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《半生缘》中曼璐的形象赏析

内容摘要：《半生缘》是张爱玲离开大陆之后的重要创作之一，其中塑造的曼璐形象，呈现了一种身处“贞女”与 “怨妇”之间的痛楚与无望，更凝聚着作者对“传统和现代之间的紧张的关系” 的深刻思考，也由此具有了很强的现代性内涵。

关键词：贞女 怨妇

《半生缘》实际所写的是互相牵连在一起的两个悲剧。一个是曼桢与世钧的爱情悲剧，一个是曼璐的人生悲剧。相较而言，在曼桢与世钧的爱情未发生之前．曼璐就已成为一个悲剧的主角——为家人牺牲做了舞女．后来她又亲手导演和制造了曼桢和世钧的爱情悲剧，这些才是作者暗自着力表现的。因此，曼桢和世钧的爱情悲剧不过是套在曼璐人生悲剧中的小悲剧，换句话说，曼璐首先作为一个悲剧的存在，又由她亲手导演和制造了新的悲剧——曼桢和世钧的爱情悲剧，从而使她成为更大的悲剧的存在!在曼璐身上所体现出的悲剧意义要远比曼桢、世钧的不幸要深刻、复杂得多。

曼璐这一形象有着很强的现代性意义，这也使得《半生缘》具有了更为高远、更为深厚的文本内涵。 对于这个故事的现代性，王岳川教授做了如下解释:现代性就是“传统和现代之间的一种紧张的关系”，是“新和旧的关系”，同时“还是世俗性与神圣性的关系。而在曼璐身上，恰恰凝聚了张爱玲对“传统和现代之间的关系”、 “新和旧的关系”、“世俗性与神圣性的关系”的深刻思考。 阅读《半生缘》，曼璐的人生际遇很容易让人联想到现代派大师卡夫卡的伟大作品《变形记》。《变形记》中的格里高尔和《半生缘》中的曼璐所面临的现实困境和精神困境有着惊人的相似，前者面对的是父亲破产，母亲生病，妹妹上学；后者面对的是父亲早逝，母亲年迈，弟、妹年幼。他们的共同选择是为家人做出巨大的牺牲：一个拼命地工作，一个沦落风尘。而结果也是一个异化为甲虫，一个沦落为舞女，都由 “人”变为“非人”。但他们的牺牲行为都未获得应有的回报，家人或盼其速死，或盼其速嫁，他(她)们已成为家人沉重的精神负担，因此在他们死后或嫁后，家人都有一种如释重负之感，在精神上获得解脱。 通过比较分析我们不禁慨叹，伟大的作品总有相通之处。卡夫卡作为“最早感受到时代的复杂和痛苦，并揭示了人类异化的处境和现实的作家”，可以说是“20 世纪文学的先知、时代的先知与人类的先知。”

曼璐的困境，同样也从某个角度揭示了现代中国人的困境。在她身上，凝聚了一种身处“贞女” 与“怨妇”之间的痛楚与无望．也凝聚着作家对“传统和现代之间的紧张的关系”的深刻思考。这种紧张关系，不仅是“新和旧的关系”，还是“世俗性和神圣性的关系”。曼璐实际上就成为这种紧张关系的表征。从传统的、旧的、世俗性的角度看．她就是一个有伤风化、为人不齿的娼女；可从现代的、新的、神圣的角度看，她又可称为一个伟大的牺牲者．尽管肉体被沾污，但她的牺牲精神依然是圣洁的，单从精神上讲，她并不逊色于守身如玉的“贞女”们。然而，残酷的现实是：她既不同于地地道道的娼女。也不能成为偶像化了的贞女，只能像飞天一样默默承受着上不着天、下不着地的苦闷、孤独与焦虑，最终成为货真价实的怨妇，为了守住可怜至极的所谓正常人的夫妻生活，不惜做出疯狂之举，亲手摧毁自己用牺牲换来的妹妹的幸福。

