A Gender Study Of Toni Morrison's Love

As a prominent contemporary Afro-American women writer, Toni Morrison has been concerned and sympathized with black women marginalized in American mainstream society. She also pays special attention to the relationship between black men and black women. Morrison's concern for black women and black male-female relationship runs through all her works, the relatively new novel Love included. In the thesis, Love will be studied from the perspective of gender. Gender study covers issues about both the male and the female, displacing women as the mere object of analysis. Therefore, gender theory is adopted to examine both the male and female protagonists in the novel, explore the unequal sexual relationship within the black community, and analyze Morrison's efforts to reconstruct equal, harmonious communities.The thesis consists of three chapters together with an introduction and a conclusion. Chapter One gives a brief account of some basic ideas of gender and Morrison's ideas of gender. Gender is defined as socio-cultural construction of masculinity and femininity. The variable quality of society and culture probably leads to the change of gender conventions. Therefore, what it means to be a man or a woman alters within any given society at any different time. Men's representing"universality"and women's subordination are questioned, which paves the way for an equal, harmonious relation between two sexes. As a writer inevitably affected by feminism and gender theories, Morrison has her own ideas of gender and her gender politics are either explicitly or implicitly reflected in her works.Chapter Two specifies an unequal relationship between black men and black women on the basis of detailed investigation into the main characters of Love: Bill Cosey, Heed, Christine, and May. Toni Morrison through her characterization reveals that African American women in contemporary society are still inferior and subordinate to African American men as a result of patriarchy modeled on white American society and the false ideas of"race loyalty ethic"in which race always trumps gender and black women's sufferings. Morrison in this novel once again focuses on the afflictions and adversities of black women in a new historical phase.Chapter Three demonstrates Morrison's efforts to reconstruct equal, harmonious communities for African Americans. In Love, the author emphasizes the significance of sisterhood among black Americans by portraying the strong affection between Heed and Christine. Meanwhile, she creates two new images Romen and Junior with the hope of appealing to black Americans of younger generation to develop appropriate personalities and worldviews. As far as Morrison is concerned, female bonding and the elimination of rotten patriarchal values imposed on both men and women are fundamentally essential to the reestablishment of an equal sexual relationship in the black community.The thesis aims to display Morrison's great concern for intra-racial gendered relations of black communities. She in Love explores ways out for black women still subject to inferiority and subservience and conveys her hopes for African Americans---the necessity of an equal, harmonious sexual relationship. The equality between Afro-American men and women helps to promote self-development and advancement of the whole community, which subsequently serves to obliterate racial discrimination. This is also the correct"race loyalty ethic"for black Americans in modern society.