论西莉在《紫色》中的成长毕业论文.doc

【标题】论西莉在紫色中的成长 【作者】汤 茵 【关键词】紫色；西莉；成长历程；身份寻求；觉醒 【指导老师】张亚军 谭佳 【专业】英语 【正文】I. IntroductionThe initiation novel, or the Bildungsroman in German, is a novel that “follows the development of the hero or heroine from childhood or adolescence into adulthood, through a troubled quest for identity”.1 According to Mordeeai Marcus, the “growing-up novel” and the “coming-of-age novel” are considered to be synonyms of the initiation novel.2 It is a typical mode for most Bildungsromances: at the very beginning the main character is faced with frustration in whatever form, during the course of his or her growth, he or she struggles to conquer the difficulties and achieves his or her goal. And finally the hero or heroine gets mature in ability, in feeling, to be an integrated person.Since the 1970s, African-American literature has taken on a new look, and a group of African-American female writers have claimed nationwide reputation. Alice Walker is one of them. She attracted attention from American literary critical world with her novel: The Color Purple, which portrays the oppressed black womens miserable life, was published in 1982. This novel won her the 1983 Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award, and it was nominated for the 1982 National Book Critics Circle Award. The Color Purple as the influential novel about black females growth has accepted extensive attention from home and abroad scholars. Some of them discussed cultural characteristics in this novel from female growth, love and sex, family problem, friendship, race problem, and teenagers problem. As Harold Bloom said, “beginning with its epigraph, Alice Walker marks off The Color Purples territory and purpose: it is a novel that intends to teach its readers, and it is also a novel about how that instruction might take place. The Color Purples central character Celie, serves as an example of the ideal learning process. Poor, oppressed, miserable, she learns to shed the yoke of patriarchal oppression in its formsin marriage, in love, in economics, in religion”.3 The Color Purple portrays new images of black women who were raped, beaten, and separated, but who fought, struggled and survived.In this novel Walker mainly chooses to depict a black woman Celies life, yet she never fails to cast her eyes on the growth of the other black females, the blackmales, even the white along with. Like other Buildungsromances The Color Purple puts weight on the theme of “change”, and change always means growth. Though it can be attained at great cost. This thesis tries to analyze the theme of Celies growth from Celies emotional maturity, belief transformation and awakening consciousness of identity. The first part describes and analyzes how the heroine Celie fell victim to family violence and sexual discrimination, which is the obstruction of her growth. The second part discusses the various means by which Celie struggled for growth, she and her friends maintained their dreams, helped each other and then Celie began to quest for her identity. The third part delineates how Celie retrieved her rights over her bodies, marriage and beliefs, that is her declaration of growth. Trough strenuous struggles and efforts, she finally could live well without men, choose the right men and adopt her own view of men, society and religion. II. Obstruction on Celies GrowthIn the history of slavery, black women are called black victims, they suffer most of the abuses heaped upon them: hard physical labor, poor rations, whipping, the threat of being separated from children and mate, coerced sexual relations with the master, and vindictive treatment at the hands of the mistress. In The Color Purple, Walker describes black womens physical and psychological abuse, which is not only the reason for but also the process of black womens loss of self-identity. As Barbara Christian claims, “The Color Purple is a book that emphasizes the oppression on black women by black men”.4 Celie is the victim for sexual, physical, economic oppression and she is burdened with the load form sexism than any others in The Color Purple.  A. Object of Sexual AbuseAccording to Simone de Beauvoirs The Second Sex, “Man is the Subject while woman is the Object. Man sees himself as a human being, and sees woman as the sex ”.5 In black mens eyes, black women are only the sexual objects for them to give vent to their sexual desire. They just enjoy their own happiness, and the thing left for women is pain and indifference. Moreover, this attitude and manner in marriage is descended from generation to generation, from father to son, as a black social tradition. So in black household, rape and incest frequently take place so that black women become long-time victims of black mens sexual appetite.In the novel, Celies mother suffers the most pain during her fathers sexual onslaught. When Celies mother becomes too ill and too worn-out from childbearing to satisfy her stepfathers sexual desire, he rapes Celie repeatedly and then sells the two children born of his sin. The stepfather meanwhile threatens Celie: “You better not never tell nobody but God. Itd kill your mammy”. 