那么，曼璐的敏感和怨愤来自何方呢? 首先来自她对自身处境的深刻认知。小说第二章她与母亲有关婚嫁问题的对话便很能说明这一点。当曼璐主动说：“二

妹现在也有这样大了，照说．她一个女孩子家，跟我住在一起实在是不大好，人家要说的，我倒希望她有个合适的人，早一点结了婚也好。”这番话与其说是出于对曼桢的关心，不如说是对自身在这个家中的尴尬处境的清醒认识。因此当后来母亲对她婚嫁问题表现出关心时，她的敏感和愠怒也就不足为怪：“他们都大了．用不着我了．就嫌我丢脸了是不是?所以又想我嫁人!这时候叫我嫁人。叫我嫁给谁呢?”在这样的话语中，我们分明能感受到曼璐的苦楚与怨愤。这并不是她多心，而是她面临的一个非常实际的问题：为家人做出巨大牺牲的她换来的并不完全就是感激和同情，更有拒斥和疏远。同在一屋，却分属两个世界：一个光明，一个黑暗；一个纯洁，一个肮脏。在这样近距离的鲜明对比中，什么能让曼璐获得心理平衡? 第一或许是精神上的认可．可她连半块贞节牌坊也换不到，因为在中国的文化传统中，女人的肉体是重于精神的；第二或许是家人的亲情．可她分明感受到来自亲人的拒斥和疏远；最后仅剩下爱情．退一步讲，没有爱情的婚姻也成为一种奢望，因为毕竟这是一种正常人的生活。曼璐是把祝鸿才当成最后一根救命稻草死死抓住的．于是当这根稻草要离她而去时，她便有些歇斯底里，不择手段，以致最终将牺牲了自己而换来妹妹幸福的那种可能性化为乌有，并将其推向更加昏暗的深渊。

在这个故事中，曼璐牺牲了自己为了使家人幸福．家人幸福了自己却未获得应得的东西，便要反过来将这种幸福再度毁灭。细细想来，这种“平衡”又带有一种近乎残忍的真实。这种真实就在于对传统的一种反动。反传统的突出表现在于张爱玲“根本反对神圣化本身”，她是“以世俗的实用态度，以女性的边缘位置去消解一切旨在建立中心、等级和神圣的价值体系秩序”的。中国的传统文化中被美化、神化的东西实在是多不胜数，而这种美化、神化也更多是在维护一种等级秩序。

曼璐的牺牲精神是会被传统认可的，甚至会被美化、神化；但在世俗社会中的她的生活，却又会完全是另外一种样子。因为传统需要的只是她的精神，而不是她已被玷污的肉体。这也恰是传统文化、传统伦理、传统道德的虚伪和残忍所在。而张爱玲更大的贡献在于她通过曼璐形象的塑造，将充满现代性追问的悲剧命题做了深刻的本土化、民族化的诠释。在对这个本土化、民族化了的人类悲剧的阐释过程中，《半生缘》对西方文学中像《变形记》这样的伟大作品所体现出的现代精神，作了一次并不遥远的呼应。同时。也因其未脱离民族文化语境而有了某种程度的创新，甚至超越!单从这一点来说，张爱玲对华语文学的贡献就是不可磨灭的，其影响正如王德威的一篇论文的标题所揭示的：“落地的麦子不死”!

第二篇：《中西文化对比与文学鉴赏》课程论文写作要求

《中西文化对比与文学鉴赏》课程论文写作要求

1

没有具体文学作品分析的毫无写作意义；论文题目后应有3-5个关键词，要体现主题，概括主要内容。封面样本和范文在第3-18页。 例：题目：试论《天路历程》和《西游记》异同

关键词：中西文化对比，英雄主义，《天路历程》，《西游记》

2、必须体现本学期学到的文化概念，英语专业学生可以只分析西方文化概念，也可以分析中西方文化对比，不可以只分析中国文化（属于中文系研究的范畴）。

本学期学过的有：两希文化对比、圣经原型、英雄主义、美国梦、女性主义、佛道儒3家主要理念；其他中西文化对比观念都是要从文本对比中探索中西文化哲学、精神等深层差异，不要讲那些表面现象。

3、要求至少包含5本/篇对所写论文有参考价值的书/期刊论文作为参考文献。第2页有参考文献的具体说明。

4

5、本次测试占学期成绩的40%，格式规范和内容同样重要，全班同学都必须做，没交的这门课得不到学分。

6、最迟上交时间：5月26日/第15周周一前（不含5月26日当天）。第15周周二各班学委统计上交作业情况后将公布取消本门学分名单。电子版（发学委邮箱，由学委收齐了统一打包）和纸质版（打印）都要交。每个同学的文件名称命名为：班级、姓名、学号。

