Female Identity Pursuit:an Analysis Of A Mercy From The Perspective Of Homi Bhabha’s Postcolonial Theory

As the first Afro-American female Nobel Prize winner, Toni Morrison released her ninth novel A Mercy in2008, which was obviously an impressive and influential work to convey her new exploration on female identity crisis issue. In A Mercy, Morrison not only focuses on the cause for female identity crisis, but further reveals how vulnerable females pursuing identity completeness in patriarchal colonial society. Since its publication, A Mercy has received consistent praise from present literary circle and the noted publishing agencies. A great number of researchers tend to focus on the comparisons and contrasts among her former works and the present one, while only a small number of critics concentrate on the identity study of the novel, the identity crisis and identity construction of the main characters. Even fewer of them have studied the similarity between Rebekka and Florens in their life experiences and female identity pursuits, and the difference in their female identity recreation results. The similarity demonstrates that both free white women and enslaved black women suffer from female identity crisis in the colonial society, while the difference shows that the completeness of female identity has direct connection with cultural identity. Therefore, enlightened by the three main concepts of Homi Bhabha’s post-colonial theory,"otherness","hybridity" and "third space", the present thesis is a comparative study of Rebekka’s and Florens’ female identity pursuits, in an effort to reveal the possibility of a hybrid cultural identity in solving female identity crisis issues by analyzing whether the two characters have resisted to female invisibility and inferiority that the patriarchal colonial society has imposed on them.The present thesis consists of three parts, and the main body of this thesis is divided into three chapters.The first part is an introduction to the present study, which includes a brief introduction to Toni Morrison and her novel A Mercy, literature review, theoretical basis and structural layout of the present study, with particular emphasis on the significance and feasibility of application of Homi Bhabha’s post-colonial theory in the study of the novel.The second part includes Chapter Two, Chapter Three and Chapter Four.Chapter Two explores the female identity crisis of Rebekka and Florens, and argues that it is their otherness in colonial society that causes their female identity crisis. Chapter Three is a discussion on the two characters’ female identity recreation. In this chapter, the present thesis reveals that Rebekka and Florens firstly attempt to acclaim emotional ownership on surrounding individuals and then negate alien cultures to pursue self existence, and delineate the hybridity of Florens’ new cultural identity by analyzing two Biblical images and one African mythological image. Chapter Four discusses whether the two characters have resisted to female invisibility and inferiority so as to regain the completeness of female identity, and proves the feasibility of a hybrid cultural identity in solving female identity crisis issue and promoting harmonious co-existence of different cultures. The third part is the conclusion of the present thesis. It not only summarizes the whole thesis, but also emphasizes again how important it is to interpret A Mercy with the application of Homi Bhabha’s post-colonial theory and the contribution of this study.