Gaze And Counter-Gaze: Ideological Criticism In Toni Morrison’s Love

Toni Morrison is the first African American woman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. In her novels, she pays more attention to the problems of race, gender and class that the black face, providing effective methods which can help them to get rid of sufferings. Morrison’s stories, which are vivid, beautiful and exquisite, are represented to the readers with a feeling of mixture with reality and fantasy. This thesis aims to probe into the three kinds of female representatives in Love from the perspective of gaze and counter-gaze based on Sartre and Lacan’s theory. In the novel, gaze with the patriarchal power indwells everyone’s mind, especially women’s. The first type of woman is May who is completely objectified and loses her identity under the social gaze system. The second one is Heed, to some extent, who has the awareness of female identity, but the patriarchal gaze is pervasive and the male system won’t easily give her the chance of building subjective identity. Therefore, her efforts to realize female position without strong independent awareness are bound to fail finally. The last woman is Christine who also suffers a lot from patriarchal gaze in Cosey’s family. But she refuses to be reduced to the other, and then she deconstructs the patriarchal American dream, the female aphasia mode, traditional political role and so on by using the strategy of counter-gaze. And finally, there is no doubt that she breaks the male gaze and builds her subjective identity.Morrison’s criticism on the traditional ideology represents her humanistic care, which is also the powerful proof for her political position. This thesis aims at both providing a new perspective of analysis and appealing to people to love in an equal and harmonious society in which the male won’t dominate female. If humans want to achieve that aim, the dominance of male gaze must be subverted. At the same time, everyone should love and treat each other regardless of race, gender and class. Only in this way can human build a real harmonious and loving world.