Black Women's Searching For Self

Toni Morrison, the first black woman writer who won Nobel Prize for Literature is a prominent novelist in contemporary literary world. By her unique angle of view, vigorous imagination and poetic language, Morrison creates series of black characters in her fiction and gives vivid descriptions of them, especially the humiliated and depressed mood of the double-oppressed black female, the awakening of their self-consciousness and the exploration of the value about individual independent existence. Her works display the true life of blacks from different angles, how blacks survive the conflicts between the black and white, as well as the state of their mind and spirit. She demonstrates the blacks' traditions, at the same time, seeks after the ego and soul of blacks. To seek for self and to grasp fate is the major motif of her novels.Sula is Morrison's second novel. Since its publication, this novel has attracted the attention of a lot of readers and critics who are deeply impressed by the female characters in it and people just interpret this novel differently. Morrison, through creating different kinds of black woman images and depicting their different life styles, shows us the eternal theme in her fiction, that is, her great concern about her culture and her people especially the fate of black women.This thesis, from the feminist prospective, through analyzing the historical background, black culture and the characterization of the novel, attempts to show Morrison's feminist consciousness and by presenting the hard journey of black women's searching for self, to interpret her belief that their searching for identity must be rooted in their own culture. Without the support of black culture, their search will definitely end in vain.The thesis is divided into five parts: Introduction, Chapter One to Chapter Three and Conclusion.In the part of Introduction, this thesis just explains Toni Morrison's literary achievements and the current research of the novel Sula in the world.Chapter One is a literary background for Sula, including an introduction of black literature, black feminism, thus supplies a theoretical base for the analysis of the characterization in the novel. This chapter also shows Toni Morrison's life experiences and how they influence her writing and her writing objectives.Setting is important in novel creation. All the characters have to be set in a certain background, so Chapter One also describes the influence of the special setting -Bottom in Sula, In this novel, Morrison just puts all her characters in a special black community called Bottom. Through the depiction of the relationship between people in the community, especially Sula's relationship with others and her relations with the whole community, Morrison emphasizes her point that one's realization of self-identity cannot shun away from the community.Chapter Two and Chapter Three are the core parts of the thesis.Chapter Two mainly analyzes the characterization of Sula, the heroine. It is Bottom, the black community together with Eva, Sula's grandmother and Hannah, Sula's mother that moulds the peculiar personalities of Sula. They exerts great influence on Sula's determination to search for self and live an experimental life. The analysis of their influence, the relationship between Sula and the community and the friendship between Sula and Nel is the focus of this chapter.Chapter Three is an analysis of Eva, a traditional mother. It is Eva who leads Sula to her special view about life and choice of life style. The miserable experiences of being deserted and having to support her family on her own change Eva greatly and stimulate her creativity. She changes from a passive victim of oppression into an active dominator. Eva belongs to the kind of mothers who can sacrifice anything to her beloved children. She saves her children from starvation at the expense of losing one leg. But her love can sometimes be cruel. She even burns her son Plum to death to keep his dignity as a real man. Although Eva can be defined as the black woman ancestor to explore the self, her innovative activities are not finished by her voluntary choice. In a sense, her female consciousness for independence has, unconsciously somehow becomes the variation of male-centered consciousness spontaneously.In a word, this two chapters, focusing on the analysis of two women characters, especially Sula, the heroine, depict three different kinds of black women: Eva, the ancestor of self-searching, passive and assimilated by the male-centered consciousness in the end; Sula, a new world woman, completely independent in self-searching and Nel, the future successor to Sula in the pursuit of self and thus show Morrison's profound recognition of the hard process of black women's self-searching.In the part of Conclusion, the thesis emphasizes Morrison's viewpoint again: black women's searching for self must be based on their own ethnic culture. At the same time, they also need to absorb the essence of the Western culture.