Modern Deconstruction Of "Myths Of Southern Womanhood"

The Southern literature occupies an important position in the American literature history, among the huge amount of Southern writers, women writers accounted for a large proportion, especially in the forties of last century, many women became the literary writers, and have accomplished remarkable literary achievement. However, referring to the domestic translation and research, the academic concerns to these women writers is not sufficient enough. One important reason is that when people describe the Southern literature, they tend to focus on the "Southern Renaissance", and there are some limitation of writing the modern Southern literature history concerning to the "Southern Renaissance" to some extent.On the one hand, critics limited the "Southern Renaissance" time frame within the two wars, many talented women writers have been excluded because of their writing careers are not within this period. On the other hand, southern gentlemen made a variety of definitions for the literary range in this particular period, while those definitions often brought some degree of biases regarding to the works of women writers. Therefore, many women writers'literature achievements have been ignored whilst academia emphasizes on the "Southern Renaissance".In addition, as the South has a more conservative and continued literary tradition than the other regions, so it tended to have bias regarding to the interpretation of the Southern literary works. Lingering history shadow and the lost memory of the Southern world's literature were the most common themes in the Southern literature, critics extracted these themes and put many Southern writers into this literary tradition and critical framework for further Interpretation. However, there are some difference between the concern possessed by the female writers to the theme of the traditional topics and the male writers, comparing to male writers, they paid more attention to the present and future, blacks'lives and self-feed farmers, and the women's fate in Southern society. Owing to the "myths of Southern Womanhood" has been playing a long time durance to women, their "back glance" indicates that there would be more irony being appeared in the present literature.During the seventies and eighties in last century, the situation of the southern women writers'production and the work connotation began to be reexamined. Many commentators believe that there is a female tradition in the southern women writers'production, which always deeply concerned about the internal relationship within the families and the activity regulations in southern society, and how they interacted with women lives. The removal of the myth color in the southern female, the suppression of the frenzy for this illusory image, and the reconstruction of the female identity constituted the central themes of this tradition.The traditional southern society was shrouded by a large mythic system, in which the southern white women played an imperative role. They were angels on the altar who represented the Southern honor and integrity, meanwhile also consolidated the foundation of the southern culture. However, they were also "materialized" - as "objects" to be adored, as a "thing" which was a subsidiary of man power and authority of male decorated state. They are the "the other" in male culture that does not exist for their own sake, but for the others'existences, which was given a confirmation, confirmed the mission of the male self-identity. Consequently, the construction process of "female myth" is the process that women are gradually silenced, as southern women identities become fragmented between fiction and reality.While many male writers, whose representative such like William Faulkner, are also aware of such fact and began to depict the southern female stories, but duo to the limitations of their own identities, they cannot explore the inner world of female, nor can conceive a positive future for the women. Therefore, many Southern women began to "tell their own stories". In the late nineteenth century, the slaves'liberation revolution and female suffrage campaign promoted the southern women's awareness, the women representative writer pioneers such as Allen Glasgow and Kate Chopin, in that generation, began to challenge the traditional southern culture. In the 1920, female literary production mixed with"southern renaissance"after the first world-war, while the new southern established literary magazines also provided them the opportunities to publish the literary works.Eudora Welty is good at depicting the mundane and dramatic southern lives, she preferred to expand the stories in the background of the old Southern families. She had paid a lot of attention to the feminine role and destinies in the Southern families, and also explored the questions about where should women of old families to go when facing the modern world. In her stories extended by the southern families background, various kinds of female characters dominated the plot development, social changes in the South are also interacted in this feminine point of view. Those feminine characters in her stories tend to have a challenging feminine consciousness, which revealed as the doubts towards the traditional family model and the reaffirmation of their own identities.She also has been trying to build a new model which is rooted in the feminine power and different from the southern traditions. The Fairchild family in Delta Wedding is a typical feminine-power-oriented world, in which women are not only the leaders and decision makers of the family, but also the heirs of Southern Culture. The Southern culture they inherited is a kind of feminine culture, which was formed in the female daily activities, housing chores as long as marriage and childbirth, it did convey the true meaning of love and union the family members. Welty reversed the relationship between "to see" and "be seen" in the family, women are no longer the negative object of men's "gazing", correspondingly they become the positive "gazer", women have enough power to challenge the men's authority, and by this power, they can also even rescue men from the altar. The daughters of Fairchild family are the representatives of the young feminine generation in modern south; the author's own thinking was included in their self-examination of the Southern families. They are not only a member of an old family, abut also want to break the family's shackle, they have been always engaged the conversation in heart between the tradition, the outside world and themselves, although this process is filled up with the pain of fracture and hardship during the finding, but in this continuous "reviewing" process, the feminine image has becoming more and more clear, consequently they can walk into the modern world with the independent attitude.In order to consolidate the feminine power, Welty is used to develop her stories in rural and mythology background. Firstly, she learned the experience from the pastoral tradition, created a secluded rural world in Delta Wedding. She emphasized the connection between the nature and the female, make nature become the place where female used to express self-declaration and confirm self-value. For example, in Delta Wedding, Dabney established the self-confidence to live independently in the fields, in The Golden Apples, Virginia regained her freedom through the ceremony in the water. Secondly, she used the abundant myths to reinforce the feminine power, to predict the new birth of the south. She did not only look up the intention in Indian myths, but also acquire much inspiration from the myth of Demeter, with those mythic symbolic models, the southern world represented by Charles Mount were included to the cycle of rebirthing and new breeding,Welty's works included the exploration of the human system, "harmony" can be considered as Welty's ultimate pursuit for the human orders. She described the "harmonious" built on the basis of feminine