Reshape The Black Female Image

In the white writers'pen, the images of Black women are stereotypical faithful and obedient Black mammies, strict matriarchs, lazy welfare recipients, and lustful prostitutes. These negative images together place Black women in a disadvantageous position both in political and social life. For a Black woman writer, challenging these prevailing images and presenting positive and vivid women images have been Toni Morrison's core themes. She inscribes various splendid images of Black women throughout her literary career. In her trilogy, Beloved, Jazz and Paradise, she breaks down the stereotype image of inferior black women and presents the readers with subversive ones of Black women who bravely search for physical and spiritual freedom,self-identity, love and independence, which differ considerably from the stereotyped images depicted by the white. This thesis aims to analyze the images of Black women in Morrison's trilogy from the perspective of Black Feminist Criticism and careful reading of the texts.The thesis consists of five chapters. The first chapter is an introduction focusing on Morrison's life experience and works,the literary review of Morrison'works, the distinguishing features of black feminist criticism as well as the theme of this thesis.Chapter Two to Chapter Four are intended to analyze the images of Black women in her Trilogy from the perspective of black feminist criticism. The analysis in these three chapters intends to focus on the reconstruction of the images of Black women revealed in different social backgrounds in the trilogy, namely, a white-dominated society, an industrial society and a male-dominated society. Emphasis will also be laid on the respective pursuit of the self endeavored by the protagonists so as to read out the rebuilding process contrived by the author.Chapter Two explores image of women in the white-dominated society. Analysis follows Sethe's image change: from a naive young girl to a tenacious mother, then to an independent woman, as well as the development of the self-consciousness of the three generations so as to reveal the process of women's awakening in history.Chapter Three analyzes the image of Violet in the industrial society, who suffers from disorientation and pang of disappointed love in the city and finally rediscover both under the help of Alice, to reveal the tenacious image of black women in the process of American'industrialization and the importance of sisterhood for Black women.Chapter Four focus on the images of two groups of women in the male-dominated society. One group is oppressed, silenced and marginalized while the other is empowered and spiritually freed yet finally killed by the black men. This chapter intends to reveal that the isolated and excluded Black female community is not the perfect way for black women; they have to step out and live harmoniously with the white and the black men.The last chapter is the conclusion in which the author of this thesis argues that in Morrison's trilogy, the images of black women have been constantly changing. From the tenacious mother with self-consciousness, to passionate wife with self-consciousness, to the independent and spiritual freed women, they have turned from the object to the subject; they finally define themselves as individual woman of their own, not as a mother, a wife or a daughter of somebody else's. These vision of Morrison's points, directly or indirectly, to her attitude about the black women, and she succeeds in reinscribing their images. As one of the most distinguished writers in the world, as the first black woman writer who has won the Nobel Prize for Literature, Toni Morrison has really impressed the reading world with her unique style and the rich messages carried in her works, especially with the positive yet subversive, vivid and colorful yet tenacious images of black women.