学术论文写作题目、参考文献具体要求

1、页面设置

页边距：上边距：30mm；下边距：25mm；左边距：30mm；右边距：20mm；行间距：1.5倍行距；

2、题目：三号Times New Roman体（英文）或宋体（中文）加粗

3、正文用小四号Times New Roman体（英文）或宋体（中文），小标题加粗。

4、参考文献

顺序：英文参考书在前，中文参考书在后，以字母拼音顺序排列。 各类参考文献条目的编排格式及示例如下。

1．连续出版物（期刊）

［序号］主要责任者．文献题名[J] ．刊名，出版年份，卷号(期号) ：起止页码．

例:［1］毛峡，丁玉宽．图像的情感特征分析及其和谐感评价[J] ．电子学报, 2001，29(12A) ：1923-1927．

2．专著

［序号］主要责任者．文献题名[M] ．出版地：出版者，出版年：起止页码．

例：[2] 刘国钧，王连成．图书馆史研究[M] ．北京：高等教育出版社，1979：15-18,31．

3．会议论文集

［序号］主要责任者．文献题名[A]∥主编．论文集名[C]．出版地：出版者，出版年：起止页码．

例：[3]毛峡．绘画的音乐表现[A] ．中国人工智能学会20xx年全国学术年会论文集[C] ．北京：北京邮电大学出版社, 2001：739-740．

4．学位论文

［序号］主要责任．文献题名[D] ．保存地：保存单位，年份．

例：[4] 生．地质力学系统理论[D] ．太原：太原理工大学，1998．

5．报纸文章

［序号］主要责任者．文献题名[N] ．报纸名，出版日期(版次)．

6．电子文献

［序号］主要责任者．电子文献题名[文献类型/载体类型] ．电子文献的出版或可获得地址，发表或更新的期/引用日期(任选)．

例：［9］王明亮．中国学术期刊标准化数据库系统工程的[EB/OL] ． /pub/wml.txt/9808 10-2.html,1998-08-16/1998-10-04． 外国作者的姓名书写格式一般为：名的缩写、姓。例如A. Johnson，R.O.Duda

广东工业大学

华立学院

《宠儿》奴隶母亲的畸形母爱 The Distorted Love of Slavery Mother in Beloved

论文题目 《宠儿》奴隶母亲的畸形母爱 学 部 外语外贸学部 专 业 英 语 班 级 08英语3班 学 号 16010803032 学生姓名 黄冬利 指导教师 李孟 关键词：《宠儿》，女性主义，畸形的母爱

学期课程论文

The Distorted Mother Love in Beloved

Beloved probes the most painful part of Africa American heritage -- slavery. It penetrates the emotional and psychic consequences of slavery. She both describes the condition of the enslavement in the external world and the repercussions in the individual internal world. Beloved explores many themes such as the black community, motherhood, and the relations between a man and a woman. Even thought all these themes are different from one to another, the central them is motherhood. Morrison reveals the distorted influence of slavery on motherhood. As Mary Helen Washington Says, ―motherhood, complicated and threatened by racism, is a special kind of motherhood‖.[2]Motherhood in Beloved is affected by biological, psychological, and culture forces becomes an abnormal and unhealthy one.

1. Manifestations of Distorted Mother Love

Motherhood is deformed by Slavery, and the maternal love is unhealthy in Beloved. Elizabeth Fox- Genovese says, ―Shaped the experiences on all women in the Old South, affecting the domestic and childbearing roles of both black and white women.‖[6]The blacks are the properties of the slave owners. They make money by childbearing, through which they can produce more slaves for planters and as a matter of fact renewed the system of slavery. Under the social background, the motherhood is damaged by slavery system.

1.1 Abnormal Maternity

Maternity is an everlasting topic in the history, especially in literature. It is the most powerful and important love in Beloved, of which all can be conquered. Toni Morrison devoted many times to writing the maternal love in her writing career. The absence of maternity causes the abnormal psychological state of many characters in Beloved.

When Sethe was a little girl, her mother was hanged by her owner. She longs for the maternal love as her daughter Beloved. She even don‘ remember what her mother

looked like. She rarely saw her mother, just remembering the marks burned into her mother‘s skin. What‘s more, Sethe ran to her dead mother, trying to search for the mark which is the symbol of her mother‘s body. The concept of maternity in Sethe‘s mind is vague. She yearns for it; however, as a slaver, she was deprived the right to enjoy the natural mater love, knowing every woman was called Ma‘am. Having been deprived of maternal love, Sethe knows exactly its importance to a child. In Beloved, a great deal of materials is written to describe Sethe‘s maternal love. As a mother, she makes her best to protect her children, especially protect them form the harm at Sweet Home ―got up on the wall, right on it. I flew. Snatched him just in time….smoking and I couldn‘t see after him well. I got a rope and tied it round his ankle….I didn‘t like the look of it, but what else could do. It‘s hard, you know what I mean? By yourself and no woman help you get through.‖ (Morrison, 160)

