男孩与男人们的生活——艾丽丝门罗小说男性形象分析

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摘 要

Introduction 1

Chapter One Boys Who Hate Girls 5

1.1 “Boys and Girls” : How Boys Become Boys 5

1.2 “Changes and Ceremonies” : Opposition between Male and Female Students at School 7

Chapter Two Arrogant and Vulnerable Young Men 10

2.1 “Amundsen” : the Center of Women, the Darling of the World 10

2.2 “Train”: Fragile Young Men 13

Chapter Three Embodiment of Authority in the Middle-Aged Men 16

3.1 “Haven”: An Authoritative Husband as the Spokesman in a Family 16

3.2 “Royal Beatings”: An Authoritative Father as the Master of Female’s Fate 18

Conclusion 21

Works Cited 23

Acknowledgements

My sincere gratitude first goes to my supervisor, Professor Zhu Litian. She helped me choose my research direction and gave me a lot of encouragement and constructive advice during the process of writing. Without her help and guidance, I cannot finish my thesis successfully.

I also want to express my thanks to my classmates and roommates. Their help and tolerance in life and studies will remain in my mind.

At last, I wish to express my heartfelt thanks to my family members. They encourage me to work hard and be confident. With their support, I could finish college study and complete this thesis.

Abstract

Alice Munro (1930-) is famous Canadian short story writer, known as “our Chekhov”. In 2013, she won the Nobel Prize for Literature as a “master of contemporary short stories”. Munro is skillful in portraying the life of ordinary people in simple language. In her stories, most characters are women. Although she does not admit that she is a feminist writer, she describes contemporary women’s life and experience with her keen insight and intelligence.

Most scholars focus on female characters, but male characters are ignored. The thesis aims to focus on these supporting roles. We can have a better understanding of how intense opposition between male and female originates and develops through analyzing male characters’ features, exploring their inner world and interaction with female roles. From the perspective of male characters, the stereotype of female roles in the family and society can be found.

The thesis analyzes male characters of three age groups: the teenage boys, the youth and the middle-aged. The first chapter focuses on boys in adolescence, analyzing the formation of gender and exploring how the family and school life plays a role in the development of gender awareness. The second chapter puts an emphasis on young male adults. We will have a close look at the inequality between male and female in the workforce and gender relationship and discuss how gender differences bring pressure to both men and women. Chapter Three explores the middle-aged men. We can find the subordinate position of women in marriage and family life through the analysis of two types of middle-aged men: husband and father. Through the above analysis, we can have a more in-depth understanding of the gender relations and women’s living conditions in modern society.

Key words: Alice Munro; male characters; gender; feminism

摘要

艾丽丝·门罗（1930-）是加拿大著名作家，被誉为“当代契诃夫”。2013年，门罗获得了诺贝尔文学奖，瑞典文学院的颁奖词称她为“当代短篇小说大师”。门罗擅长用朴实无华的文字描绘普通人的生活和人生境遇。门罗作品的主人公大多数为普通女性，虽然门罗没有承认自己是一个女性主义作家，但她在作品中用敏锐的洞察力描写了当代女性的生活和经历。门罗用她独有的视角观察两性之间的互动，探讨女性复杂的心理状态。

门罗小说的主人公大部分是女性，男性角色通常是配角。因此，学界对于作品的研究和解读也基本聚焦在女性人物身上，男性角色通常被忽视。本文则将关注点放在这些配角上，重点分析男性角色，探讨他们的内心世界，关注他们与女性角色之间的互动，由此来探寻门罗作品中的两性关系，同时希冀透过作品中男性的视角，发现在家庭和社会中女性的固化形象和特质，进一步思考女性如何实现自我，找到理想的成长之路。

本文将分析少年、青年和中年三个年龄阶段的男性角色。第一章重点关注处于少年时期的男性，分析男女社会性别的形成，探讨孩童如何在家庭和学校的教导下形成性别意识，认识性别差异，并逐渐成为性别差异的受害者和执行者。第二章关注青年男性，探讨性别差异和性别不平等在职场和恋爱关系中的表现，并思考性别差异如何同时给男性和女性带来压力。男性被要求具有男性气概，有理智，性格刚毅，情绪化的行为被认为是羞耻的。同时女性一直被母亲和妻子这些角色束缚，在寻找真正的自我，发挥自身价值的过程中，遇到很多困难。第三章聚焦中年男性，尤其是两类典型的中年男性形象——丈夫和父亲，探讨男性在家庭和婚姻中的主导地位。女性在经济和情感上依赖于男性。在婚姻生活中，如果女性在经济和情感上都依附于她们的丈夫，她们即便想要反抗男性的主导地位也缺乏必要的经济支持和精神动力。父亲是女性人生中接触的第一个男性。女性和父亲的互动极大地影响她的性别认知和两性关系。通过以上分析，我们可以对门罗作品中的现代两性关系和女性生存状况有更深入的了解。

