The Gender Awareness And Psychology Study Of Amy Tan's Autobiographical Novels

Amy Tan (1952 - ), is one of the representatives of Chinese American women writer. Ever since the first publication of 1989 until now, her novels, children's literature and other literary genres have caused strong response both at home and abroad. Especially the masterpiece "The Joy Luck Club" is well known and loved by Chinese readers; the dissemination of the novel was accelerated with its film adaptation. Tan's next three autobiography novels, " The Kitchen God's Wife," "The Hundred Secret Senses" and " The Bonesetter's daughter", have been regarded as a continuation of the "The Joy Luck Club" which includes the same writing style, by means of description and analysis of"mother-daughter"relationship, it reveals the discriminations by mainstream of society which the Chinese immigrants have suffered in ethnic and gender aspects in the United States, which also leads to multiple interpretations that have attracted the attention of domestic and foreign critics. Because these novels have put female on the center stage, which represents the exploration and search for a matriarchal culture. Many critics have focused on the use of feminist theory, which lack of a comprehensive observation from bisexual angel. This thesis based on gender theory which attempt to unearth the reasons the formation of the writer's specific gender theology from social, cultural and family education aspects. The analysis of the writers also conducted from psychology view to explore the unique psychological causes of her gender consciousness in order to break a new path for the study for the Amy Tan.The formation of Amy Tan's gender consciousness is influenced by the family atmosphere,social environment and culture,the choice between two kinds of culture/races/genders makes her own contradiction gender characteristics.The male/female double temperament is performance at creating the charactes.Among them, Amy Tan described the female characters whose male temperament was repressed and named the obedience of fate; another female with independent ,but they consider it's difficult to get rid of the contradictions inherent thought to inhibit ,named the fate of negative protesters; And there although have some female charactes who dare to think, say and pursue with independent rebellion consciousness, etc. With these characters,we can find out that the contradiction of gender consciousness and the fusion and development process of double temperaments without involuntary discharge of urine. At the same time,Amy Tan's male characters can be divided into three types: "silent men" and "demonize male", "feminate male". They are preserved the interests of the male-dominated system society, but also are another type of victim.Using the psychology to analyze Amy Tan's autobiographic novels , the author introduces the"androgyny"theory , from Freud, Jung to Woolf, especially Jung,who divided the theory into "Anima" and "Animus" two categories, analyzing the representative characters with her own contradiction of the gender temperament, In addition, the study of psychology also involves psychology process and battered and abusive mode conversion two aspects. In Amy Tan'autobiography novels, some traditional Chinese women already have have self gender discrimination built-in,there're some appear deviation when they understand their own status andvalue. once they have been given the power by men, they will passed on the suffering to other women, from the battered person suddenly become abusive "the stronger". This kind of psychological is truly barriers on the road when female knowingt hemselves and pursuing the independence and liberation.This thesis is divided into three parts.Using the reference theory of gender consciousness and androgyny in studying Amy Tan's autobiographical novels . The summary including the starting point, ideological principle and main contents.Finally, the writing purpose is facing whether American culture or the Chinese culture, traditional gender roles or the feminist movement showed the different gender roles, Amy Tan has her own self-proposed solution, which is making these two cultures and double gender temperaments together, to adapt to the ever-changing surrounding. In short, Amy Tan is purseing for culture and double gender temperament with her own creation,which opens a new writing mode for the chinese-american writer's creation.