A Study Of Identity Play In Mark Twain's Works

As one of the founders of American realism,Mark Twain establishes his position not only through the content of his works but also through his unique and delicate writing strategies.With these writing strategies,Mark Twain demonstrates in his works his insightful ideas and deep humanistic concern.The present dissertation analyzes the identity play and its ethical implications in Mark Twain's four novels and several representative tales.Taking these novels and tales as a whole,this dissertation tries to explore Mark Twain's purposes for use of identity play from the perspective of ethical literary criticism,and demonstrates the influence of ethical environment on the construction of individual's ethical identity and formation of ethical ideas.Furthermore,this research demonstrates Mark Twain's concern for and thinking on class ethic,racial ethic,and sexual ethic,and his pursuit of universal ethic,like freedom,equality and justice,in what seems to be light and playful identity switches.This dissertation discusses identity play in detail from the following six parts:The Introduction Part gives a summary of the previous studies of Mark Twain at home and abroad,and introduces research object,significance of this research,research methods and the outline of this dissertation.Identity is Twain's major concern in almost all of his works,and identity play is the major strategy he uses to illustrate his understanding about identity.Thus,this dissertation chooses four of Twain's novels and some tales with identity play as study object,to explore how ethical ideas are expressed.The significance of this study is as follows.Firstly,it is a comprehensive study of Twain's ideas about class,race and gender.Interpreting Twain's works on the basis of the historical context,this dissertation emphasizes the coherence in themes and development of ideas in these works.Secondly,this dissertation focuses on identity play to explore the ethical ideas expressed through it,and thus it is an expansion of the previous study on Mark Twain.Thirdly,this dissertation not only explores Twain's ethical ideas,but also discusses Twain's narrative skills.Therefore,it is a study of Twain's views on some social problems and artistic features of his works as well.Because of the rich ideas expressed in Twain's works and many issues to be discussed,this dissertation will use ethical literary criticism as main critical approach,and also uses in different chapters other critical approaches,such as social and historical criticism,feminist criticism and post-colonial criticism,so as to interpret Twain's works from different perspectives and different dimensions.Chapter One studies Mark Twain's understanding and thinking of class issues through identity switches in The Prince and the Pauper and The American Claimant.For Mark Twain,the switch of class identity is both an element of narration and a means of demonstrating his understanding of the class society.Firstly,by trading places of the prince and the pauper and the identity switch of the English young man Berkeley,Mark Twain presents in these two novels,a panorama of different social classes and contrasts the sharp differences,so as to reveal the inequality between social classes and expansion of animal factor of the lower class people caused by inequality.Secondly,by analyzing identity switch and the subsequent identity transformation in completely different environments,this dissertation reveals that environment exerts great influence on formation of ethical ideas and behaviours of individuals,and thus challenges the myth of class superiority.In addition,by trading places of two small children whose class awareness is still not well established in The Prince and the Pauper,Mark Twain bridges the linguistic and ethical gulf for people from different classes to get to know and to understand each other,through which people from different classes break the originally obvious identity boundaries,enter a completely new environment to observe and to experience the life of other classes.As a result,they learn some moral lessons and get to change and grow,and finally,the purpose of minimizing class differences so as to solve social problems is attained.Chapter Two,taking Pudd'nhead Wilson as study object,analyzes the strategy of "baby switch"and interprets fingerprinting to demonstrate Mark Twain's concern and thinking of racial ethic and thereafter his understanding of human and human nature.Firstly,in slavery society,the racial discrimination of "white is noble and black is humble" not only distorts human nature,but also leads to moral corruption and loss of humanity.The unjust racial ethic turns both black and white people into its victims.Secondly,identity switch between the black and the white exposes the absurdity of socially constructed racial division.The identity construction of the two children after identity switch proves that "white is noble and black is humble" is not a racial feature,but an ethical one,a cultural construction,a lie for racists to legalize and moralize the notorious slavery.Finally,since the use of fingerprinting to discover the crime committed by fake Tom focuses on individuality,this is a challenge to racial division.The fingerprinting resolves the racial attributes and demonstrates Twain's view on racial issue.Everyone's particular fingerprint indicates his uniqueness and differentiates one from the other.This is exactly the same as the Italian twins:each with its uniqueness and limitations.Thus,learning from others' strong points and making oneself complete is a way towards self-perfection.This is also true of different groups of people.Therefore,it is safe to say that Pudd'nhead Wilson reveals Twain's pursuit of individual uniqueness and completion of personality as well as his pursuit of equal and harmonious racial ethic.Chapter Three,taking Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc and several representative short stories as study texts,discusses Mark Twain's view on gender and his concern for new ethical issues arising from social reforms via various men and women(mostly women)different from the traditional and stereotyped.In a series of works related to gender issues by Mark Twain,various characters are portrayed,like young men and young women with misplaced sex,cross dressers,and androgynous characters.These gender transgressors not only enrich women images in Mark Twain's works,but also break through the fixed models for men and women and question the conventional assumptions of sex and the binary oppositions of the gender roles in patriarchy societies.Finally,through creation of androgynous female characters like Joan of Arc and Cathy,Twain expresses his pursuit of harmonious ethical relationship between men and women and his ideal for perfect personality.Chapter Four,illustrating the social and cultural background in nineteenth century America and other works of Twain,is a summary and distillation of the problems discussed in the first three chapters.In fact,through identity play,Mark Twain establishes a utopian kingdom in its literary world.This utopian kingdom has the following three features:it provides a good social environment for the healthy development of the individual;in this good social environment,everyone will have equal chance to develop themselves freely,comprehensively and pluralistically,and ultimately becomes citizens of the world with completion of personality,moral integrity and awareness of cultural diversity;in this utopia,people of different classes understand each other,people of different races are inclusive of each other and men and women are equal.In a word,in this utopian kingdom,people from different countries,with different cultural backgrounds and different religious beliefs,understand each other and are inclusive of each other,living together harmoniously,while maintaining their own unique cultural traditions.The Conclusion Part summarizes the significance of identity play,Twain's expression of ethical ideals through use of identity play,and the ideological value and artistic charm of Twain's works.Through a variety of identity play,Twain reveals the constraints of the old ethical system on people,expresses their desire to get away from the distress in their life,break through their limitations,so as to play different roles by experiencing various life and achieve individual integrity.Through identity play,Twain also constructs a new social environment,in which people will develop freely and live equally,harmoniously and inclusively together while maintaining their personal differences.This shows Twain's praise for and pursuit of universal ethic like equality,justice and etc.In short,identity play is an important strategy in Twain's works.The use of identity play as an element in plot building is not the original of Twain,but Twain's use of it is unique in that his identity play is not intended to create a fantastic story,but used as a way of expressing his views on some social problems.It not only blows the flame of realistic criticism,but also expresses persistent pursuit of the harmonious society in the future;it is the mediation of the established order,and the prospect of the future order as well.The identity play of what Twain designs is the unity of realistic criticism and future construction,the unity of aesthetic art and ethical expression.Through literary imagination,Twain constructs a utopian world,expresses human's pursuit of self-perfection and praise for equality and justice and other universal ethic,and the prospect of harmonious social relations.More importantly,as a great writer,Twain presents in his works,not only his concern about particular issues in American society,but his concern of the issues that the human confront.Taking the realistic issues of American society as a window,Twain catches the common problem faced by mankind in the process of modernization,that is,how to achieve human equality and justice when maximization of economic interests is taken as the goal in modern society.Therefore,Twain's construction of a utopia is continuation and transcendence of the American dream.Although it is too perfect to be achieved,it is always the dream of the human.