Under slavery, the right to nurse one‘s own child is almost deprived by the whites. Their children receive milk only after the whit babies left. ―Nursing Mother and Feminine Metaphysics‖, Demetrakopoulos argues in her essay that many people regard the breast milk as the symbol for the essence of maternal love. In Beloved, Sethe cares about her breast milk very much, which is the symbol of maternal love for her child, because it is the food for her child. Sethe reflects upon the relationship between maternal love and nursing milk:

―Nobody will ever get my milk any more except my own children. I never had to give it to nobody else – and the one time I did it was took for me – they held me down and took it. Milk belonged to my baby. Nan had to nurse white babies and me too because Ma‘am was in the rice. The little white babies got it first and I got what was left. Or none. There was no nursing milk to call my own. I know what it is like to be without the milk that belongs to you; to have to fight an holler for it, and to have so little left. I‘ll tell Beloved about that: she‘ll understand. She my daughter. The one I managed to have milk for and get it to her even after they stole it.‖ (Morrison, 200)

As for Sethe, nursing milk also means the essence of maternal love. Through her own orphan experience, Sethe knows the feeling lack of mother love for a baby and

not to have her own mother‘s milk. It is why schoolteacher‘s nephews stealing the milk her body is storing for her infant daughter when violate her, which is one of the painful memories of Sethe. Her ―stolen milk‖ suggests the maternal love which is denied to her as a slave mother. When she tells what has happened to her to Paul D, she emphasizes on the loss of her baby‘s nursing milk, but not the pain of beating:

―They used cowhide on you？‖

―And they took my milk.‖

―They beat you and you were pregnant?‖

―And they took my milk.‖ (Morrison, 17)

Her milk not only presents the cruel experience of a slave woman, but also her potential failure to nurse her children.

Sethe‘s love for her children is selfless. She sees her children as her best thing: ―The best thing she 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, 251) In whites‘ eyes, they were degraded to animals, which make Sethe suffer much. Compared to let her children be threatened by schoolteacher, Sethe prefer to kill them than have them dirtied by the whites. As a result, Sethe‘s abnormal maternal love and infanticide becomes normal under the system of slavery.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Sethe, Halle, Sethe‘s husband, is watching from a loft above her, when she is violated and stolen the milk by schoolteacher‘s nephews. Afterward, Halle goes mad and never comes back, which left Sethe along with the children. Halle‘s absence gives Sethe a heavy hit. She has no choice but to nurse the children by her own. It is this single parent family that results in an unhealthy relationship between children and mother.

1.2 Unhealthy Relationship Between Daughter and Mother

The daughter- mother relationship is always an eternal topic of mankind, so it is unavoidable to become the enduring theme in literature. An outpouring of scholarship

on relations between mother and daughter has been seen since the mid-1970s, including in today‘s literature.

As described in Adrienne Rich‘s masterpiece Of Woman Born: ―The daughter views her mother both as herself and as the other from whom she must split to define her own sense of self. Despite this antipathy for her mother, though, the strong pre-oedipal bonds, her need for nurture, draw the daughter to her mother, making it much more difficult for her to break away than for the son. The result is a life long tension, a shifting back and forth from love to ?matrophobia‘, a rejection of the mother.‖ [9], mother- daughter relation sometimes is antagonistic an antipathetic for some feminist theorists. Therefore, it seems challenging for both mother and daughter to handle the relationship properly. Or it will do a lot of harm to them.

Under the slavery, daughter- mother relationship is seriously affected and interrupted by it, which is an omnipresent force in the text. As a matter of face, in Beloved, there are as much about the mother-daughter relation as crimes of slavery, and is causes the tragic infanticide in Beloved. In slavery system, the slave women are regarded and valued as ―breeders‖. Barbara Christian claims that one of the most salient elements of American slavery is that women are valued ―not for themselves but for the capacity to breed, which is to ?produce‘ workers for the society in Black Feminist Criticism: Perspectives on Black Women Writers.[3]What‘s more, according to the slavery, the mother has no right to charge her own children‘s fate because they don‘t belong to her, just the products to the whites. In Beloved, the some tragedy happens to Sethe. As a slavery mother, she belongs to the Sweet Home, without any individuality or subjectivity. So do her children.

Beloved in Beloved is like a real character but not a ghost or the metaphor. The relation between Beloved and her mother, Sethe, is analyzed as an actual mother- daughter relationship, which is unhealthy and abnormal. Beloved comes back for maternal love, while her desire is insatiable. All the pay of Sethe is not enough. In other word, Beloved‘s desire even threats her mother‘s life, because in order to satisfy Beloved‘s need, Sethe becomes thinner and thinner; more and more lethargic. The

description of the daughter- mother relation between Sethe and Beloved seems to verify the psychoanalytic conclusion which the bond between mother and daughter is dangerous, devouring and destructive. In the novel, Beloved says: ―I am not separate from her there is no place where I stop‖ and Sethe says: ―You are my face; I am you‖ As the novel tells us, the mother and daughter are ―locked in a love that wore everybody out‖.

