Double Identities And Cultural Integration:On African American Women Novels During The Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s contributed to the development and prosperity of African-American literary.During this period,a great quantity of African-American literary works were published in the mainstream publishing houses,marking that the African-American literature received the attention and recognition from the mainstream society of the United States for the first time.As crucial force and participant of this important historical time of the black race,African-American women writers are indispensable spokesmen and describers of the new negro women images.They are also the promoters and recorders of the conflicts,interactions and integration between the white and black cultures during this period.The novels written by famous women novelists,such as Jessie Redmon Fauset,Nella Larson and Zora Neale Hurston during the Harlem Renaissance explored the unique experience of new Negro women on race,gender,class,culture,etc.In the special historical context of the United States in the 1920s,it was not only the turning point for African-American women novels moving towards modernity,but also the beginning of constructing modern African-American women novels' writing tradition.The ten novels of the three women novelists showed the difference,conflict,collision and integration between African-American traditional culture and American mainstream culture,and reflected the cultural orientation and writing tendency of double identities and integration of white and black racial cultures.As women writer representatives at different stages of the Harlem Renaissance,Fauset in the early days of the movement focused on writing the urban middle-class African-American women,emphasized the double identities of new Negro women and their efforts to achieve self-realization,and presented a positive and optimistic attitude of racial integration.Larson at the peak of the movement gained insight into the inner world of female mullato wondering between the white and black worlds with the modern psychological description technique,focused on depicting the special realization of mullato on the conflict,collision and integration between white and black cultures,and reflected the complexity of integration.Hurston in the later period of the movement turned her attention to the life of African Americans in the southern rural areas.She showed that African-American women are the inheritors and protectors of folk traditional cultures such as black dialects,songs and dances,and primitive religious beliefs and emphasized that the premise of racial integration is maintaining racial identity and adhering to the African-American traditional culture.This Thesis is divided into three parts,including the introduction,the main text and the conclusion.And there are four chapters in the main text.The introduction contains research question,literature review of domestic and abroad studies,significance of this research,and research methodologies.From the investigation of literature review,we can see that the novels written by these three women novelists were an important part and achievement of the Harlem Renaissance.However,it has not received sufficient attention from the academic circle in the past 30 years,no systematic research on the women writer group in this period has been conducted,and especially it is lack of research on the common themes,writing tendency and cultural orientation of women novelist.This thesis makes a profound study around that double identities and integration is the theme of African-American women novels in the Harlem Renaissance as well as the cultural orientation and creative tendency of women novelist with post-colonial literary criticism,feminist literary criticism,social-historical literary criticism and other research methods,which is conducive to strengthening the study of African-American women novelists as a whole in the Harlem Renaissance and the study of African-American women novel writing tradition and is of practical significance for the construction of American multiculturalism.Chapter One combs the relationship between the Harlem Renaissance and the three women novelists.It mainly introduces the historical background,goals and hot-debated topics of the Harlem Renaissance Movement,then it goes to discuss the participation,attitude and cognition of the three women novelist to the Harlem Renaissance,their literary writing career,and their interaction and cooperation with male novelist such as Dubois and Langston Hughes at the same time,and tries to illustrate their cultural perspective,and how the Harlem Renaissance and contemporary African-American male novelist affect the writing strategy of women novelist.Compared with contemporary African-American male novelist,women novels chose African-American women as their protagonists,and highlighted gender experience of these new Negro women,and tried to restore African-American women as women who are "complete,complex,not dwarfed,and not distorted".New Negro women began to fight agaist the multiple oppressions of race,gender and class,and their consciousness of women's self-development,self-expression and self-fulfillment was constantly enlightened and awakened.Meanwhile,African-American women novelist rejected cultural assimilation and cultural nationalism and formed a double cultural identities.Their novels achieved the combination of "ethnicity" and "Americanness",and explored cultural identity from multiple perspectives.Chapter Two mainly analyzes the writing of "blackness" in African-American women novels during the Harlem Renaissance.As a cultural bond shared by the African-American group,"blackness" is the basis for African-Americans to participate in the construction of multiculturalism in the United States,and is also a cultural link that maintains the communication of the African-American racial group.African-American folk customs,African-American folk art and primitive religious beliefs from Africa in African-American women novels showed to a large extent that African Americans had African cultural memory factors in their blood,embodying that they identified the African-American cultural