Multicultural Perspectives In Pearl Buck's Novels

Pearl Buck is the famous American writer in the 20th century. She was born in America but was brought up in China, where lived more than 30 years. She lives in two worlds, the world of her American missionary parents and the world of a continually fascinating Orient. Pearl Buck has produced more than 70 major works during her astonishingly prolific career including East Wind: West Wind, The Good Earth, Dragon Seed, Pavilion of Women and so on. Pearl Buck has deep affection for China and the Chinese people and makes China as the subject matter in most of her writings. The thesis is endeavored to explore Buck's cultural viewpoints embodied in her novels by analyzing some of her novels focusing on China and Chinese people.At first it shows her concept of the concord of the East and the West. It is mainly shown in the following aspects. The first is her genuine description of China. Chinese people are always described as fantastic, ridiculous, evil and ignorant, which fully shows Westerners' absolute and dogmatic discrimination against Chinese people. As a witness to the situation of the modern Chinese nation, Pearl Buck owns the firsthand information about China and thus has a unique vantage to present China as objectively as possible. Therefore, the Chinese culture and Chinese people in Buck's novels are so genuine, colorful and full of affection. Therefore, her works by themselves have shown her concord concept. The second is the intermarriage between the East and the West. In Buck's novels, those people with different cultural background can marry, such as American man Alex with Chinese woman Louise in Kinfolk and also American woman Mary with Chinese man, Kwei-lan's elder brother in East Wind: West Wind.There are also the conflicts between the East and the West in Pearl Buck's novels on China. Having suffered and witnessed so much embarrassment in her own communication with heterogeneous cultures, Pearl Buck knows well that there are so many differences between different cultures. So cultural conflicts are avoidable in the communication of heterogeneous cultures. Pearl Buck has not denied the truth in her novels. There are two kinds of conflicts: weak conflict and strong conflict. The weak conflict in the novel is culture shock, which is initiated by the deep anxiety that results from losing unfamiliar signs or symbols of social intercourse. It is vividly displayed in Dragon Seed and The Good Earth. The strong conflict is cultural confrontation. It is theconflict of language and action because of different moral principals, values and systems, which is shown in East Wind: West Wind.However, being an American writer and also influenced by her mother, she knows that her native country is a superpower with the most advanced technology. We can feel a sense of cultural colonialism in many of her novels. On her way to pursuing the ideal of cultural concord of the East and the West, Buck thinks Chinese cultural is inferior to Western culture. Unconsciously she has assimilated Chinese culture with Western culture. This kind of cultural colonialism is embodied in missionaries and international students. Most of the protestant missionaries, as the forerunners of the imperialist, are driven by the conviction that they are bringing light to people in darkness. Although most ordinary people in her novels are, to some extent, vivid and true, they are miserable people who don't know how to take their fate into their own hands and need the help and teaching of foreign missionaries such as Madame Wu in Pavilion of Women. The infiltration of missionaries into China has gradually disintegrated the ideology of the native people.Besides, Pearl Buck regards the American culture as the mascot of the backward Chinese culture. So she has made so many Chinese intellectuals to learn advanced science and technology abroad so that they can devote themselves to the great development of China with their new ideas, new science and technology such as Wang Yuan in The House Divided, Fengmo in Pavilion of Women, Kwei-lan's husband in East Wind: West Wind, James and Mary in Kinfolk and so on.Above all, in her novels on China, Pearl Buck has not only shown the cultural concord of the East and the West, but also the conflict between them. At the same time there is a sense of cultural colonialism. That is to say, it has shown her multicultural viewpoints, which have defects as well as merits. Therefore, we should put our criticism under the concrete historical contexts and treat Pearl Buck objectively and dialectically. She is indeed one of the earliest writers who are dedicated to the communication between the East and the West in early 20th Century, so she deserves the praise by the American President Richard Nixon as "a human bridge between the civilizations of the East and the West". Nowadays, Pearl Buck's reflections can also serve as a cultural resource to be made use of and referred to because they will surely illuminate people in their speculation about the intercultural exchanges.