Except for the abnormal relation between Sethe and Beloved, the relation between Sethe and Denver is also unhealthy. According to the following dialogue, we can find the depth and Sethe devotion to, and protection of Denver.

―Excuse me, but I can‘t hear a word against her. I‘ll chastise her. You leave her alone.‖

―Why you think you have to take up for her? ...‖

―I don‘t care what she is. Grown don‘t mean nothing to a mother. A child is a child. They are bigger, older…‖

―It means she has to take it if she acts up. You can‘t protect her every minute. What‘s going to happen when you die?‖

―Nothing! I‘ll protect her while I‘m alive and I‘ll protect her when ain‘t‖ (Morrison, 45)

Denver accepts to much love form her mother, so she must fight for out of the bond to be herself. Due to the excessive love from her mother, Denver keeps the quality of native, infantile and self-centered. Even though she grows up, she is the same as before. What‘s worse, without any friends, she feels very lonely and is afraid of her mother and the world outside her yard. Luckily, she realizes that she has no self, so she decides to leave the yard. In short, either an inappropriate, over-close or too loose daughter- mother relationship is doing harm do both of them.

2. Reasons of Distorted Mother Love

In the novel, there are many reasons causing the deformed motherhood. This

theme will focus on the truth experience of slaves, disruption of the motherhood and the exclusion of community‘s.

2.1 The Black Slavers’ True Experience

In Beloved, Morrison tells us the wrenching influence on the motherhood of slaves. Under slavery, the life of slaves is absolutely a nightmare, and it is the part of national amnesia. Morrison makes a conclusion that the limitations imposed on the 19th century writer of the slave narrative. Morrison knows how painful to remember the nightmarish horrors in her novel. However, she chooses to remember it. By doing that, Beloved can help to reveal and honor the symbolic spirit of the black girl. It also presents the hope of a future where Afro-Americans can respect and honor themselves and their ancestors. It aims to tell a truth about Afro- Americans life, which has been either whitewashed or forgotten, such a horrible truth that it makes a mother kill her own child.

The history of Afro Americans can date back to the middle passage that is a part of the Atlantic slave trade. Those ships departed from Europe to African markets with commercial goods. However, in return, they were trade for kidnapped Africans who were transported as slaves. Many of the slaves were sold as the commercial goods for raw materials. Many slaves were imprisoned, enslaved and removed from their homelands and their relatives in the process of capturing and transporting.

―Some historians told me 200 million died. The smallest number I got from anybody was 60 million…‖ Morrison once said in an interview. It seems that Morrison ground her fictional work in this historical reality. According to the experience of Beloved, the slave ship was a horrible place in which the dead remained next to the living for long periods, in which the white men pushed the hill of dead people into the see. Many Africans who were caught by whites, like Beloved‘s mother, chose to committed suicide by jumping into the sea rather than live cruelly.

Under slavery, the slaves are treated as animals than human beings. They are just the property of their owners. According to Paul D‘s description in Beloved, we can

clearly know the brutality of slavery. ―During, before and after the War he had seen Negroes so stunned, or hungry, or tied or bereft it was a wonder they recalled or said anything. Who, like him, has hidden in caves and fought owls for food; who, like him, had buried themselves in slop and jumped in wells to avoid regulators, raiders, patrollers, veterans, hill men, posses and merrymakers.(Morrison, 66)

Morrison reveals the whit owners‘ brutality and obscenity. After they failed to escape from Sweet Home, Paul D is sent to work on the gang sleep chained together in separate wooden cages. The misery memories of Paul D break his spirit, which is said following: ―A man ain‘t a goddamn ax. Chopping, hacking, busting every goddamn minute of the day. Things get to him. Things he can‘t chop down because they‘re inside.‖ (Morrison, 69) the male slaves are suffering from the cruel fate, so do the female. Female slaves not only were forced to endure the sexual advances of white males but also were mated with white male slaves to increase their property. Seethe is the representative, as the Schoolteacher said to his nephew in Beloved ―No, no. that‘s not the way. I told you to put her human characteristics on the left; her animal ones o the right. And don‘t forget to line them up.‖ (Morrison, 193) The whites degrade the black slaves to the rank of animals. Under the cruel slavery, many children are deprived the mother love. Meanwhile, the mothers have to experience the cruel alienation form their children.

