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1、摘 要
在20世紀60年代的民權(quán)以及女性主義運動的推動下，湯亭亭打破沉默，用虛構(gòu)的、夸張的和諷刺的筆觸為我們展現(xiàn)了華裔女性被社會邊緣化的生活畫面。本文將從女性主義視角解讀《女勇士》中的食物意象。具體來講，就是通過母親為女兒準備的帶著恐怖、怪異、殘忍色彩的食物，隱喻華裔女性在男性主義和種族主義中尋求“自我”身份的步履維艱。作者直接批判和諷刺中國迂腐的“男尊女卑”思想和白人社會的種族歧視，并積極尋求自我身份認同以及努力成長為女勇士。
這篇論文由六部分組成。
第一部分，簡要介紹作者湯亭亭和她的巨著之一《女勇士》，淺析食物與女性、文化和身份的關(guān)系。
第二部分，闡述女性主義、種族歧視以及學(xué)者已有
2、的研究。
第三部分，分析食物如何體現(xiàn)母女矛盾心理，包含矛盾的顯現(xiàn)、激化以及調(diào)和。
第四部分，闡述對“中式胃口”的抵抗和接受對應(yīng)對本民族的文化的憎恨和認同心理。
第五部分，闡述女勇士成長之路，包括提升自我意識、尋求自我身份及民族身份認同。
第六部分，總結(jié)全文。
關(guān)鍵詞：食物意象; 華裔美國人; 女性主義; 種族歧視; 自我身份認同
The Analysis of Food Images in The Woman Warrior from the Perspective of Feminism
1. Introduction
The Chinese American liter
3、ature arises and reaches its supreme prosperity in 1960s to 1990s. With the publication of The Woman Warrior written by Maxine Hong Kingston in 1976, Chinese American literature came to its sparkling stage. The novel won the National Book Critics Award for the best non-fiction of that year and was w
4、ell-received in American academic mainstreams. In The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston creates a strikingly vivid and picturesque panorama of Chinese life in America. It made the first significant impact of Chinese American consciousness, and paved the way for young writers of the next decade to
5、prove conclusively that the Chinese America voice had a powerful resonance far beyond Chinatown.
1.1 Introduction of Maxine Hong Kingston
Maxine Hong Kingston (Chinese name: Tang Tingting), was born in Stockton, California, in 1940. She was the third of eight children to the first-generation Chine
6、se immigrants, Tom and Ying Lan Hong. He was a laundry worker and gambling house owner and she was a practitioner of medicine. Kingston is a Chinese American author and Professor Emerita at the University of California, Berkeley. Kingston has published such works as The Woman Warrior (1976), China M
7、en(1980), Tripmaster Monkey (1989), The Fifth Book of Peace (2004), and Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace (2006). Awards for her great contributions to Chinese American Literature including: the National Book Critics Circle Award, National Book Award, National Humanities Medal as well as National M
8、edal of Arts.
The lack of life material doesn’t mean the poverty of spirit. Instead, children’s pabulum for mind is rich. Tom is busy making a living, thus children are out of his discipline. After all he is an excellent intellectual of traditional Chinese literature, exerting profound influence on
9、 Kingston. When it comes to Ying Lan Hong, she is a Jack of all Trades, especially in telling Chinese folk tales: The goddess mending the sky, Jingwei reclamation, the Foolish Old Man removing the mountain, Mulan the Army, Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio... She could tell the story fluently at
10、 any time. Although young Kingston told the difference between the kindness and evil, the beauty and the ugliness from the perspective of an American, soon she was deeply impressed by the romance characters and the vivid description of legends. It was at this time that Kingston brought up a keen int
11、erest in literature.
In her long career, her writings reflect the cultural experiences of the Asian immigrant community in America and struggle against sexual and racial discrimination.
1.2 Introduction of The Woman Warrior
Maxine Hong Kingston created a worldwide sensation with her 1976 work The
12、 Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts and showed up as one of the leading contemporary Chinese-American writers. While labeled as nonfiction, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts featured a blending of traditional memoir and myth, and invoked a similar feeling of magica
13、l realism. The book won the national book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction in 1976.
