A Study On Female Trauma In Toni Morrison’s Fictions

Toni Morrison, a leading figure in American and world literature, was the first African-American female to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. Besides, she was awarded other prizes, including the National Book Critics Circle Award (1977), the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1988) and the National Humanities Medal (2000). From 1970 to May 2012, Morrison has published ten novels in total which drew great attention from scholars in literature circles and received a warm welcome from readers and the media.The study of trauma theory can be dated back to the 19th century. It was originally used in medical treatment and later extended to literature, philosophy, sociology and the other fields. Trauma not only refers to the physical damage of body, but the damage to people’s minds. In literature, trauma can be categorized into the following aspects:historical trauma, national trauma, cultural trauma, psychological trauma and so on. Morrison has created different characters of black images, especially images of the black female so as to expose the difficult situations of black people under the oppression of slavery, racial discrimination, sexism, American white mainstream culture and so on. By creating images of black females, Morrison showed her sympathy for them and presented the traumatic black female.This thesis is created by close reading and intensively studies of Toni Morrison’s works under the guidance of trauma theory. By analyzing the historical trauma, cultural trauma and psychological trauma of black females, the study brings to light the causes of female trauma and the result of these traumas. On the one hand, this thesis aims to extend the depth and breadth of research on Morrison’s works so as to obtain a better grasp of the artistic attainments in her creations. On the other hand, it interprets Morrison’s works from an interdisciplinary perspective, which provides a new direction for following studies.