The Construction Of Black Female Subjectivity In Toni Morrison's Love

Toni Morrison, the first African American Nobel Prize winner in American literature, has had a great influence in the literary world. In her novel Love published in 2003, Morrison continues to pay attention to the black women under the patriarchy and racism. This thesis is intended to discuss the black female subjectivity through black women's growth.This thesis is composed of five chapters. Chapter one briefly introduces Toni Morrison's life and her works, the literary comments on the novel Love, as well as body politics and subjectivity. Chapter two discusses the absence of female subjectivity. In Love, May, one of the heroines, is a representative black woman who lives under Cosey's shadow, and her subjectivity remains absent during her life time. In their childhood, Heed and Christine lack maternal love, especially Heed who is sold by their parents to Cosey, and have no subjective consciousness. Chapter three explores the awakening of female subjective consciousness. Heed's falling in love with a young man, and her pursuit of happiness, together with Christine's marriage and her participation in Civil Rights Movement in her adulthood and Junior's running away from home in her childhood, all show that they have subjective consciousness. Chapter four discusses the construction of black female subjectivity. Junior lives in her own way to construct her subjectivity, and L, the cook and housekeeper, leads other black women to help each other. Chapter five concludes the theme of female subjectivity. By analyzing the black female subjectivity from perspectives of body politics and feminism, the author of thesis come to the conclusion that there has been and that there still will be a long way to go for black women to construct their subjectivity. In modern times, black women have achieved subjectivity in black communities after struggling for decades, to some extent; yet whether they could make the same or greater success in the mainstream culture or a broader society would become another new mission for them.