An Analysis Of By The Light Of My Father’s Smile From The Perspective Of Queer Theory

Alice Walker(1944-) is one of the most outstanding, influential and productive contemporary Afro-American writers and she is also the first black woman writer who won the Pulitzer Prize in the American literary history. In the process of literary creation, Walker is really keen on portraying the complicated inner world of the characters of the novels. Most of her works, grounded in reality, mainly describe black people, especially the black women’s miserable experience and bitter heart, since they are under double oppression from racism and sexism. Walker’s writing style shows she is an anti-traditional writer. Although Walker in her novels depicts and criticizes the discrimination and violence of whites on blacks, and men on women, she seldom sets them in complete opposition, which not only manifests the writer’s positive concepts of removing dichotomy, building a harmonious society and realizing the wholeness of human survival, but also reflects Walker’s noble humanistic concern. Evidently, in her literary works, Alice Walker persistently exposes the wickedness, inequality and injustice of the world on one hand and portrays an all-inclusive and grand picture of human survival one after another on the other.By the Light of My Father’s Smile published in 1998 is the sixth novel of Alice Walker. American academia makes a very high evaluation on this novel. The Washington Post praises it as a fascinating and creative novel produced by one of the best writers in today’s America. The novel, taking the relationship between father and daughter as the main thread and closely revolving around the theme of sexuality, tells a story about love and forgiveness, resistance and reconciliation, sexuality and spirituality. Its spooky plot and bold description of sex spark many readers’ heated debates over race, culture, the relationship between human and nature and so forth. Many literary critics and scholars have also launched a series of studies on the themes and narrative skills of the novel from the perspective of womanism, magic realism, eco-feminism and so on. Based on the previous studies, this thesis attempts to interpret By the Light of My Father’s Smile with queer theory aiming at offering a new perspective to analyze the contradictions and conflicts between heterosexual and homosexual, male and female, mainstream culture and marginal culture emerged in the novel, and then profoundly reveal the writer’s sincere humanistic concern and her brave subversive spirits concealed in the novel.This thesis is composed of six parts, with four chapters coming between the introduction and conclusion. The first part is introduction, which provides brief information about Alice Walker and her novel By the Light of My Father’s Smile, the researches on the novel from home and abroad as well as the statement of the thesis. Chapter One provides the theoretical basis of the whole thesis, including the origin and development of queer theory, its major contents and its application in literary criticism. Chapter Two, Chapter Three and Chapter Four are the main body of this thesis, which analyze By the Light of My Father’s Smile according to the three contents of queer theory. Chapter Two is the resistance to heterosexual hegemony of Susannah and Pauline based on the first content of queer theory which is opposed to the binary of heterosexual and homosexual. Chapter Three reveals main characters’ androgynous and homosexual tendency in accordance with queer theory’s objection of male and female gender binary tradition. Chapter Four explains that the ethnic minority Mundo’s culture represented by Manuelito overcomes the white Christian culture represented by Robinson, according to the third content of queer theory about criticizing the western cultural hegemony, breaking the patriarchal dual-opposite thinking model, and eliminating all forms of prejudices and biases. The last part is conclusion, which enhances the connection between the novel and queer theory, and reveals the thoughts and feelings the writer hopes for express in the novel as well as the enlightenment we can get from the characters’ experiences.