The Woman Warrior is divided into five interconnection chapters and each one narrates one woman character. Chapter One, titled No Name Woman, tells the narrator’s alleged aunt. A young woman who gets pregnant lon
14、g after her husband has emigrated to the United States is convicted of adultery, which humiliating the entire family. Thus the whole family never speak of her even denies her existence. The night when she gives birth to a baby girl, villagers violently assault her family’s house, punishing her unacc
15、eptable deed. Hailstones of abuse are pelting her. With enormous shame, she takes the baby and jumps into the well, both drowned. The narrator retells the story and uses her own experience with Chinese tradition and culture to transit the No Name Woman from a criminal to a victim. Chapter Two, title
16、d White Tigers, recounting a talk-story of an imaginary woman warrior-Fa Mulan. Kingston tells the story in “I”, morphing into Fa Mulan. “I” has been trained at the mountain top for fifteen years by a couple of god-like elders. Powerful and strong enough, “I” return to her village and kill the bulli
17、es with her quick swordsmanship. Achieving her battle, she resumes her duties as a wife, and a mother as well. Kingston reverts to her life in America, which is “disappointed” (Kingston 45) comparing to Fa Mulan’s. She is treated unfairly but still submits to humiliation. In the end, she declares wh
18、at she and Fa Mulan have in common are the words at their backs. Chapter Three, titled Shaman, is the story about Mother Brave Orchid, who breaks up the Chinese feudal thought and studies medicine and then put it into practice. During that time, she succeeds in conjuring and defeating the ghost lurk
19、ing in the dormitory. However, when she follows her husband to America, she has to quit her glamorous profession to help with the laundry and care for the children. She sacrifices her own prospects to deal with the housework. Chapter Four, titled At the Western Palace, is the story about her mother
20、Brave Orchid’s younger sister, Moon Orchid. She is a prime of traditional Chinese woman: weak, timid and obedient. She obeys her parents to marry a man younger than her. Her husband emigrates to America and becomes a brain surgeon. No sooner, he remarries a Chinese wife. Moon Orchid lives as a deser
21、ted wife, bringing the children up alone without any complaint. Of cause, her husband sends her some money as compensation. She is almost willing to cater to the characters of woman demanded in feudal patriarchal society. Under the encouragement of Brave Orchid, she sets foot on America to find him
22、but ends with a blow of noodle bought by him. She becomes wacky and dies in an asylum in California. Chapter Five, titled A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe, is the story of her own, from childhood to adolescence. Confusion, frustration, anger, silence and revolt accompanies her growth. Ts’ai Yen, a w
23、arrior poetess captured by barbarians, brings her song “Eighteen Stanzas for a Barbarian Reed Pipe” back to China. “It translates well” (Kingston 209) suggests Kingston respect her identity as a Chinese American.
The Woman Warrior sweeps away a large range of topics: the immigration, the generation
24、 gap, the confusion and treason of youth, feminism, marginal culture, self-identity, family epic...etc.
1.3 Food & Women, Culture and Identity
Food is the necessity of life. In Food, Consumption and the Body in Contemporary Woman’s Fiction, Screats Sarah says: “It is more or less the first thing w
25、e do, the primary source of pleasure and frustration, the arena of our earliest education and enculturation.” As for human beings, eating and language are ceremonies of life activities from birth to grave. Therefore, food plays an important role in the identity of the individual in the family, class
26、 and nation.
Food is a highly condensed social fact. Women use food imagery for diverse purposes: to speak of personal and social behaviors and psychological problems, art, sex, sexual politics, poverty, nationalism, murder mysteries and so on, especially domesticity. Psychologist Kim Chernin, in T
27、he Hungry Self: Women Eating, and Identity, proposes food as “the principal way the problems of female being come to expression in women’s lives”; women have been taught female values via their mothers’ presentation of food, and an obsession with food as in anorexia or bulimia bespeaks a problem of
28、female identity through inability to separate from the mother or regression to her (qtd. in Harriet).
For Chinese, hunger breeds discontentment. What Chinese do is for food. This philosophy, whether in ancient Chinese culture or in present, is still alive in the bottom of heart. It guides the actio
29、ns and words. Carole M.Counihan declaims that food indicates the relationship of mother and daughter. Thus, food not only means the relationship between families of Chinese American, but also the sufferance they are confronted. For a woman, food is more survival than connection with outside world. F
30、or a mother, she feeds the babies with her milk, and affects their characters. Chinese American women live a hard life in America. They suffer a lot under the oppression from both racial and sexual discrimination. As for how to survive in such a dilemma, food may be a solution. They seek for their i
31、dentity through food. Kim Chernin believes that women can express themselves through food. Self-Identity crisis of Chinese American woman, conflicts and combination between mother and daughter, and the special identity of Chinese American woman can be spoken out through food.