关键词：艾丽丝·门罗；男性角色；社会性别；女性主义

Introduction

Alice Munro (1930- ) is one of the most famous Canadian writers. American novelist Cynthia Ozick calls her “our Chekhov”. In 1968, she published her first short story collection Dance of Happy Shadow which obtained high recognition and praise from readers and critics. Since then she has published 14 books. In 2013, she received the Noble Prize for Literature. Besides, she has won Giler Prize twice, the Canada’s Governor General’s Award, Canada’s most important literary prize, for three times, the American National Book Critics Circle Award, the Edward MacDowell Medal and the Lannan Literary Award.

Munro’s stories often set in Horon, Ontario, which is modeled in her hometown. She often depicts the life of ordinary people in these places, focusing on the complexity of mundane routine. Her stories cover a variety of themes, including gender issues, moral conflicts and the relationship between the time and reality. Usually, her short stories do not have compelling narratives but stacking daily life details. Her stories are about trivial things and detailed psychological description. The main characters in her stories are usually females, but male characters also have a very important position.

With the publication of her story collections and her increasing reputation, Munro has obtained more and more attention from literary critics. The researchers abroad mainly focus on narrative techniques, themes, the relationship between her novels and the geographical background of her life, and feminism.

Firstly, some scholars focus on her works from the perspective of the narrative technique. Different from traditional narration, Munro prefers to make light of plot and adopts variable narrative methods, transforming freely among different narrative perspectives. Coral Ann Howells’ book Alice Munro, elaborates on Munro’s unique narrative approach. The book Probably Fictions: Alice Munro’s Narrative Acts selects nine academic papers on Munro’s narrative techniques and style.

Secondly, some scholars put emphasis on themes of her works. She is a master of using a simple and moving story to explore the complexity of life. The living conditions of women, the relationship between nature and civilization, and all kinds of social problems are all her concerns. Marcia Allentuck in “Independence and Resolution in Alice Munro’s Works” -- especially discusses Munro’s early three short story collections Happy Shadow Dance, Girls and Women’s Life and Something I’ve Meant to Tell You. She points out that these stories are all related to female emotional independence.

Thirdly, as a female writer, Munro is more concerned about the survival and living conditions of women. In her stories, she describes the difficulties women are facing in their lives and protagonists’ life attitude inspires and enlightens many female readers. Many scholars study her works from the perspective of feminism. For example, Barbara Godard in “Heirs of the Living Body: Alice Munro and the Question of a Female Aesthetic” discusses the issue of female subjectivity, female desires, female writers and literary stereotype. Another important feminist researcher, Magdalene Redekop focuses on the mother image and family relation in Munro’s works.

Fourthly, some emphasize textual analysis from different perspectives. James Cascaren interprets Munro’s work with the approach of archetypal criticism. In The Other Country: Patterns in the writing of Alice Munro, he argues that the characters, themes and plots of Munro’s works can be traced back to literature giants such as Dante and Shakespeare. In The Tumble of Reason: Alice Munro’s Discourse of Absence, Canadian critic Ajay Heble encourages readers to be concerned about the deeper meanings between the discourses.

Fifth, some scholars study the relationship between the geographical background of Munro’s life and her works. Munro builds her kingdom in her fiction, like William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County. In “Munro’s Wonderland”, Brandon Conron points out that Munro grasps the essential features of Ontario’s rural town.

Compared to foreign studies, domestic research on Munro starts later. Before 2000, there are fewer researches about Munro’s works. After Munro won the Man Booker International Prize in 2009, scholars are more and more interested in Munro and her works. The critics analyze Munro’s work from narrative strategies, writing styles, language features, feminism. For example, In “Alice Munro’s Narrative Structure”, Liu Xiaobo and He Miaobo explore Munro’s story structure from the abstract narrative structure and specific narrative structure. They argue that grasp of the narrative structure of the story helps readers to understand the fiction better. From the perspective of feminism, Zhao Huizhen discusses female characters in Munro’s works and summarizes their common feature - the strong is not strong, the weak is not weak. That means the tough man may be weak and incompetent and the delicate woman can be strong and brave.

