论文总字数：38684字
摘 要
女性形象在美国华裔文学中扮演着重要角色。汤亭亭的《女勇士》中的女性虽生存在男权和种族歧视的压抑下但仍努力争取从传统的习惯依附于男性的性别角色中解放，试图摆脱压迫和歧视。本文主要分析了《女勇士》中六个典型女性形象，从她们的性格特点，行为选择和不同命运等方面挖掘出勇于反抗命运,追求精神独立和地位平等的女性形象。本文还将阐述这些女性形象给美国社会带来的强烈震撼和对处于男权和种族歧视双重压迫下的社会女性的现实教育意义。
关键词：女性形象；美国华裔文学；《女勇士》；男权；反抗与独立
Contents
1. Introduction 1
2. Literature Review 1
2.1 Maxine Hong Kingston as A Female Chinese American Writer 1
2.2 Current Status about The Woman Warrior 2
3. Analysis of the Typical Female Images in The Woman Warriors 3
3.1 No Name Woman—A Defender for Liberalism at the Expense of Death 3
3.2 Moon Orchid—A Victim of the Patriarchal Society 4
3.3 Brave Orchid—A Survivor of both Traditional Culture and Marginal Culture 5
3.4 Fa Mu Lan—A Changer of the Traditional Feudal Society 7
3.5 Ts’ai Yen—A Propagator of Eastern Culture 8
3.6 “I” —A Resister of Traditional Chinese Culture 9
4. The Significance of the Female Images in The Woman Warriors 11
4.1 The Great Shock of Chinese Female Images from The Woman Warrior 11
4.2 The Educational Significance to the Current Females 12
5. Conclusion 14
Works Cited 16
1. Introduction
Chinese American literature is one of the literature genres and is usually defined as the literature works written by Chinese Americans. Due to their different life experiences, complex backgrounds and special social status, the Chinese Americans were marginalized by both China and America. Chinese American Literature is often the reflection of Chinese Americans’ lives and the burden of their dual ethnic identities as well as culture backgrounds. So Chinese American literature is a product of collision and hybridization of both Chinese and American culture. But it also represents distinctive personalities and characteristics. Chinese American literature not only records Chinese Americans’ hardships but also expresses their hope of harmony of Chinese and American culture.
According to the survey, the origin of Chinese American literature should date back to the second half of 19th century. This is a period that the first large scale of Chinese immigrants arrived in America. However, that was just a kind of immigrant literature mainly based on the oral literature like ballads and stories. And for most scholars the first real Chinese American literature work is Mrs. Spring Fragrance which is written by Sui Sin Far in 1912.
The real upsurge in the development of Chinese American literature began in 1970s. It was pushed by immigrants law reform, the black civil rights movement, feminist movement and student movement. So in this period Chinese American writers like Maxine Hong Kingston, Frank Chin, Amy Tan and Gish Jen paid much attention to the importance of cultural identity and their rights.
2. Literature Review
2.1 Maxine Hong Kingston as A Female Chinese American Writer
Maxine Hong Kingston is one of the most famous Chinese American writers. Her three master works The Woman Warrior （1976）, China Man（1980）and Tripmaster Monkey（1989）get a great success in literary circles. Her parents emigrated to the United States in 1930s and she was born and raised in America. The Chinese tradition, culture and history have a great influence on her so that her literature works often contain Chinese elements. But she was educated in America and surrounded by Americans. There’s no doubt that she was impacted by American mainstream culture and literature. As she is a female Chinese American, she also pays much attention to the status of females. So the cultural identity, racism and feminism become some of her major concerns in her works. Her writings are often based on memory and imagination.
2.2 Current Status about The Woman Warrior
The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Childhood among Ghosts（1976）is Maxine Hong Kingston’s most successful work which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction in 1976. The publication of The Woman Warrior created a social stir immediately and the book was regarded as “An epoch-making masterpiece” by President Clinton. It was even highly praised as an original work of the revitalization of Chinese American literature. “It was written as a memoir, but reads like a combination of autobiography and fiction.” （Chang Yaoxin, 2008: 552）This work is like a biography based on a combine of mythology, history, tales and imagination.
The Woman Warrior is also the most controversial work among all Maxine Hong Kingston’s works due to its special way of Chinese culture representation. The peculiar writing techniques brought wide praises from readers but also caused some flames from literature critics like Frank Chin, Kathryn Fong and Benjamin Tong. Frank Chin regarded the book as a book which caters to Caucasians’ tastes. They criticized that Maxine Hong Kingston wasn’t on behalf of the Chinese Americans’ interests and distorted the real image of China in The Woman Warrior. But Maxine Hong Kingston emphasized that The Woman Warrior first is an American book.
