera, Margaret Garner, first performed in 2005.

1.2.2 Features of her novels

Morrison’s novels are famous for the serious and closely examining of her language, narrative and rhetorical choices. In these two novels Morrison uses a lot of epic themes, vivid dialogue, and a lot of specific characters. To this point, Morrison pays much emphasis on the usage of language, which is generally acceptable as acknowledged truth in literary criticism. As Leech described “the great novelists of the English language have been, arguably without exception, also great artists in the use of words.” (Leech, 1981, p.2) Meanwhile, Morrison has been praised for powerful, precise and poetic language by “her ability to create a densely lyrical narrative texture that is instantly recognizable as her own” (Gates, 1993, p.11).

Toni Morrison explores the issues of African-American female identity in the two novels that include the oral tradition, magical realism, and postmodern literary techniques to express the experiences of women living at the bottom of white American society. She has also placed black women’s existence, feeling, life and experience in her novels and imagines a world of harmony between the two sexes, and a classless gender-free society under the control of Nature. Her eternal theme is to narrate and reconstruct the historical and cultural traditions of African Americans, and it is one of the characteristics of her novels to give voice to this theme by concerning the voices of the oppressed.

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Black Girls’ Consciousness Awakening in White Culture

---A Comparative Analysis of the Heroines in The Bluest Eye and Sula

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