6 Since then, she has became silent and lived in the shadow of rape. When she feels powerless in the rest of her lives, her muscularity is threatened by this sense of powerlessness. Just as Clenora Hudson ever said, “Rape, within or outside marriage, is totally demystified and seen as an instrument of oppression” 7, Celies identity crisis rises from family violence. In her first letter to God, Celie says, “Dear God, I am fourteen years old. I am. I have always been a good girl”. 8 Celie places her present self (“ I am ”) under erasure, a device that reminds readers that there are some reasons why Celie was once “a good girl” but no longer feels that she can make this claim before God. Because “a good girl” means the avoidance of sex, especially at the age of fourteen, but Celie has been raped by her stepfather. Sexual attack in the form of rape symbolizes the smash of Celies requirement for security and respect. All the sequels to sexual attack arouse horrible feelings in Celies mind. So from the beginning, she has an antipathy to sexual intercourse with men.Repeatedly, Celie takes the attitude of making herself “wood”, of not responding to either abuse or sexual intercourse. By self-negation she turns herself into a neuter and a cipher to acclimate mens requests and then gradually internalizes the man-centered notion and practices it.  B.Free Laborer in the HouseholdUnder the American slavery, black women became the most exploited “member” of the masters household. They scrubbed the floors, washed, cooked and cared for the children. In The Color Purple, Celies fourteen years of experience is inseparable from her mother, who gave Celie a model of womans role, including her consciousness that woman is created to feed and support man. Celie, an innocent and frightened child, is forced to do different kinds of housework even she is pregnant. “Im big. I cant move fast enough. By time I git back from the well, the water be warm. By time I git the tray ready the food be cold. By time I git all the children ready for school it be dinner time”. 9 Celie has to bear the heavy burden with her weak shoulders alone. Seven years later, Celies stepfather feels no more interested in her, and then offers her in marriage to the widower Mr._ (Mr._ is Celies husband who given no precise name in the novel), who marries her in desperation because he needs someone to cook and clean for him and take care of his four children.In the dull and forced marriage life, Celie does not enjoy love and respect at all. Though Celie is an ideal housekeeper, cooker, labor, good stepmother and wife, she still wins no care and love from Mr._ and his children. Survival seems to be the only choice for Celie to make in this world at least. Celie endures the mistreatment imposed by Mr._, choosing to make herself like a tree.Celie submits to a set of systems and beliefs and relegates herself to a subordinate status. More unfortunately, she not only refuses to fight against the injustice of the male world but also even advises Harpo to beat his wife Sofia, who is a quite independent woman. This time Celie herself acts as an accomplice for the patriarchy. A month later, Sofia finds out the truth. She comes to argue with Celie angrily, “Then what you say it for? She ast I say it cause Im a fool, I say. I say it cause Im jealous of you. I say it cause you do what I cant. What that? She say. Fight. I say”. 10 So this is the most tragic thing for Celie because she has completely accepted and internalized patriarchal subjugation to women.  C. Female Without Human RightsLoss of Speech PowerPatriarchy refers to the authority of husband. In the family, black men have the overwhelming power and they are superior. Men do not care about what women think about and women dare not speak out their ideas as well. Living in a patriarchal society, the black women become slaves in their own minds. They lose themselves and even make themselves in a notion of complete numbness. The long time non-human treatment makes black women become emotionless. Their long-term silence and numbness leads to loss of discourse power which will bring on black womens loss of self-consciousness till self-identity. At the beginning of The Color Purple, Celie, who is only a fourteen-year-old black girl, has no one to talk about her affliction because her father has told her, “You better not never tell nobody but God. Itd kill your mammy”. 