Revision of motherhood, maternity, and matriarchy in Toni Morrison's novels

摘要

Toni Morrison's fiction has attracted a widely acclaimed audience for its portrayal of the diversity of the Black life and family in the United States. This study examines Morrison's depiction of Black mothers and their search for an autonomous identity. Toni Morrison's configuration of Black womanhood and motherhood exposes the patriarchal assignment of damaging stereotypical images of mammy, idealized mother, and matriarch to Black women. Morrison challenges these images by creating mothers whose departure from the ideology of motherhood proves their diversity of character and humanity. These characters' search for autonomy and identity reveals the inaccuracy of the ideology of Black motherhood which defines mothers in relation to their children and encourages mothers' self-sacrifice, passivity, aquiescence, and submission to the dominant social order. Morrison's delineation of non-stereotypical mothers serves to defy the socially constructed portraiture of the idealized Black mother while pointing to the inherent danger of stereotyping which negates and cancels the individuality of Black mothers.;In this project I argue that the patriarchy's attempt at the erasure of the Black mother's identity is consistent with the historical erasure of the Black race's identity by the dominant social order. However, Black women are the most oppressed group because they are victimized by both race and gender oppression. Therefore, Morrison's focus on the revision of Black motherhood is very important to the Black woman's process of identity formation which has been an urgent concern of many contemporary Black women scholars. By creating a space for Black mothers' active representation and articulation of their own experiences, Morrison allows Black mothers to defy the "object" position they are placed in and speak as "subjects," on their own behalf. The exposure of the stereotypical images of mothers is further significant because it can lead to an awareness of the nature of the social oppression based on race, class, and gender, thereby, help to offer and create possibilities for reshaping the society by deconstructing the oppressive social hierarchy.;Morrison's mother figures deconstruct the ideology of motherhood through their complexity and ambivalence of characters, actions and reactions. In The Bluest Eye, Beloved, Sula, and Tar Baby an array of multi-dimensional, and even ambiguous, mother characters expose the social dynamics which condemn them to uniformity and encourage them to conformity. In these novels, Morrison shows how resilient and self-reliant mothers such as Mrs. MacTeer, Eva, and Sethe, by deviating from the assumed expectations of motherhood, pursue their search for a distinct identity and autonomy. In addition, in Sula and Tar Baby, Morrison extends the notion of motherhood to the individual's self-creation and "mothering" themselves by showing how Jadine and Sula's attempts at making themselves open up alternatives and possibilities for the expansion of the definition of Black motherhood.