A Study On Females Identity In A Mercy

A Mercy,the ninth novel of the contemporary African American woman writer Toni Morrison,was published in 2008.Morrison describes the miserable life of different ethnic women in the early days of North American colonies.The main female characters in the novel,the black slave Florens,the black slave Minha m?e,the Indian Lina,the mixed blood girl Sorrow and the white bride Rebekka,under the social oppression at that time,all lack the identity of self consciousness to varying degrees,and can not find the value and significance of existence.After struggling,they gradually awakened their inner consciousness and eventually found their own identity.The thesis is from the point of feminist literary criticism,combining the characteristics of the wave of western feminist movement and adopting the method of careful text-reading,to analyze the identity of main female characters in Morrison’s A Mercy.Morrison’s view of women has been deeply reflected in it.The thesis consists of three parts: introduction,main part and conclusion.The introduction briefly introduces the life and creative achievements of the author Morrison,the domestic and foreign comments on Morrison’s novel A Mercy,the theory of feminist criticism and the historical retrospection.The first chapter mainly discusses the manifestations of losing identity of different racial women in the novel.They were abandoned by family and love.They lost ethnical culture and past memory,which made them lack sense of self identification.The second chapter analyses multiple factors that lead to the physical enslavement,mental destruction and personality materialization under the historical perspective.Different females in the novel aroused their inner self consciousness in the process of struggling with social constraints.The third chapter reveals the different ways of constructing females’ subjectivity after the suffering.They try to cherish themselves,seek independence,empower themselves and return to the racial culture.It shows the efforts to explore and rebuild subjectivity and achieve self worth.The conclusion summarizes the thesis.It tells the road for women to pursue their self development is long and tortuous.Due to the limitations of experience and conditions,ways for different women to build themselves are various.The significance is that to reshape oneself,females must understand the ultimate meaning of self existence,to emancipate themselves from the depth of hearts,to stick firmly to the personal ideals and beliefs.They must control the fate,interact positively,grow constantly and realize the self sublimation,which is also an important factor in building a harmonious society and a peaceful world.