11 This warning has tightly controlled Celies discourse right, for she can tell nobody but God the abuse and suffering from her stepfather. Celie is a woman silenced. Out of desperation, the muted Celie turns to the written word to alleviate her confusion, shame, and the silence that has imposed on her. Celie begins to write letters to God to tell him her pains both physically and spiritually. Celies praying to God accompanies her and makes her endure the domestic violence, pain of loss of children and Nettie, and hard work in house and fields. Mr._, Celies husband, is a typical figure of the patriarchal system. Mr._ conceals Netties letters because she refuses to be seduced by him. Celie and Netties letters are not answered between each other because Mr._ intercepted their personal letters. Here again, we see a woman who is silenced by a man in her life. Celie and her sister are separated and silenced by the angry husband for many years.III. Celies Struggle for GrowthAlice Walker once talked about three types of black women. The first types are the physically and psychologically abused who lived during the period of slavery and renaissance. The second types are women in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth century who were groomed by black and white society to be “extraordinary”, but were torn by “contrary insights”. The third types are the new black women who hold onto the creative spark within themselves and are able to recreate themselves in the context of their culture. In The Color Purple, Walker not only points out black womens physical and psychological abuse but also affirms their belief in personal, spiritual redemption that may evolve through the self.  A. Learning to Appreciate HerselfAfter Celie gets married to Mr._, the only person she can tell private things directly is Sofia. Sofia, Harpos wife, is the only woman in the novel who never stops fighting against men. She grows up in a family of men, so she learns that only by fighting can she survive. Both Harpo and Celie are confounded by Sofias strong will. Because Sofia is so strong-willed and Harpo is in shock, they often fight.Because of the continuous fighting, Sofia and Harpo part at last. Sofia is not only racked with sexism in household but with racialism in society. One afternoon, Sofia takes her children to town, and the white mayor and his wifeMiss Millie stop because the wife touches and admires Sofias children for their cleanliness. Miss Millie finally asks Sofia to be her maid. Sofia sasses her and resolutely refuses. For this breach of proper behavior, Sofia is given a twelve-year prison sentence and a terrible beating at the town jail. At the end of this novel, Sofia reunites with Harpo who has already changed, and works as a shop assistant for Celie in her pants shop.Trough the juxtaposition of Celie and Sofia, Walker clearly illustrates oppositional character types. Sofias fighting has a great influence on Celie. Her fearless rebellion introduces Celie to a new spiritual world.  B. Preserving the Aspiration by Writing Letters A patriarchy maintains power by making women powerless, thus denying the womens ability to authorize their self-expression. But some black womens silence and obedience do not mean that they have given up hope. Preserving aspiration for selfhood makes foundation for black womens awakening.In the novel, Celie chooses to write her story in letters since she is deprived of speech power by her stepfather. Celie writes to understand the familial violation that has threatened her identity. By putting down her thoughts, Celie makes the discovery of her pain and victimization possible. In this sense, she writes herself into humanity and gives herself an inner life to confront with the exterior oppression. Letters then become the surrogate body for her, an inanimate form that serves a dual purpose: it secretly fends off pain siphoning off her feelings of inferiority, as well as allowing her to express and to feel the intensity of her emotions in the phallus-centric society. Her personality is re-affirmed by the written language in which she is revealed. The silent writing is simultaneously a way of keeping dignity. Writing gives Celie self-knowledge and self-consciousness, and ensures her growth. Celies letters become longer, more complicated and influent, which indicate that her feelings and sense of self is more complex and reflective. The format of the letters also changes. There are 70 letters written by Celie in the novel, of which 55 are addressed to God and the rest to Nettie. Celie chooses God who is nihility as the recipient because of her feelings of loneliness, helplessness and guilt. When she gives up believing in God, Celie changes her recipient to Nettie who is alive and loves her in return. The changing of the recipient shows Celies affirmation of the world and sense of self.   C. The Sisterhood Between Celie and OthersThe bond among black women that they cannot break is the genuine sisterhood. This sisterly bond makes black women support each other, give and receive love equally, and share the common and individual experiences and ideas. Since God cannot save Celie, she chooses to save herself through the love interaction with other women in the family. Celie and Nettie, two sisters, separated by