Sweet Home, under the dominant of Garners, is practiced a comparatively benevolent kind of slavery. However, when Garners died, everything in Sweet Home is changed. After run the farm by Mrs. Garner‘s sadistic, the oppressive presence makes the slaves‘ life on the plantation even more unbearable than it had been before. So they decide to run away from Sweet Home. In Beloved, when Schoolteacher decides to sell him, Paul D realizes the sense of his identity. He understands that in many people‘s eyes, he is at the same place with the animals. The description of Halle, who is Sethe‘s husband, finally goes mad after watching his wife being raped. It is his empower to protect his wife that drives his insane.

What‘s more, the black slaves are stopped from speaking their own languages or

maintaining their own traditions. In Beloved, not only the mother tongue obliterated but also the actual tongue of the speaking subject is harnessed by an iron bit. Seethe rememorizes of the language her mother spoke, which were never come back. But the message—that was and had been there all along. In addition, the slaves must be named with the names given by their owners, but not the African name. The loss of the language and name imply that the slaves are suffering a kind of cultural devastation.

The deprivation of mother love is another common phenomenon under slavery. The right to take care of one‘s own children is deprived by the slave‘s owners, not to say the maternal love. In Beloved, according the slavery, Sethe not only lost her own mother, but also lost the right to be a mother. In the novel, both Beloved and Sethe have experienced the deprivation of mother love. When Sethe was a little girl, her mother was hanged, which makes her feel abandoned. The shadow of her mother‘s death influenced her a lot. However, the image of her own mother is only an African woman with a stooped back in a clothe hat, as is described in the Beloved:

―She remembered only song and dance. Not even her own mother, who was pointed out to her by the eight-year-old child who watched over the young one—pointed out as the one among many backs turned away from her, stooping in a watery field. Patiently Sethe waited for this peculiar back to gain the row‘s end and stand. What she saw was a cloth hat as opposed to a straw one, Singularity enough in that world of cooing woman each of whom was called Ma‘am.‖(Morrison, 30)

It seems that losing their children of black mothers is a prevailing phenomenon. Baby Suggs is another example in Beloved. She has eight children, however, at last, just keep Haller with her. The agony of black mothers and cruelty of slavery is described vividly as following from the novel:

“Whom she barely glanced at when he was born because it wasn‘t worth the trouble to try to learn features[she]would never see change into adulthood anyway. Seven times she had done that: held a little foot; examined the fat fingertips with her

own-fingers. She never saw them become the male or female hands a mother would recognize anywhere. All seven were gone or dead. What would be the point of looking too hard at that youngest one?‖ (Morrison, 139)

Even though Sethe‘s infanticide has successfully obstructed the oppression of Schoolteacher to some extent, its negative influence is widely felt and far-reaching. After Baby Suggs died, Sethe‘s two sons are frightened away and never come back. Her daughter stayed with her, but grows up lonely. Under the slavery, undoubtedly, black motherhood is distorted.

2.2 Disruption of Mother Love

In Morrison, motherhood is treated as the ancient properties of traditional black womanhood and the ancestral memory of black culture. Toni Morrison focuses on the importance of motherhood repeatedly. She claims that ―A woman has to be a daughter before she can be any kind of woman. If she doesn‘t know how to relate to her ancestors, to her tribe, so to speak, she is not good for much.‖ She goes on saying ―When I talked to a very young black girl recently,‖ “it seemed to me that she had never heard of anything. They‘ve grown up like they never had grandmothers. Or if they had them, they never paid them any attention. Kill your ancestors, you kill all[11]

Beloved shows the disruption of African American motherhood by separating families through sale and buying the African Americans as commodities. In this novel, Morrison tells us the loss of motherhood and thinks about how this loss demonstrates psychologically. The character Sethe is the representative to represent the historical trauma of motherhood loss. Sethe‘s motherhood is disrupted because she suffers both the loss of her own mother and her daughter. However, in Beloved, Sethe never give up to have their motherhood. Sethe details the difficulty to mother her young children without a community of elder women to help guidance and support by the conversation with Paul D:

I never did,‘ cause that‘s the only day Halle and me had with sunlight in it for the both of us to see each other. So there wasn‘t anybody. To talk to, I mean, who‘d know

when it was time to chew up a little something and give it to em.... I wish I‘d know more, but, like I say, there wasn‘t anybody to talk to. Woman, I mean. So I tried to recollect what I‘d seen back whereI was before Sweet Home. How the women did there. They know all about it. (Morrison, 160)

Sethe knows that the daughter can learn how to mother from the teachings of motherhood. Sethe also knows that mother successes more than practical advice to their daughters. Every mother wants her own daughter to be a healthy mother knowing how to mother her children. In the novel, Sethe never get mother love from her mother, or has been a beloved daughter before. It‘s dangerous for her to deal with the daughter-mother relation. She doesn‘t know how to give her daughter love properly, which is the reason the infanticide happened.

