浅议《紫色》中黑人女性的觉醒与抗争英语专业毕业论文.doc

浅议紫色中黑人女性的觉醒与抗争学院毕业论文（设计） Black Womens Awakening and Resistance in The Color PurpleBy *Submitted to the Department of Foreign Languages of Shandong University of Political Science and Law in Partial Fulfillment to the Requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts in EnglishUnder the Supervision of Professor *February, 2012浅议紫色中的黑人女性的觉醒与抗争摘要：艾丽斯·沃克是美国文学史上最著名的黑人女作家之一。她的代表作品紫色发表于1982年，一经出版便引起了评论界轰动，并获得普利策文学奖和美国国家图书奖。艾丽斯沃克深受女姓主义影响，并把争取种族平等、女性解放作为其毕生的事业，她的这种女姓主义思想在小说紫色中得以体现。小说紫色深刻分析了黑人女性所遭受的来自种族主义和性别主义的双重压迫，揭示了阻碍黑人女性觉醒与获得解放的因素，呼唤黑人女性自我意识的觉醒，把争取女性平等的斗争扩大到黑人群体中。小说揭露了黑人男性和白人对黑人女性的歧视和压迫，并展现了黑人女性团结一致摆脱压迫，重建黑人男性和女性之间的和谐关系。本文旨在阐述紫色中黑人女性的觉醒与抗争以及她们觉醒抗争的原因。全文共分为四章。第一章为引言，主要介绍艾丽斯沃克的生平和她最著名的小说紫色；第二章主要阐述黑人女性所遭受的双重压迫黑人男性的性别歧视和压迫以及白人的种族歧视和压迫；第三章分为两部分介绍紫色中黑人女性的觉醒与解放：第一部分阐述促使黑人女性觉醒与抗争的原因，第二部分强调黑人女性从逆来顺受到觉醒抗争的转变过程，黑人女性团结一致摆脱压迫，获得独立，重新构建了男女之间的和谐关系；第四章是结论，对全文进行总结并重申重要观点。关键词：艾丽斯·沃克，紫色，黑人女性，觉醒，抗争Black Womens Awakening and Resistance in The Color PurpleAbstract: Alice Walker is one of the most outstanding black women writers in American Literature. The Color Purple, published in 1982, is considered as her representative work. The novel has aroused great reverberation since its publication and also makes Alice Walker win the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Greatly influenced by feminism, Alice Walker regarded achieving racial equality and women liberation as her life career, which was greatly reflected in the novel The Color Purple. The novel deeply analyzed the double oppression of black women, which were racism and sexism and revealed the barriers of black women awakening and liberation. It encouraged black women to wake up and fight for selfhood. It expanded the struggle for the black womens equal rights. The novel exposed the black men and the white peoples oppression and discrimination to black women. This thesis will analyze how the black women characters in The Color Purple seek self-identity under the two oppressions from and the reason of their awakening. The specific contents will be divided into four chapters. Chapter one is the introduction part, which introduces the basic information about Alice Walker and her most famous novel The Color Purple. Chapter two focuses on the double oppression that the black women suffer, which are the sexual discrimination and oppression from the black men and the racial discrimination and oppression from the white people. Chapter three emphasizes the awakening and liberation of black women from two different aspects. The first aspect analyzes the factors which contribute to the awakening and resistance of the black women in The Color Purple; the second part introduces black womens transformation from submission to rebellion. Chapter four is the conclusion part which delivers a summary and restates the theme of this thesis.Key Words: Alice Walker, The Color Purple, black women, awakening, resistanceContent摘要i关键词iAbstractiiKey WordsiiChapter One Introduction11.1 Basic Information about Alice Walker11.2 About The Color Purple1Chapter Two Black Womens Double oppression32.1 Black Womens Sexual Oppression from the Black Men32.2 Black Womens Racial Oppression from the White People4Chapter Three Black Womens Awakening and Resistance73.1 Black Womens Awakening73.2 Black Womens Resistance9Chapter Four Conclusion11Bibliography12Black Womens Awakening and Resistance in The Color PurpleChapter One Introduction1.1 Basic Information about Alice Walker Alice Walker (1944- ) is one of the most influential African-American black women writers in American literature. She was born on February 9, 1944 and was the eighth and the last child of a sharecropper family in a small rural town in Eatonton, Georgia. When she was eight, her brother accidently shot her in the eye and then she became blind in her right eye, which also made her bore an ugly scar. Thinking herself to be ugly, she became depressed, solitary and just hid herself in a room all the time. However, this period provided her with a good chance to read a lot of books, which played a very important role in her later writing career. She attended Spellman college from 1961 to 1963 and then transferred to Sarah Lawrence college, earned a B.A in 1965. During her college life, she was very interested in the U.S Civil Rights Movement and continued the activism after graduation, which influenced her writing of her novels. Another movement that deeply affected her was the Womens Liberation Movement, which made Alice Walker realized the necessity of feminism and the necessity for black women to rebel and win freedom under the double oppression of society and family. Greatly affected by feminism, Alice Walker regarded striving for racial equality and women liberation as her life career. Alice Walker is a prolific writer whose work includes poetry, novels, short stories, essays and criticism. Her works like 1965-To Hell with Dying (short stories), 