tradition.African-American women,as inheritors of racial culture,attached importance to the resurrection and interpretation of African-American folk culture within the community and family,further enriching the connotation of "Blackness".The daily life of African-American women was recorded in dietary practices,the African-American oral cultural tradition was displayed in the corridor culture,the "call-and-response" mode was interpreted in sermon customs,the powerful signifying function of black English was showed in their dialects,the ethnic emotions were vented through song and dance art,and their wisdom of existence was embodied in the art of humor.Women novelist strongly urged the restoration of national self-respect and racial cultural pride to maintain ethnic identity.They exposed the production mechanism of the white race's stereotypes against African-American women,thought highly of the value of women's growth,profoundly re-thought the extreme alienation within the race,and emphasized that the raising of the consciousness of black women is of great significance for the black race and the American society.Chapter Three mainly analyzes the writing of "Americanness" in those African-American women novels.Women novelist recorded the life experience of African-American women in the United States in the early 20th century by modern literary techniques,such as focusing on psychological description,symbolism and stream of consciousness in American modernism literature.Those African-American women in different social classes showed some kind of identity and acceptance to the mainstream culture.New Negro women in the novels,such as Angela,Helga,Clare,and Jannie,adhered to their own American identity,fully participated in the American social life,recognized the gender emancipation of women's movements,and boldly pursued women's dreams of having a job,getting wealth,living in cities,and having equal rights.African-American women in Fauset's works,despite serious racial and gender discrimination,insisted on continuing to live in the United States,refusing to immigrate to Africa,trying to prove the similarities between the white and black races in all aspects,and actively promoting women's rights and showing the possibility of racial integration.The mullato women in Larson's works have the middle-class values and lifestyles.A large number of trips broaden their horizons and good economic conditions enabled them to pursue self-definition and self-expression as modern women.Hurston's novels borrowed and transformed a large number of literary images such as "Moses" and "Six-winged Angels" from the Holy Bible,borrowed "Jonah's Gourd Vine","Marriage of David and Saul's Daughter","Methuselah's Age" and other allusions from the Holy Bible,and reproduced the prototypes of "Great Flood","Eden" and other images from it,showing the acceptance of the Holy Bible,which is a typical representative of Christian culture in the United States.Chapter Four mainly discusses the construction of "civilization Sameness" for keeping the coexistence of different cultures.The tension formed by the conflict and integration in the exchanges between the white and black races,which greatly affect identity construction and the sense of "home"belonging of African-American women.African-American women novelist have rejected cultural assimilation and cultural nationalism,and formed a cultural perspective of double identities and integration.The contradictory attitudes of African-American women against the visual culture of beauty makeup in the consumerism era described by Fauset and Larson in their novels showed the difference,conflict,exchange,collision and integration of white and black cultures.Beauty makeup played a double role.The aesthetic need of African-American women for beauty makeup in the consumerism era was a characteristic of conflict and integration of racial cultures.On the one hand,cosmetics reshaped the body vision by changing some physical characteristics,making the ethnic identity of African-American women who are well-dressed and groomed become elusive and discernible.African-American women's passion for beauty makeup fashion reflected their acceptance and recognition of the mainstream consumer culture and visual aesthetic culture and also implied that they were eager to integrate into the mainstream social life of the United States in an equal and dignified manner.On the other hand,the beauty makeup culture showed the aesthetic standard of the white race that "white is beautiful",which formed a conflict with the aesthetic standard of the black race that "black is beautiful" and caused the "blackness" identity crisis of African-American women.In addition,there were travelling narratives and structures in the women novels during this period,and the narrative paradigms and themes were homogeneous with those of the mainstream literature of the United States.The departure and return of African-American women in trips showed their life situation and seeking for identity in different trips.The final establishment of identity would help travelers form a sense of "home".The conclusion concludes that double identities and integration is both the common theme of African-American women novels in the Harlem Renaissance,and it is also the cultural orientation and literary writing tendency of women novelist.This not only accords with the development trend of the African-American literature in the Harlem Renaissance that is in the pursuit of shaping a new image of black people and promoting the black folk culture,but also conforms to the requirements of the era that the American mainstream literature vigorously explored the domestic cultural resources in the 1920s to seek independence of American literature.Meanwhile,the brief introduction of the status quo that contemporary African-American women novels,as always,attach great importance to"blackness","Americanness" and cultural integration shows the significant contribution of African-American women novels in the Harlem Renaissance to constructing the tradition of African-American women novels and thereby emphasizes the contemporary practical significance of the study of African-American women novels in the Harlem Renaissance.