A Study Of The Ambivalence In Mother-Daughter Relationship In The Bonesetter's Daughter Through Mirror Image Theory

Amy Tan is a world-renowned female Chinese American writer who enjoys high reputation in China. She started her writing career at the age of thirty-three with the debut novel The Joy Luck Club which brought her immediate popularity and became a sensation right after its publication in 1989. It also laid a solid foundation for Amy's first-class writer status in the United States. Tan's success wins an extensive attention and a high remark in the literature circle, along with a constant maturing process of her works. Her novel The Bonesetter's Daughter contains more autobiographical elements. The Bonesetter's Daughter adopts a vertical angle to illustrate the subtle and complex mother-daughter relationship, with a vivid description of the old memories and the shifting between the present and the past, leaving the readers a new fresh feeling, so the theme of the novel becomes deeper and more delicate.The author chooses The Bonesetter's Daughter as her studying text. Different from other studies, this paper applies psychoanalysis to study the mother-daughter relationship. The aim of this thesis lies in studying"Ambivalence"of mothers and daughters in the novel from the psychological perspective and combining it with Jacques Lacan's"Theory of Mirror Image". Both of the two theories are belonging to psychic categories, and are used widely in literature investigation. The combination of the two theories is a ground-breaking practice and will be very effective in the studying process. Through the analysis of the relationship between the mothers and daughters, the write may get many reasons to explain the conflicts, for example, their cultural differences and communication obstacles, what's more, the lack of understanding of their own identity. Through the"Theory of Mirror Image", we may see daughter takes her mother as a mirror of herself to realize her self-identity. But in the process of looking for her identity, the daughter still suffers from the contradiction of going forward or backward, which we call the concept"Ambivalence".The thesis mainly consists of five parts. Starting with the introduction part, this thesis first gives a brief introduction of Amy Tan's life experiences, masterpieces, literature review and the significance of this study. The second part illustrates two important concepts in the psychological field, namely"Theory of Mirror Image"and"Ambivalence". In the third part, the author elaborates on the confliction between mothers and daughters and the causes behind it; this part also gives a detailed illustration to show how Amy Tan's real life experiences are reflected in her novel. This paper then expounds the history, cultural root of the conflict and the reconciliation process in the next part. The last part is the conclusion of this thesis, which summarizes the thesis, pointing out the great significance of the combination of"Theory of Mirror Image"and"Ambivalence".