1973-In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women (a collection of short stories), 1976-Meridian (novel), 1982-The Color Purple (novel), 1985-Horse Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful (poetry)，and so on. Among all her works, the novel The Color Purple is the most famous one, which made Walker become the first black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize and it was also awarded the American Book Award in 1983 and National Critics Association Award.1.2 About The Color PurpleAs we all know, The Color Purple is Alice Walkers representative work. The novel aroused great reverberation in the critical field, and created a lot of enlightening of its form, content and theme after its publication in 1982. It was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the American Book Award for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1983. In 1985, the novel was made into a very popular movie by Steven Spielberg. The Color Purple tells the story of Celie, a poor, uneducated, fourteen-year-old black girl living in rural Georgia, who is also the protagonist and narrator of the novel. Celie writes to God to tell about her lifeher roles as daughter, wife, sister and mother, because she undergoes the double oppression since childhood. The novel is composed by 92 letters which include the letters Celie writes to God, the letters Celie writes to Nettie and the letters Nettie writes to Celie. The novel tells a story of how the heroine becomes an independent, confident and courageous woman from a meek, timid, and submissive black woman from. The story happened in the south of Georgia. Celie was violently raped by her stepfather Alfonso many times, but she dared not to say to anybody except God because her stepfather threatened her. Celie had two children but they were taken away immediately by Alfonso when they were born. Later Alfonso married her to Mr. Albert, who just considered Celie as a tool for sex and housework. As a result, Celie endured a hard and loveless life. Albert even had evil intentions on her sister, Nettie. So Nettie ran away and in the following thirsty years, Celie didnt hear from her. Being illness, Shug Avery, an American-African singer also Alberts lover, was brought back to his home. Under the good care of Celie, Shug gradually recovered and established a good friendship with Celie. Influenced by Shug, Celie became confident and also learned to appreciate herself. Later, with the help of Shug, she found that Albert had secretly kept Netties letters to her for many years. She was so angry that she left Albert finally. She got economic independence by making pants. After Alphonso died, Celie inherited the house that her biological father left. On the other hand, Albert went down slope after Celie left him. After introspection, he transformed to be a good man and became friends with Celie. In the end, Celie reunited with her sister and her own children. Celie not only won her respect, love and dignity, but also established a harmonious relationship with men. Chapter Two Double Oppression on Black WomenAs is known to all of us, in the Bible, the first woman is created by God from a rib of Adam, the first man in the world. From that time on, women were considered to be mens subsidiary which makes them always in the submissive position to men. They live in the bottom of the society and they dont have the equal rights with men. Both white and black women are in the same miserable situation that women are oppressed by men. However, a black family is worse and more complicated than a white one because the blacks are in the lowest status in American social structure. According to the racial segregation and discrimination, white people treat black people badly which imposes great physical pain and mental anguish on them. When black men know that they could not overturn the white oppression and could not change their social status, they are depressed and need a way to let off their frustration and to reestablish their lost masculine power. Under this circumstance, the black women are the best choice. As a result, the black women endure both sexual and racial discrimination and oppression from not only white people but also black men. 2.1 Black Womens Sexual Oppression from the Black Men As we all know, people live in the patriarchal society for a very long period of time. In a patriarchal family, men are in the absolutely status and authority and they have the power to control womens destiny and to confine womens ideas and way of living, which makes both white and black women in the miserable situation; That is, women are oppressed by men. However, white womens situation are better than black womens, white women just bear the oppression from white men while black women endure the oppression not only from white men but also from black men. In The Color Purple，Alice Walker portrays several black women