The 1960s and the 1970s are the upsurge of the civil rights. The black civil rights movement, and feminist movements have forced the birth of Maxine Hong Kingston’ The Woman Warrior. This book expresses a strong protest to the patriarchy, hierarchy in China and racial discrimination in America through the description of a series of Chinese women.
3. Analysis of the Typical Female Images in The Woman Warriors
3.1 No Name Woman—A Defender for Liberalism at the Expense of Death
The first chapter “No Name Woman” is a tragedy which has become a taboo in a family and was retold by the author’s mother.（Here the author is replaced by Maxine in the following passage.）
In 1920s, Maxine’s aunt was married to a young man by her family. And this marriage was never related to love but just one of ‘‘hurry-up weddings—to make sure that every young man who went ‘out the road’ would responsibly came home’’ （Kingston, 1976：3）. Later her husband left home and gave her endless loneliness and waiting instead of happiness. She got pregnant with other man few years later. The villagers attacked aunt and insulted her before baby birth. At that night, aunt gave birth to a baby outside and she drowned her little baby and herself in the family well. However, the whole family never showed any sympathies to her and never had a word about her. That makes Maxine’s aunt become “no name women”.
There’s no doubt that no name aunt is a tragic woman who was abandoned by her family, her husband’s family and the whole society. In China, a name is not only a symbol of a person but also a manifestation of profound meanings like social status, ties of family blood and cultural backgrounds. Maxine’s aunt was named “no name woman” and this means that she lost her identity. Her family evicted her out and never mentioned her after her death because her infidelity did great harm to the reputation of a family as well as the whole village. It was serious punishment for no name aunt like the book mentioned “The real punishment was not the raid swiftly inflicted by the villagers, but the family’s deliberately forgetting her”（Kingston, 1976：3）.
“No name woman” is also a symbolic name which means that every woman who suffered in old society can be “no name woman”.
The most shocking action of no name aunt is her defense for liberalism at the expense of death. Even though she faced the oppression from the society and family, “she kept the man’s name to herself throughout her labor and dying; she did not accuse him that he be punished with her.” （Kingston, 1976：11）After she gave birth to a baby, “Toward morning she picked up the baby and walked to the well.”（Kingston, 1976：15）The action of no name aunt drowning herself with her baby in the family well is a war declaration to the patriarchal society because her blood blended in the well water which the villagers lived on. From that moment, everyone who drinks the well water will be affected by her and the whole patriarchal society will be fluctuated.
According to Chinese superstition, a drowned woman will emerge from the water to conduct vengeance on her enemies. The no name woman became a drowned ghost and would never be forgotten by the villagers even though they tried to deny her existence. No name woman wasn’t an ordinary Chinese woman who was limited by traditional moral principles. She became a subject of her own desire instead of an object of the male’s desire. Obviously, she was a defender of liberalism at the expense of death.
Her death was a kind of silent demonstration and struck the traditional feudal marriage relationship. Her defense of death also announced that women were not tools of giving birth to babies.
3.2 Moon Orchid—A Victim of the Patriarchal Society
Just like the no name woman, Moon Orchid is also a tragic character in Chapter Four At the Western Palace. It seems that they have similar experiences and tragic ends. But actually Moon Orchid is very different from no name woman and is totally inferior to no name woman. No name woman was brave enough to seek for her own love, private life and was never willing to submit to patriarchy. Even though she got a miserable end, she is a real woman warrior.
However, Moon Orchid is opposite of no name woman. She was badly infected by feudal cultural thoughts like the three obediences and the four virtues. Her husband went to America and remarried a young lady. But she still lived as a widow for thirty years and thought that she should feel grateful for her husband’s support to her family. She was eager for her husband’s acception and was even willing to wait upon her husband’s new wife when she came to America. Finally she was abandoned by her husband and became mad.
Moon Orchid is a typical representative of the female as a victim of the patriarchal society. It is obvious that Kingston put special meanings to the name “Moon Orchid”. First, it is a common sense for us that moon is a symbol of soft which is the same as Moon Orchid’s characteristic. Second, the moon makes a sun-centered movement and Moon Orchid lived a man-centered life.
There are two reasons which lead to Moon Orchid’s madness. One is her husband’s abandonment. In Moon Orchid’s world, she strictly followed Chinese feudal moral codes and never queried these rules. She spent her whole life obeying her husband but she was still abandoned. This also means that she would live in suffering, humiliation and would be laughed by others.