The Woman Warrior is a
32、 masterpiece to study Chinese Americans. It integrates the real life experience and Chinese folk tales. This paper will, based on a few description of Chinese food, analyze one of the mother-and-daughter conflicts in the novel to expose the double struggles for self-identity from the perspective of
33、feminism as a Chinese American.
2. Literature Review
This part is divided into three parts: the studies on feminism, racial discrimination and the previous studies on the novel.
2.1 Studies on Feminism
Misogyny is the hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against women or girls. Sociologist Mich
34、ael Flood notes: Though most common in men, misogyny also exists in and is practiced by women against other women or even themselves. Misogyny functions as an ideology or belief system that has accompanied patriarchal, or male-dominated societies for thousands of years and continues to place women i
35、n subordinate positions with limited access to power and decision making.[...] Aristotle contended that women exist as natural deformities or imperfect males.(“Misogyny”) (Encyclopedia online)
Aristotle says “The female is female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities.”(qtd. in Selden et al. 121)
36、 Women have long been oppressed in male-dominated society and even brainwashed by the negative notions of patriarchal ideology.
Feminism is an ideology to campaign for women’s rights. It inspires women to self-discover and self-develop. In general, the western feminist movements are divided into th
37、ree developing stages (also called three waves). And the fundamental tasks are to challenge, break the existing social order and improve their social statues. The first-wave feminist movement begins at the end of 19th century and lasts until the early 20th century. It emphasizes the gender equality.
38、 Men and Women have no obvious distinctions in intelligence and abilities. It is of great significance to achieve the equality both in household and social labors. The second-wave feminist movement originates in America in 1960s and continues till 1980s. Feminists explain natural and reasonable divi
39、sion of labor on gender, and stress on fair payment with the same job. The third-wave feminist movement begins at 1990s and lasts till now. It is similar to the Post-structuralism and Post-colonialism. It aims at eliminating the discrimination and oppression.
This paper will draw the theoretical su
40、pport from the second-wave feminism to reveal of patriarchal oppression upon Chinese women.
2.2 Studies on Racial Discrimination
Racial discrimination is the exclusion of, contempt for, and prejudice against other races. America declaims freedom and democracy, but they’re paradoxical because the r
41、acial discrimination is common and obvious in America. The white-oriented concept and the slavery mutually influence the racial discrimination in America.
Four main ethnic minorities in America are Hispanics, Afro-Americans, Native Americans and Asians Americans. The most severe discrimination is a
42、gainst the black. Negro is an insulting appellation to the black. The ancestors of African were kidnapped and trafficked to be slaves in America in 17th and 18th centuries. The establishment of slavery and apartheid further worsened their rights. Even though the Abolitionist Movement reached an unpr
43、ecedented height in 19th century, the liberation of the black was still far away.
Many Chinese people immigrated to America to seek fortunate at the Age of Gold Rush. Things went athwart, not wealth but hardship they received. Chinese Exclusion Law made things worse. Even though, they refused to go
44、 back motherland and silently swallowed the sufferance. The discrimination against Chinese still exists and the process of elimination can be hard and long.
America is a melting pot. It has a great number of immigrants and diverse culture. However, most Americans insist on the doctrine of white sup
45、remacy and exclude other races. It is a tough and long-term process to achieve racial equality and harmony.
2.3 Summaries on Previous Studies
To some extent, scholars have explored the Woman Warrior from various perspectives, especially the simplex feminism, racialism and post-colonialism and on d
46、iverse themes, especially the discrimination, self-identity and cultural affiliation. Specifically, many a scholars have dissected themes relating to immigrant and cross-cultural conflict, the construction of identity and the desire for self-realization, Chinese cultural elements and acculturation,
47、from silence to voice and so on. Food is closely related to women’s culture and their daily lives. Women undertake almost all the housework. When trapped in the crisis of identity, they will make good use of food, the most familiar and available thing, to express their confusion inner hunger. The pa
48、st two decades have witnessed the popularity among the studies on food images and women identities in cross-cultural fields. SLC Wong’s Reading Asian American literature：From Necessity to Extravagance and Outka, Paul’s Publish or Perish: Food Hunger and Self-construction in Maxine Hong Kingston’s Th
49、e Woman Warrior are two prominent masterpieces,which deeply explore the food and women identities. It is of great pity that many scholars just step on the comparative analysis of texts or the narrow meanings of food, lacking a sysematic and implied analysis of food images.