characters who are the victims of sexual oppression, such as Celie, Sofia and Shug. Now we will take Celie as example to tell about how the black women suffer from the gender discrimination and oppression. The protagonist Celie is a typical representative of this kind of black woman. The oppression that Celie suffers can be divided into two parts. The first oppression comes from her stepfather, Alphonso. Because Celies mother is ill and cant meet her husbands sexual demand any more, Alphonso turns to Celie to vent his sexual desire. Her stepfather threatens her that she is not allowed to tell anyone about her suffering in the family. He warns her that if she tells to other people, maybe he will take revenge to her mother or her mother will die because she can not accept the fact that her daughter is sexually abused. This command shows that Celie should not resist her stepfather in the surface, but in the extended meaning, it reflects a social phenomenon that women should completely obey mens will and do whatever men command. Raped by her stepfather, Celie has been pregnant twice and gives birth to a boy and a girl respectively, who are taken away immediately by her stepfather. Celies mother doesnt know the truth and keeps cursing Celie until her death because her stepfather tells her mother that she has love affairs with some other man. When Celie is pregnant for the first time, her stepfather deprives her rights of being educated, which makes Celie nearly an illiterate person. Other than what mentioned above, her stepfather also beats her violently and unreasonably and she has to do all kinds of housework. What the role she plays is just a housekeeper and her stepfathers slave. Being tired of her stepfather, Celie is married to Mr. Albert in the cost of giving Albert two cows when she is 20 years old, which brings Celie another kind of oppression, the oppression from her husband. Marriage can not save her out of the miserable life but continues and even becomes worse. In the new family, Celie still undergoes various oppression and humiliation. Her husband just considers her as a tool of meeting his sex desire and a mammy to look after his four children, so he does everything he wants on Celie without considering her feelings. He considers Celie to be useless but just a piece of property of him. While his son, Harbo asks why he beat Celie so frequently, his answer is that Celie is his wife, so he has the right to do everything he wants on her, he also can entirely control her life, her will and her destiny. Whats worse, Celie doesnt think its wrong but just accepts it as her destiny. She considers what happened to her is right, reasonable and natural, so that she never considers fighting against that; instead, she just keeps silent. From what happens to Celie, we can see that the phenomenon that women are oppressed by men is very common; women are totally controlled by men, especially the black women. Bearing the sexual oppression, women are just mens subsidiary and slave.2.2 Black Womens Racial Oppression from the White PeopleAmerican is a multi-race country and the race issue is always an important part in American life. In a very long period of time in the white-dominated society, the whites consider the blacks to be inferior in social position, so the blacks are forced to work for the whites and they have to live at the margin of the society and face the problem of racial discrimination and oppression. All the social systems are built in order to meet the interests of the white people, so once the black people break them or commit an offence against the whites, they will be severely punished.As a black woman writer, Alice Walker has written at length on the issue of race and gender. She has a strong sense of racial injustice and pays much attention to the blacks unfair treatment in society. So in her works, she always depicts many black women characters that are brave enough to go against the racial oppression in black community. As mentioned before, black women suffer from double oppression, not only the sexual oppression but also the racial oppression. Sofia in The Color Purple is such a kind of person. Sofia, another female character in The Color Purple, is brave, strong and independent. She is so brave that she can stand up to fight against the gender oppression in the black community. She falls in love with Alberts son, Harpo, but she has to ask for Alberts permission of their marriage; unfortunately, Albert not only rejects their request but also insults Sofia, however, to his surprise, Sofia rebuts him. Fighting for her marriage, Sofia finally gets married with the man she loves. She not only fights for her marriage but also fights with her beloved husband. Being affected by his father, Harpo always tries to and makes every effort to control his wife, Sofia. In order to maintain her own identity and dignity, Sofia has to fight against her husban