Beside her husband’s abandonment, there’s also a very important reason of a totally different environment. Moon Orchid, a woman who was deeply controlled by Confucianism went to America alone. This was a totally strange world which was full of strange languages, life styles and thoughts for her. She worried that she was in danger anytime and there were all ghosts in the new country. Moon Orchid reflected a most obvious characteristic—cowardice. When she arrived in America, she was afraid that her husband will be angry for her coming and even wanted to go back to Hong Kong. “I shouldn’t be here.” “I’m scared.” “I wanted to go back to Hong Kong.”（Kingston, 1976：125）She just imaged how to pleased her husband when she meet her husband but refused to fight for herself. She was forced by Brave Orchid to talk with her husband but she was terrified and wanted to get rid of meeting her husband.
It is easy to find that Moon Orchid isn’t the only one who was badly hurt in traditional Chinese society. “Moon Orchid’s weakness and her obedience to men make her outside the Western Palace. It is also a different deconstruction of authority for the author to describe the common people by using queen’s residence. The same thing happens among the females regardless of the rich or the poor. And whatever she is a queen or a civilian woman, she will be a victim. This kind of experience of women has the universality in traditional Chinese society.”（Dong Xve, 2008: 18）
3.3 Brave Orchid—A Survivor of both Traditional Culture and Marginal Culture
Brave Orchid is another woman warrior who gives the readers deep impression because of her unusual spirit. Kingston used the word “brave” to name the character in order to show that this woman is a representative of brave women and Kingston is very proud of her.
At first, Brave Orchid was an ordinary woman in old China. Her situation was the same as Moon Orchid’s. Her husband went to America and she was left in China. But later she broke the tradition value that innocence is the virtue for women and went to school. When she was at school, she was never afraid of the ghosts in the girls’ dormitory and led her classmates to flight against the ghosts. In china, ghosts are symbols of mysterious power and they are often atrocious and invincible. In this book, the ghost is also a symbol of male supremacy. Brave Orchid also showed us her rebellious spirits as well as dauntless spirits. She was also a woman who was unwilling to lag behind to others and had a consciousness of self-respect and self-strengthening. After she finished school, she became a good rural doctor in her hometown.
At last, she left everything she had, crossed the ocean to America alone and lived with her husband. This is also a great challenge for the tradition ideology that women should stay at home and never leave home.
Brave Orchid had a new life with her husband and got six children in America. Why did Brave Orchid get a totally different end from Moon Orchid? First, Brave Orchid’s action of going to America to find her husband is a kind of conscious activity. Second, Brave Orchid is more independent and brave than Moon Orchid. She has the ability to defend her rights and dignity. The most important is that Brave Orchid had a quick self-adjustment and adapted to the new environment.
Brave Orchid was also a great mother who took care of her children with all her heart.
“The first group of immigrant Chinese American mothers has a kind of special character which is different from the traditional Chinese mothers who are controlled by patriarchy and is also different from the white mothers in the American mainstream culture. They stubbornly stick to Chinese cultural traditions and they are rejected by American mainstream culture. But they are also influenced by the American dominant culture like equality and freedom unconsciously. These make them become a special group between the cracks.”（Zhou Lili等 183）Brave Orchid is one of the first group of immigrant Chinese American mothers. So she is a contradiction too. On the one hand, Brave Orchid tried to keep the Chinese traditions and wanted to teach her children more Chinese tradition rules. When Brave Orchid was in China, she was brave and never afraid of ghosts. “But when the mother came to America, things changed drastically. In mother’s eyes American was a country full of ghosts. Once a heroine in China, mother was changed into an ordinary woman, losing the power to fight against ghosts, who had to work day and night to help with her husband and families.”（Li Xiaolin amp; Liu Guilan, 2005: 36）This also shows that she was scared in her inner world when she faced a new world.
On the other hand, she is a survivor of both traditional culture and marginal culture. She tried her best to adapt to the new environment and new culture. Finally, she was used to the life in America and the American culture. She regarded herself as a new American. “I don’t want to go back anyway.”（Kingston, 1976：251）
3.4 Fa Mu Lan—A Changer of the Traditional Feudal Society
The story of the heroine Fa Mu Lan is known to all, however, in the book The Woman Warrior, Kingston presents the readers with a totally different image as a changer of an old traditional feudal society.
In Chapter Two of The Woman Warrior, Fa Mu Lan got away from the moral life as well as her home and learned Kongfu and tactics. After she finished study in the Mountain White Tigers, she prepared to fight for herself as well as others. “This time I must go and fight.”（Kingston, 1976：33） When she returned home, she decided to take her father’s place in the army. Before she left home again, her father wrote out oaths and names on Fa Mu Lan’ back in the family hall. She led the army, won the wars, killed the emperor and helped to build a new farmer’s regime. After Fa Mu Lan returned from a successful combat, she led the villagers to fight against the bully and revenge for the villagers. Finally, She returned to undertake her duties as a mother, a wife and a daughter-in-law.
