An Analysis On Chinese Male Images In Amy Tan’s Saga Novels

In American literature, Chinese male image is the focal point in American writers· andChinese American writers· work. White American society discriminates Chinese with theirracial superiority, uses literary outputs and movies to make up different kinds of Chinesecharacters by imagination in order to widely spread these negative and passive Chineseimages in American society and make it known to all, debasing Chinese people. Meanwhile,these negative and passive Chinese images get increasingly proved and deepen the negativeimpression of China and Chinese people in American society. Therefore, Fu Man-chu andCharlie Chan appeared as the product of that times. With the past of racial era and the adventof ethnic era, Chinese American writers cut a striking figure gradually in American literature.In self-reproduction of Chinese American literary works, from the male writers, PardeeLowe, Frank Chin and Shawn Wong to the female writers, Maxing Hong Kingston, Gish Jento Amy Tan, there is an obvious gender dividing line, that is male subject is what Chinesemale writers show solicitude for, whereas at the cost of diminishing women·s images tobuild up. While women writers and their writing focused on the construction of femalesubject. Amy Tan, as a Chinese American woman writer, this double marginalities endowsher work with distinctive and unique features of feminist. In recent years, scholars and criticsfrom home and abroad put an emphasis on the mother-daughter relationship, cultural identityand other aspects but to ignore the male images in her novels. This thesis analyzes ChineseAmerican male images in Amy Tan·s three saga novels from a feminist perspective tointrospect that how Amy Tan deconstructs the patriarchy and highlight the female subjectiveconsciousness.The thesis is generally divided into three parts, the introduction, main body andconclusion. The introduction demonstrates the research background, significance andmethodology as well as the organization of the thesis. The main body is organized into fivechapters. Chapter One is literature review which deals with sorting out Amy Tan·s relatedworks and summing up relevant aspects of domestic and international existing studiesmeticulously. Chapter Two introduces Amy Tan and the feminist theory, tending to interpretthe texts with an analysis on Amy Tan·s three novels. Chapter Three is to compare the distinguished Chinese male images in American writers·novelswithdifferentidentities,firstoffering an overview on the white American writers· works to retrospect and reconstruct thehistory of Chinese American together with the investigation of the existing characters, thenanalyzing the male images in the writers· novels of different gender from severalrepresentatives of Chinese American writers· works. Chapter Four specifically cited fourmale characters in three novels, mainly based on the whole text. After the analysis of thecharacters, Chapter Five delves into the reasons for the emergence of these stereotypes fromfour aspects. Chapter Six, combined with Amy Tan·s ethnic experience to analyze how sherepresents the female consciousness in the works under the influence of feminism and howto subvert patriarchy with textual analysis. The conclusion aims to regard the Chinese maleimages in different Chinese American writers· novels objectively, to dig out the hiddenreasons about these images, to dispel prejudices so as to fully understand the author·screation motive and Chinese American·s positive image.