This paper sets a new ang
50、le in an old framework: Analyzing the food images from the perspectives of feminism. It focuses on the narration of food, exploring how the female Chinese American writers voice for themselves and succeed in establishing female consciousness of subjectivity.
3. Food Implications in Mother-and-Daugh
51、ter Ambivalence
The Hungry Self: Women, Eating and Identity explores the often troubled relationship between mothers and daughters, and daughter’s reluctance to grow away from and perhaps beyond the mother, to achieve the independence and autonomy expected of women in today’s world. Instead, daught
52、ers of all ages and backgrounds flee the struggle for identity and self-development into an obsession with food.
3.1 The Arising of Dissension
In the eyes of Maxine, mother Brave Orchid is the first generation of Chinese American who integrates stubbornness, hunger and desperation into one. She wa
53、s born in feudal old China and immigrated to America following her husband. Before immigration, she attended medical school and threatened to eat off all monsters and kill all ghosts. She was a woman warrior challenging feudal ethics. She was willing to put aside her role as an independent intellect
54、ual woman, burying herself in housework. Her life in America is as simple as an ordinary housewife and a lower labor. She experienced a lot of tribulation and disgrace but still found it hard to integrate into American society. She was confused with her status. In order to face and accept this bruta
55、l fact, she tried to deny her failure, depression and isolation. She insisted on preparing a variety of Chinese food for her family, sticking to “the three obediences and the four virtues” and undertaking the heavy burden from family. Unfortunately, the climate and diet in America are not her cup of
56、 tea, so the hunger goes up from physically to psychologically. Her Chinese appetite can digest Chinese ghosts, but not a foreign devil. This inner hunger extends to the love and education of her daughter, thus affecting and impeding Maxine’s growth and struggle. American scholar Counihan considers
57、that mother symbolizes the food as her language to express her cognition of the world. When preparing the exotic Chinese meals, mother told her daughter Chinese folk tales and her life experience, inculcating the traditional Chinese culture and patriarchal ideology through telling stories. She doesn
58、’t care about daughter’s achievement in school or workplace, but fosters her to become a traditional Chinese woman as filial as Fa Mulan, who serving her family wholeheartedly. Otherwise, life would be nonsense. The food mother cooks is full of traditional feudal thought.
Maxine lives in the Chines
59、e community and has been educated the patriarchal thoughts that male is superior to female. She is greatly inspired by Fa Mulan and hopes to become a heroine one day,to prove her capacity and value, and add luster to her family. But reality always beats her down. Hard work and good grade fail to obt
60、ain mother’s praise, let alone a celebration with feast. With time fleeting, she desires to be independent and win others’ acceptance and respect.
As the daughter grows up, the misunderstanding and friction between mother and daughter gradually arise. Their desire and contradiction are embodied in
61、the family diet. Even though under discrimination and poverty, mother, as a children nurturer, tries her best to bring them up.
My mother has cooked for us: raccoons, skunks, hawks, city pigeons, wild ducks, wild geese, black-shinned bantams, garden snails, turtles that crawled about the pantry flo
62、or and sometimes escaped under refrigerator or stove, catfish that swan in the bathtub (Kingston 90).
Those which should have appeared in famine ages, now are served as meals. These weird and exotic meals are full of mother’s unique love in such hard times. But daughter fails to understand her good
63、 intentions, even the historical background and family condition. Mother’s love is so hungry, so she shouts at us: “Eat! Eat!” (Kingston 92). In the voice of her urge, “I” seem to be a sacrifice being slaughtered (Guo 13).
Counihan makes an exhaustive analysis on the relationship between food and w
64、omen.In tern of the relationship between girls and their own parents, in the process of their growth, when it comes to “independence, control and concern”, food is almost the flash point. However, the problem of appetite can cover that of self-identity, especially when women are prompted to explore
65、self-image in traditional concept due to the social environment or personal tendency. In this sense, Chinese daughter born in America will inevitably trap into such a dilemma between food and diet. What food contains no longer as simple as the literal meaning. Eating implies daughter’s hesitations a
66、nd uncertainty about the intake of traditional Chinese women’s concept; Refusing to eat means the betrayal against mother.
3.2 The Worsening of Conflict
Being confronted with mother’s prepared food and her inculcation of traditional value, Maxine is perplexed and scared. Meanwhile, mother traps in the same dilemma as the growing daughter asking for independence. Contradictions between the two are more frequent and severer. Food becomes a major factor intensifying conflicts.
Maxine’s expatia
從女性主義視角解讀《女勇士》中的食物意象商務(wù)英語專業(yè)