self-identity, through the establishment of subjectivity to achieve gender reconciliation, the past and the future reconciliation. She supports female are free to choose their lovers, to achieve their sexual integrity, in such circumstance, she praised the love between men and women, beauty of gender convergence, in her point of view, this is the way that the how the South rebirth. In her works, the contradiction between past and future is revealed through the contradictory between mother and daughter, through the memories of the mother, recognizing the mother's value, the South female not only can accept the past but also are brave to face the future.Carson McCullers's stories also evolve with the exploration to the Southern background, but she did not depicted the Southern tradition in such tender style like Welty did. She has been disgusted with the rigid system of the South, eager to shake off the shackles of the Southern patriarchal culture, she started the literary imagination based her own living, intented to create a shadow has her own role, these women characters have been trying to get rid of the traditional "femininity" restriction, challenge the inherent gender boundaries, and recreate themselves in their own ways.In McCullers's southern family,"mother"is often considered as a absent image, meanwhile, the black nanny guides the children instead of their mother, and this reflects her subversion of the southern womanhood myths. This traditional Southern mother's absence, just make the opportunities for women like her to have a free way to define themselves, those "tomboys" could also begin their adventure. in The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, Mick has lofty ideality and aspiration, she tried to define herself with the masculine standard, but she has always been beaten by the reality, and finally she accepted her feminine identity and gave up to her ideality. Whereas Amelia in The Ballad of the Sad Cafe has crossed the perplexed adolescence, and she had set herself authority based on masculine standard definition, however, in this completely sexual reversed model, she contribute this completely independent power to her masculinity, which consequently attribute her final failure. The previously two novels produced by McCullers influenced the ending of The Member of the Wedding, in which she made the dramatis personae Frankie accepted her feminine role return to the "normal " road, but at the expense of individuality lost and the self-constructed of feminine identity is still failed to achieve.As can be seen, McCullers'attitude towards feminine identity and power is always pessimistic, in her view, "be limited" is often considered as the destination of the feminine self-defined road, she used "uncompleted melody" and "inescapable prison" to suggest feminine hopelessness situation. As she can not find the power of self-construction in the southern culture, nor the models to emulate from the feminine traditional, she hoped to seek another group which can be resided in the cracks of the modern world, to find "we of me." "we of me" means an world can contain the others, in which each individual possesses their own equality, freedom, and the survival right. However, the modernity process make this hope become very slim that, perhaps, she can only repose her hope to the future.Flannery O'Connor is a writer who has devout religious beliefs, her attitude toward the South often revealed an apocalyptic meaning. For the southern feminine destinies, she also maintained the attention without any romantic colors. She focused on the feminine destinies in the "no father" families in southern society, of those people living in the edge of the crowd provided her the starting point to reveal the feminine living conditions and explore the fate of women, in which she use her female perspective to view the " masculine absence" and " feminine presence" in a deeper level, depicting southern feminine plight, struggling and exploration based on the psychological, emotional and sexuality with various aspects.The mother and daughter are often depicted as different images in those "No father" families, however they all have the same fate, like Luby repeated her mother's mistake in the A Stroke of Good Fortune, same named mother and daughter were all deceived in The Life You Save Maybe You Own, O'Connor often suggests that those women's destinies were caused by the masculine involvement. She further explained those reasons in Good Country People and The Life You Save Maybe You Own, in her point of view, in the south which has been long influenced by the patriarchal ideology, "misogyny" has become a habit, hidden beneath the surface of the refined gentlemen is their angrily dissatisfaction about feminine powers. She also explored the role of the sons in such "no father" families, as the advocators during his father's absence, they wish to punish his power-acquired mother, but they are tenuous, they cannot live independently, but also lack of the necessary ability to take actions. In this way, O'Connor also expressed her disdain towards the Southern patriarchal mythology. The heroic image in the southern myth with strong physique body and great determination has collapsed. Men are no longer the creators and interpreters of history but the destroyers and oscillators; they became the parasites rather than the supporters of families nor the backbone of society. Family women no longer rely on men to acquire power and realize their own subjects and find their own power, and that is, the Southern feminine choice toward the modern world.Although O'Connor expresses sympathetic to feminine experience, but she also saw the complicity relationship between women and men in this twisted culture, wherein they do not even know they are in, as a result, O'Connor's research in the integrity of the female is always associated to consideration of hierarchy. In her view, feminine power cannot be acquired by toppling down the subject and object in patriarchy system. From"being suppressed" to become "to suppress" is just another sense of the consolidated hierarchy. She pinned her hopes on the religious salvation, but also proposed that her lord belonged to the general meaning of human beings, neither male nor female.After the 1960s, a large number of southern female writers emerged, they extracted experiences from Welty, O'Connor, McCullers and other writers, used a more clearly feminist awareness and more confidence in their productions, further discussed the present southern feminine living conditions, showing their desire and pursuit of self-reliance. These successors are still telling the southern feminine stories, and they still hope women, are of the individuals who have rich emotions, are recognized and respected, they deserve impartial and independent assessment as true and complete ones, Welty have already set aside a bright dawn, shining the southern women who have been in the long silence of the history, those who have been awakened will not be so easily let their own shadow disappear, and easily give up their rights to talk about themselves.Although the three writers provided different answers to the questions regarding to feminine self-construction in the South, but they have shown the same tendency in their productions. They all began with the family– the space where regulations established, to express the desire to deconstruct traditional family models. As the families used to be the core of the southern mainframe framework, they constituted the main shaft of southern culture's feelings and imaginations, so they eagerly want to re-establish feminine position in the families. In addition, they all very concerned about the relationship between mothers and daughters. Because their attitude towards mothers not only reflects their opinion of southern traditions, meantime the mothers also provided them the most direct experience as a woman, according to the female, how to understand their mothers is a common question when trying to set up their own subjects.