Some scholars think that Beloved is the ghostly reincarnation of Sethe‘s murdered daughter and more importantly is the symbol of the broken motherhood. Beloved makes Sethe remember what she was determined to forget. In this way, seethe learns how to live with the past and accept herself. Therefore, Sethe finds her lost motherhood by the relation with Beloved.

2.3 Black Community’s Rejection

According to Morrison, community plays an important role in blacks‘ life. It is not only the dwelling place for African American, but also their spiritual home. She believes that no black people can live without the black community. Therefore, she always constructs black communities in her works. She emphasizes the function of community where the black people live and depend on in Beloved. In this novel, she focuses on the role community plays. She not only manifests the community as a place gathering the strength but also presents the dark inside and destructive part of community.

After Sethe escaping from Sweet Home successfully, she arrives in Ohio. She stays in Cincinnati with Baby Suggs and her dear children where she spends twenty-eight wonderful days. 124 Bluestone, her house, is a place of the community

center. In this place, ―She should have known that he would behave like everybody else in town once he knew. The twenty-eight days of having women friends, a mother- in-law, and all her children together; of being part of neighborhood; of, in fact, having neighbors at all to all her own…‖ What‘s more, they can discuss about the true meaning of Fugitive Bill, the Settlement Fee, God‘s Ways and Negro pews….( Morrison, 173)

After Sethe‘s return back to Cincinnati, they live in happy days. However, something tragedy happened afterwards. The crisis in the community starts with Baby Suggs‘ overgenerous expression of love. The community disapproves the ―bounty‖ of Baby Suggs. ―124, rocking with laughter, goodwill and food for ninety, made them angry. Too much they thought. Where does she get it all, Baby Suggs, holy?‖(Morrison, 137) The community finds in Baby Suggs a suitable target angry. As a result, when the Schoolteacher comes to capture Sethe back to Sweet Home, nobody wants to warn both Baby Suggs and Sethe. ―And about the party too, because that explained why nobody ran on ahead; why nobody sent a fleet-footed son to cut cross a field soon as they saw the four horses in town hitched for watering while the riders asked questions‖ (Morrison, 157)

Cincinnati‘s black community‘s failure to alert Sethe to Schoolteacher‘s approach implicates it in the death of Sethe‘s daughter. Baby Suggs feels the slight as a grave betrayal from which she never fully recovers. What‘s worse, she is mortally disillusioned. She fells depressed about the people living together with her, and even abandons her ministry of love and gives up her life gradually. As is said in Beloved, ―To belong to a community of other free Negroes—to love and be loved by them, to counsel and be counseled, protect and be protected, feed and be fed—and then to have that community step back and hold itself at a distance—well, it could wear out even a Baby Suggs…‖, Baby Suggs gives up her role as a community mother.

It is the community‘s jealousy that leads the isolation of the community members and the exclusion of Sethe. They envy the bounty of Baby Suggs, the deftness of flowers and Sethe‘s youth. The community around 124 starts to outcast Sethe, Baby

Suggs, and Denver.

In a way, it is the exclusion of the community that Sethe chooses to kill her own daughter. As a matter of fact, sethe‘s infanticide is a declaration of independence from a jealousy and unsympathetic community. Compared with her daughter leading a cruel life as every slave, she prefers to kill her own dear daughter brutally.

3. The Ways to Set Up Normal Mother Love

In the novel Beloved, the protagonist is not nurtured by culture bearing mother love, which has difficulties in developing an authentic selfhood. The relationship between she and her daughter is abnormal, which finally cases the infanticide. Morrison presents the great necessity for people to develop healthy motherhood by this painful phenomenon. In Morrison‘s opinion, there are some ways to set up a kind of normal and healthy motherhood. Meanwhile, she creates some healers to cure the psychological wounds that is possible for African American to set up healthy motherhood.

3.1 Development of Sisterhood

Sisterhood is powerful, which feminists take between women as one of the most important means support each other and unite together struggling against the patriarchal society. Many writers discuss the sisterhood in women literature, especially in African American literature. And Morrison is great aware of the importance of sisterhood for women, especially for women. In this novel, Morrison deals with sisterhood between women, the sisterhood between black women and their white counterparts included.