Maxine Hong Kingston created a lot of new different details and made Fa Mu Lan a changer of an old traditional feudal society.
Even though, Fa Mu Lan in Chinese history（here we called her original Fa Mu Lan）disguised as a man and was heroic in the combat, she was an ordinary girl in peacetime. She spun at home and strictly followed the requirement that the patriarchal society forced on women. But in Maxine Hong Kingston’s book, Fa Mu Lan（here we call her new Fa Mu Lan）is totally different. When she was young, she left home and learnt to improve her own abilities instead of staying at home. The new Fa Mu Lan is freer than original Fa Mu Lan in Chinese society. This is an overthrow of a traditional Chinese woman who should be limited at home and submit to the male.
There’s also some difference between two images. The original Fa Mu Lan’s choice of leaving home and disguising as a man in the army is a helpless choice. She left home just in order to protect her old father. This action was based on the filial piety of Confucianism and met the traditional Chinese moral discipline. After she joined the army, she was heroic in the combat and protected the feudalism and the emperor. This action focused on the loyalty of Confucianism. But new Fa Mu Lan totally changed original Fa Mu Lan’s spiritual pursuit of filial piety and loyalty. She deviated from Confucianism and revolted the limit which the male forced on women. The first time for her to leave home was her own choice and the second time was also her initiative choice. And when she was in the army, she defeated the emperor and struck down the feudalism regime instead of protecting them like original Fa Mu Lan’s protection. After she went home, she killed the bully and released the imprisoned women. All of these actions totally showed new Fa Mu Lan’s spirit of resistance for the patriarchal society.
Maxine Hong Kingston’s rewrite of Fa Mu Lan showed us a different image of a woman warrior who had an independent life and an independent choice of realizing her value of life. This change also showed Fa Mu Lan’s spirit of opposing the fate and feudal patriarchy.
3.5 Ts’ai Yen—A Propagator of Eastern Culture
The story of Ts’ai Yen is only mentioned a little at the end of Chapter Five. But the author still used the name of this story “A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe” to name Chapter Five and retold a respected woman in the history. Ts’ai Yen is a poetess who is intelligent and knowledgeable in the end of Han Dynasty and she is more wildly known as Cai Wenji. Ts’ai Yen was re-interpreted by the author and she became a woman warrior who was adept with both the pen and the sword. She could gallop across the battle field like Fa Mu Lan. “Ts’ai Yen fought desultorily when the fighting was at a distance, and she cut down anyone in her path during the madness of close combat.”（Kingston, 1976：208）During her twelve-year stay with the barbarians, she was lonely and painful in the barbarian world. But when she heard the music of barbarians, she was shocked. “The music disturbed Ts’ai Yen; its sharpness and its code made her ache. It disturbed her so that she could not concentrate on her own thoughts. Night after night the songs filled the desert no matter how many duns away she walked.”（Kingston, 1976：208）Finally, she created the song which was a coalition of both Chinese melodies and barbarian music. “Then, out of Ts’ai Yen’s tent, which was apart from the others, the barbarians heard a woman’s voice singing, as if to her babies, a song about China and her family there. Her words seemed to be Chinese, but the barbarians understood their sadness and anger.” （Kingston, 1976：209）The song reflected a perfected unification of both traditional Chinese culture and the foreign culture after the development of contradictory mentality of keeping the Chinese traditions and adapting to the real environment. Here we can see Ts’ai Yen is an image of a woman warrior who fused both Chinese culture and the local culture and created a kind of new harmonious culture. “Maxine Hong Kingston made a metaphor of her own hard growth process in America through rewriting Ts’ai Yen’s story. Under the background of the double culture, Maxine Hong Kingston absorbed both Chinese and American culture, cleared up the conflicts of the two kind of culture and created the cultures which are in the relation of mutual tolerance, mutual dependence and mutual promotion.”（Mei Feihu amp; Liu Jin, 2010: 38）Although Ts’ai Yen was in a foreign country she was still an unyielding woman warrior. She broke the silence through her singing, revolted the oppression forced by the foreign land and realized the reposition and liberation of herself. She is a woman warrior who is brave to find her own voice in a foreign country. And we can also find that the author expressed her own emotion through retelling Ts’ai Yen’s story. Maxine Hong Kingston regarded Ts’ai Yen a propagator of eastern culture and wanted to follow the example of Ts’ai Yen who used the song to express own feeling and she hoped to build a good relationship between the new American culture and the old Chinese culture through her writing.
3.6 “I” —A Resister of Traditional Chinese Culture
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