Motherhood In Zora Neale Hurston's Autobiography Dust Tracks On A Road

Zora Neale Hurston was a prominent black female writer during Harlem Renaissance in the 20 th century.In her works,Hurston usually focused on the spiritual growth of black women.As to her autobiography,Dust Tracks on a Road(1942),Hurston concentrated on the intertwining of race,family,suffering,and opportunity among women and mothers.Scholars and critics have carried out research in this autobiograph mainly from the perspectives of narrative structure,authenticity of Hurston's personal information,rhetorical strategies,etc.So far,the study of Hurston's autobiography from the perspective of motherhood has not received full attention from scholars and critics.This thesis attempts to use Sarah Radick's“maternal thinking”and Carol Gilligan's theory of ethics of care which belong to the third stage of motherhood theory to analyze four roles of mothers in Hurston's autobiography.The main body of this thesis is divided into three chapters.The first chapter uses Sara Ruddick's “maternal thinking” to study the maternal practices of black mothers:Hurston's grandmother and mother.It reveals that Hurston's grandmother adopts patriarchal and tough means to guarantee her maternal subjectivity.Hurston's mother takes a persistent and tolerant attitude.The second chapter employs Carol Gilligan's theory of ethics of care to analyze how Hurston's stepmother and godmother,who cross the boundaries of blood and race,recognize their identities through fulfilling their responsibilities and maintaining relationship.This part discovers that Hurston's stepmother ignores the affection she has with her stepdaughters,treating them with indifference and violence.But Hurston's godmother values the relationship with her godchildren by providing material support and spiritual guidance.The third chapter interprets the narratives of fiction and facts about mothers in accordance with the characteristics of autobiography and by using relevant objective historical data,and further discusses Huston's racial attitude.Through the narrative of different mothers,Hurston showed the readers both the kind and beautiful sides and the ugly and dark sides of of black motherhood.At the same time,she also affirmed the positive representation of the white motherhood.The analysis of different kinds of motherhood provides a reference to interpretingHurston's racial attitude and the female characters in her other works.