Sex and gender are the terms that we use to identify ourselves and others, especially distinguishing men and women. And there is a difference between sex and gender. Sex is innate biological attribute. Gender is about the differences between masculinity and femininity. In gender studies, the term gender refers to the construction of masculinities and femininities, both socially and culturally. In this context, gender only focuses on cultural difference instead of biological differences. In daily life, the identification of gender is dependent on gender culture which is a series of material symbols. These material symbols, combined with self-identification, enable individuals to express their gender. With the development of feminist movement and feminism, feminist and socialists promotes a deeper analysis of how interactions between the biological being and the social environment influence individuals’ capacities. On the basis of these movement and feminism, gender study steps into a new phase.

The thesis focuses on male characters in Munro’s works, mainly focusing on three age groups: teenagers, young and middle-aged men. The thesis attempts to explore their inner world and focus on their interaction with women around them. Through these male characters, we will have a close look at the plight of women and explore their living conditions and the complex relationship between male and female. Main body of the thesis consists of three chapters. The first chapter discusses how children obtain gender consciousness. Through the analysis of two stories: “Boys and Girls” and “Changes and Ceremonies”, we can find that families, schools and public places teach children gender difference imperceptibly. Parents have different expectations of their daughters and sons. Girls are expected to do house work and their world is constrained in this limited space while boys have the privilege of going out. At school, gender differences are further strengthened. Children learn to act according to a certain behavior norm which is set for their gender roles. Boys and girls get equal rights to go to school, and parents and teachers have different expectations of what they are supposed to learn at school. In “Change and Ceremony”, for some girls, it seems no use of getting good grades in maths or chemistry. Teachers, and even children themselves, presuppose what they should learn. The second chapter explores the different status of men and women in their workplaces and sexual relationship, and how social expectations bring stress on both men and women. Through text analysis of “Amundsen” and “Train”, we can see that men’s work probably obtains more respect, while women’s hard work is neglected. Men achieve their self-fulfillment through their work, and marriage is just a part of their life while women regard marriage as a lifetime career. Social conventions put a lot of stress on women, and men sometimes are also a victim. True gender equality is supposed to take the dilemma of both women and men into consideration. The third chapter puts emphasis on the middle-aged men. Munro depicts authoritative husbands and authoritative fathers in her stories. In the family, the inferior position of female is very obvious. Husbands and fathers, as the bread earners, decide everything in the house. Women are doomed to be in a subordinate position because of their economic disadvantage. Beauvoir believes that female’s status as the other is closely linked with the overall situation.(Myerson 133) In marriage, women play a secondary role and depend on others. Father-daughter relationship has a great impact on female psychological development. Father is the first male that women come into contact with. The relationship between the daughter and the father influences the daughter’s cognition of sexual relation.

Chapter One Boys Who Hate Girls

Gender is not naturally formed, but constructed socially. As social animals, human beings act according to a set of behavior norm. And in a male-oriented world, these norms are set according to male’s interest. Children learn the proper behavior, or we can say, behave like a boy or a girl through the instruction of their parents, teachers and everyone around them. As for some girls, they are doomed to be the appendage to men and live in hard condition. On the contrary, most boys find their superiority and enjoy much more freedom in the domestic life and social life. In essence, both boys and girls are constructed with their gender roles by the society, but in the patriarchal society, boys have a more favorable position than girls.

1.1 “Boys and Girls”: How Boys Become Boys

“Boys and Girls” tells a girl and her brother’s growth story. Their father is a fox farmer. The girl was once her father’s right-hand man. She helps her father fill water tin cans, rake up the dried grass into the piles and do other chores in the stable. At that time, her brother Laird was just someone who could barely walk on his own. He cannot do anything useful for dad, with his little cream can. The girl does not regard her brother as her threat or someone in her opposition. Baby Laird certainly has no idea about gender distinction. For little Laird, his sister is the one who protects him, plays with him, and tells him bedtime stories every night.

However, changes take place. At first, their mother expects the girl to stay at home. She tells her husband “Wait till Laird gets a little bigger, then you’ll have a real help.” (78)

What did she mean about Laird? He was no help to anybody. Where is he now? Swinging himself sick on the swing, going around in circles, or trying to catch caterpillars.... “And then I can use her more in the house,” I heard my mother say. She had a dead-quiet, regretful way of talking about me that always made me uneasy. “I just get my back turned and she runs off. It’s not like I had a girl in the family at all.” (78)

She is angry about her mother’s suggestion. She hates these chores in the house and she is proud of being an assistant of her father. And soon, she finds that Laird also grows up quickly. When they fight, she has to summon up all her strength to fight against him, yet she loses. From this moment, she begins to recognize the word “girl”.

