The American Landscape And Gender Space In A Mercy:A Geocritical Perspective

Nobel Prize laureate Toni Morrison,as one of the most productive American writers,composed voluminous works during her lifetime,among which her novels garner her most acclaim.A Mercy is a narration of Jacob,Lina and Florens’ s journeys across the American landscape.This thesis intends to elucidate how characters write their stories through the interaction with the American landscape in A Mercy.Jacob first endows the American landscape with the patriarchal political meaning,and attempts to build the American landscape as a male space.In the meantime,Lina and Florens reclaim the American landscape with which they inject new meanings.The thesis,first of all,presents a succinct introduction to Toni Morrison and her masterpiece A Mercy,offers a relevant literature review,and then explains the purposes and significance.Chapter one explores how Toni Morrison writes the American landscape in her works.This part firstly gives a brief definition of landscape in both the ecological and sociological dimensions.It then explains how Toni Morrison describes the American landscape from the perspective of an African American women with characters’ interaction with the landscape as an example.Chapter two concentrates on Jacob Vaark’s mapping of the American landscape.In the first vignette Jacob,via walking across the American landscape,develops a sense of awe that later galvanizes him to tame the landscape.Through his conquest,Jacob breaks his connection with the landscape and makes it an exclusive male space.Chapter three shifts the focus to female narratives on the American landscape,among which Lina and Florens’ s stories exert most power and persuasion.In the first part,Lina runs into alienation from the mainstream society due to her racial identity.However,thanks to her inexplicable affinity to nature and determination to stick to her native traditions,Lina leaves her own indelible marks on the American landscape.The second vignette expatiates on Florens’ s journey in America and how she starts to construct her identity and write her story.After her initial struggle,Florens begins to adjust to the landscape and gradually has a command of her selfhood.Florens,ultimately,consummates her pilgrimage and takes down her own stories.Two women succeed in reclaiming the American landscape,endow it with a new spatial meaning,and finally change the once patriarchal space by making it a diversified one.In conclusion,Toni Morrison masterfully disrupts the tradition of male hegemonic accounts,and composes female counter-narratives in A Mercy.These female narrators problematize the mainstream story of the founding of the United States,and project an alternative narrative of the American historiography.Their efforts allow for another possibility for the once male-dominated American landscape and equip it with multilayered meanings.