Wandering Between Ideals And Reality

Culture values,the core of personal value system of culture,are human norms and value criterions,which have profound impact on people's beliefs,behaviors,attitudes and thoughts.Moreover,culture values reflect the evaluations and views towards the outside world.As a cross-cultural writer who is deeply influenced by both oriental and occidental cultures,Pearl S.Buck dedicates all her life to cultural communication and integration under the guidance of her unique dual culture values.It is of profound significance to place Pearl S.Buck's culture values in the era of globalization.Based on Pearl S.Buck's personal experiences,social activities and literary creation,the dissertation attempts to do the research from the perspective of her culture values,and to elaborate on the formation of those values,along with the core connotation,the artistic expression and the practical significance,in order to unscramble her personal value system under the impact of dual cultures.The formation of Pearl S.Buck's culture values can be examined in four aspects,namely,the influence she receives from family,education,religion and society.Under the influence of various elements,Pearl S.Buck's cultural identity gradually forms,in the process of which the exile and migrant experiences pose as the most significant.Because of this unique cultural identity,her culture values demonstrate the characteristics of inclusiveness and transcendence,and also present diverse and contradictory traits.The core connotation of her culture values covers three aspects--the views on women,religion and family.Pearl S.Buck's views on women form in a dynamic way.As a female writer,the similar patriarchal culture in the Chinese and Western cultures keeps her always sensitive to the fates of women.Furthermore,she puts her views on women into practice,and pursues women's individual liberation,freedom and equality through continuous efforts.Pearl S.Buck's views on religion present a diversity,which is mainly seen in the collision and fusion of western Christianity and Chinese Confucianism.On the one hand,Pearl S.Buck approves her father's faith and her mother's humanistic spirit.On the other hand,she holds a clear opposition to many overseas missionaries.But ironically,being a missionary for some time herself,her words and deeds often show her as a typical missionary.In fact,such a contradiction embodies the complexity of Pearl S.Buck's views on religion,that is: the idea “harmony in diversity” in Confucian thought provides Pearl S.Buck with both an attitude toward and a method to resolve life's problem,so that she can be more tolerant to face the differences between religious ideology,which also become the starting point of Pearl S.Buck's transcendent religious view.Pearl S.Buck's views on family are contradictory.She praises highly of the Chinese family system in which children respect the elders and family members enjoy an intimate relationship.However,she keeps her children at a distance in her later life,for she believes that Chinese women are brutally devastated by patriarchy but also feels that women are very powerful in Chinese families.The contradiction comes from her family background and life experience,as well as from the great differences between Chinese and Western family cultures.There is no doubt that an important carrier of Pearl S.Buck's culture values is her literary creation.Based on these aspects of her views,the thesis attempts to comment on the artistic expression of culture values in her works.Through the images of traditional women,women under the clash of two cultures,women of the new era and women of the United States,this part of my thesis fully displays the views on women in Pearl S.Buck's works.The views on religion in her works are embedded in the image of both the missionaries and the extensive description of Chinese religion.And in the third aspect,through the portrayal of Chinese family's land sentiment,Chinese family ethics and American families,Pearl S.Buck's views on family are presented.In the era of globalization,cultural conflict and integration happen all the time.At present,the exploration of this dissertation of Pearl S.Buck's personal culture values through investigating her efforts when faced with the cultural conflict and integration will therefore provide some inspiration and methods to seek common grounds between different cultures in the world.