The word girl had formerly seemed to me innocent and unburdened, like the word child; now it appeared that it was no such thing. A girl was not, as I had supposed, simply what I was; it was what I had to become. It was a definition, always touched with emphasis, with reproach and disappointment. (79)

Girls always keep knees together when they sit down. Girls do not slam the doors. There are so many things girls can’t do but boys can. Boys have the privilege of going out.

She once did not understand the disappointment of the salesman to whom her father introduces her as his “new hired man”, at that time, the girl dreams of being a successor of her father. Now she understood why Henry, the helper of her father, says “There Laird’s gonna show you, one of these days.” (79) Laird grows up and he would take her place.

For Laird, when he was a baby, he did not have a clear idea of the differences between him and his sister. But he is appointed to be a successor of the farm from his birth. As he grow up, he no longer needs the bedtime stories to forget darkness and dislikes the song sung by his sister. He has a thin, winter-pale face - a face of men, and enjoys hunting and killing.

In the Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir holds the view that “babies don’t make women (or men)”. (Myerson 163) Biology requires each species to reproduce, so human beings give birth for continuation of the species. Baby boys and baby girls have different physiological features, but these features have limited influence on babies’ gender identification. There is no biological fate implicit in reproduction. The distinction between women and men is not made by babies but by society.

In a hierarchical society, discourse power is determined by gender, wealth and social status. However, women are excluded from social cultures as “the Other”. They are deprived of equal social status. This phenomenon is reinforced by women themselves. In “Boys and Girls”, it is her mother who suggests her father to let the girl stay in the house and wants her to be a good daughter. It is her grandmother who asks her to behave like a girl. On the contrary, her brother Laird is confronted with no restrains in his growth. He enjoys much more freedom.

In the story, when Laird grows up quickly, he can easily defeat his sister. He recognizes the physical differences between him and his sister. And he begins to dislike those girlish things, like his sister’s lace curtain. His sister tries her best to prove her ability and does not think she can’t compare with him. However, people around them keep telling her that she is a girl and there are things that she is not endowed with. The girl goes through struggle and doubt about her value and gender identification. Beauvoir claims that “gender is created psychologically, not fixed biologically”. (Myerson 165) In the end of the story, she sets their horse free, and Laird tells his father what his sister has done .

“Never mind,” my father said. He spoke with resignation, even good humor, the words which absolved and dismissed me for good. ‘She’s only a girl,’ he said. I didn’t protest that, even in my heart. Maybe it was true.(84)

It is her father’s comment on her action that defeats her psychological defense. The girl makes herself a woman in her own consciousness.

1.2 “Changes and Ceremonies”: Opposition between Male and Female Students at School

If home is the first place that we notice the differences between male and female, school would be the place that enforces these differences. The differences between boys and girls do not come from nature, but to some extent, is a result of education. In the primitive society, men and women had different roles in their cave and in the wild. Men were responsible for hunting, fishing and fighting while women were restricted in a small space because of reproduction. Although the society develops, men and women are still educated and trained differently due to their social roles.

In “Changes and Ceremonies”, school is naturally divided into two worlds: the world of boys and the world of girls. Sometimes, boys and girls are in opposition. Boys like to make fun of girls. As a matter of fact, they just try to obtain girls’ attention but in a wrong way. They use aggressive behaviors to disguise their hormone. Boys’ weapons are vulgar words and punctured tires. Girls fight back with tears and sharp words, or pay no attention to these naughty boys and turn a deaf ear. However, the two worlds interact because of school’s operetta. Every year, the school will make an operetta and performs it in the town hall. Miss Farris and Mr. Boyce were responsible for it. The students, unusually but unexpectedly, get together to make fun of them. The two poor teachers gained their authority for the first time. The kids were excited about the operetta. My friend Naomi and I were happy about having a role in it. The operetta bound the boys and girls together. During the rehearsal, they tried to communicate with each other and even develop some romance relationship, however, when back to the male or female camp, they never forgot to express their hate to the other.

Human beings are social animals. Individual always adheres to certain groups and adjusts his behavior according which group he belongs to. At school, students behaved just like their fellows to earn the sense of belonging. Peculiar kids, in the story, like the fat girl Beulah Bowes, the pale boy with a kidney disease and a quiet Italian girl, belong to neither side because they don’t act according to behavior norm of boy’s world or girl’s world. And they show the consequences of not fitting into any group: always alone.

The school does not have lessons that teach boys and girls specific behavior norms, while invisible cultural marks at school influence the kids silently.

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