In the history, sisterhood and motherhood are closely tied and inseparable. The most profound sisterhood is to be found in co-mothering, which is essence of black community. Grandmothers, sisters, or aunts can act as mothers by taking responsibilities for the children. In Beloved, Sethe is sold to Sweet Home when she is a little girl. Therefore, most of her time is staying with no black women. When she is at Sweet Home, she has to foster her children by herself without any concerns. When

she comes back to Cincinnati, because of the jealousy, she is abandoned by the whole community, so she leads a lonely life as before. On the other hand, Sethe is a beneficiary of the black sisterhood. Even thought, she is forced to leave her own mother, she is brought up by another black woman. Before she escapes form Sweet Home, Baby Suggs help her look after her children. All these are the representations of other mothering and community mothering in the black community.

What‘s more, besides the help of black women, there are other help from the counterparts- white women. Morrison doesn‘t condemn all the whites. On Sethe‘s way from Sweet Home to the free place, she receives the help form Amy Denver who is a white woman. She also acts as a link between the black and white. Besides Amy Denver, there are other women in the novel giving help to Sethe. Mrs. Garner gave her a pair of crystal earring as a present compensating the lack of wedding and comforts her. Another white woman is Miss Baldwin who always helps the black and usually bring Christmas gifs to them. Although the number of helpful white women is minor, they give hopes to establish the relationship between black and white. To develop a normal African motherhood, blacks and whites ought to consolidate.

Morrison expresses the same belief with some black feminists by Beloved. To some extent, both the white and black act as the healer. Thus the development of sisterhood is very important to establish a kind of normal motherhood.

3.2 Strong Ties between Individual and the Community

Denver is the only daughter who lives with Sethe after the infanticide. She suffers a lot and her life is greatly affected. Denver grows up lonely. She seldom walks out of the yard, let alone see people outside. However, in order to save her mother‘s life, she decides to leave 124 Bluestone Road. After her leaving, she learns how to communicate with other people and learns how to get alone with them. In Beloved, Denver acts as the link between Sethe and the community. It is a hard step for Denver to overcome the fear outside of yard. Her fear is coming from the fear of her mother. Both the blacks and whites hurt her mother in the past. Sethe warns

Denver against going to outside place, and there fore Denver really fears leaving the yard. For Denver, 124 Bluestone Road is her whole world. However, the venture is important. Luckily, Denver receives the brave from Baby Suggs: ―You mean I never told you anything about Carolina? About your daddy? You don‘t remember nothing about your mother‘s feet, not to speak pf her back? I never told you all that? Is that way you can‘t walk down the steps? …Know it, and go on out the yard. Go on.‖(Morrison, 244)

It is Denver‘s asking for help that awakens more and more black people. Because many members of the community not only experience material horrors, but also go through a psychic trauma, the community is unable to love anybody, especially not to Sethe. 18 years ago, the community‘s failure to alert Sethe to schoolteacher‘s coming because of jealousy implicates it in the death of Sethe‘s daughter. As the time goes by, the community is changing. At the end of the novel, the black community makes up for its past misbehavior by taking active response to Denver‘s difficulties.

4. Conclusion

Morrison‘s outstanding work, Beloved, is both an application and an enrichment of feminist theories. In order to honor the lives of the invisible slaves, Morrison writes the distorted mother love to help heal the Afro-American culture.

Morrison‘s different manifestation of mother love is seldom enacted. In many white people‘s opinion, it is unbelievable to kill one‘s own child, especially for a responsible mother. However, in this novel, Morrison writes an anti-character to reflect the unusual mother love. She analyzes the reasons why the infanticide happened: firstly, it is the horror experience of the blacks under slavery; secondly, it is the distorted motherhood; at last, it is the exclusion of the community.

In Beloved, many characters seldom received the indispensable mother love that is for their well-being as grown-ups. Here Morrison presents the mothers‘ desperate struggle to provide their children‘s survival and well-being with essential mother work. The mother love in this novel is distorted because her children are not nurtured,

nor did they receive cultural bearing.

This paper makes an analysis of an unusual kind of mother love, which is a call for the equality of afro-American, especially for the feminism. By doing this research, we can know the darkness and brutal life of African American slaves. Hopefully this essay on the deformed mother love will do some help to the further study of Toni Morrison and her other works, even the female black writers‘ works.

(注：以上例一为封面和论文正文的例子，大家写时不须这么多字，课程论文简洁明了就可以了，英文1500字Times New Roman小四大概3-4页，中文3000字宋体小四大概是4-5页。本范文抽自08级的师姐的毕业论文，毕业论文需要10000字的英文内容。

以下例二为09级1位师姐的毕业论文参考文献，课程论文的参考文献要求至少列举阅读过的与论文题目相关的5篇相关论文或者5本书籍，全部是中文的，没有英文的也可以。)

例二： References(参考文献)

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