Towards Self-empowerment-a Female Gothic Interpretation Of Toni Morrison’s Love

Love is another novel with high acclaim among both critics and readers afterToni Morrison won Nobel Prize. As a black and female writer, she puts the femaleimages onto the front stage and endows them with the rights to voice for themselves.But unlike her earlier novels and the traditional feminist works pointing to themainstream white culture, Love analyzes the problems within the black culture andreveals that the chief culprit of disempowering the black females is the patriarchy. Bythe aid of Female Gothic theory, based on its three most typical features--enclosedliving space, courageous heroines, and happy ending, this thesis is composed of fiveparts. Part one briefly introduces the research on Toni Morrison and her Love at homeand abroad as well as the theory of Female Gothic. Then comes the main body of thisthesis, which is divided into three chapters. Chapter one presents black females’ realstatus in the patriarchal society through describing the heroines’ enclosed livingenvironment, distorted marital relationship and abnormal parental love. Chapter twoshows the Female Gothic heroines’ brave and courageous struggles in seeking forself-empowerment through the three female characters’ personal experiences. Chapterthree provides a typical happy ending in a Female Gothic novel that the heroines havegained their empowerment at last after experiencing kinds of hardships and challenges.Part five is a conclusion to the whole thesis.