论《喜福会》中母女关系的冲突与融合

论文总字数：41643字

摘 要

《喜福会》中华裔母女之间的关系实际上是母女间从不理解、冲突，到沟通、理解，最后接受并融合的过程。美国华人移民家庭中的母女冲突实质上是一种中美文化冲突。通过母女之间爱的故事，女儿终于领会到中国文化的精髓，隐含了两种文化间的冲突得到缓解、促进文化间交流与理解的美好愿望。笔者认为,《喜福会》通过对华裔社会中母女关系描写，一方面展现了华裔的生活状况。另一方面说明了华裔本身在美国社会中不断调整自己的文化身份，不断发展。保持中国传统文化的精髓,接受美国先进的个人文化教育，是华人移民在美国社会取得成功的应有之道。

关键词：喜福会；母女关系；文化冲突；融合

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 2

3. Cultural Conflict of Mother-daughter Relationship 3

3.1 Chinese Obedience to Parents and American Independence 3

3.2 Chinese High-Context Culture and American Low-Context Culture 4

3.3 Family’s Honor and Individual Achievement 5

4. Factors Leading to Contradictions and Conflicts 7

4.1 The View of Life and Value 7

4.2 “Self ” and “Others” 8

4.3 The Family Education 10

5. The Integration of Mother-daughter Relationship 11

5.1 The Mother’s Understanding of Her Daughter 11

5.2 The Daughter’s Understanding of Her Mother 12

5.3 From Conflict to Fusion 13

6. Conclusion 16

Works Cited 18

1. Introduction

Amy Tan, a famous American and ethnic Chinese writer, was born in Auckland in California, America in 1952. She first began to write novels at the age of 33, and her first Novel The Joy Luck Club was published in 1989, which find her a way to reputation. The Joy Luck Club, a description of the subtle passions between mothers and daughters, not only gained the annual national Volume Prize, but also was transferred to films, which created a high box office value. The Joy Luck Club is made up of sixteen stories about the lives and relationships of four family’s Chinese immigrant mothers and American-born daughters.

Structurally speaking, the novel is divided into four major sections, with the first and third sections focusing on the stories of the mothers and the second and the fourth sections on the stories of the daughters. These stories present the cultural misunderstandings between the Chinese immigrant mothers and their American-born daughters. The Chinese mothers just tried their own fashions in accordance with their lifestyle in their homeland and can not accept the daughters’ completely westernized life style. And the daughters don’t understand the unfamiliar Chinese traditional culture. They felt unsatisfied with their Chinese-born mothers when their life was interfered. The daughter did not feel completely at ease in the strange surroundings. Though they loved each other very much, they could not get rid of the emotional barriers easily. To dispel the misunderstanding, mothers told their Chinese stories to their daughters. With the mothers’ help and encouragement, daughters found out solutions and support to confront the difficulties and began to accept the Chinese culture. Eventually, the Chinese mothers and the American-born daughters understood each other.

In this novel, the writer aims to describe the distinct and the changing feelings between mothers and daughters, and finally reach the conclusion that they can still love and respect each other despite the huge cultural differences. In 1993, the novel was adapted into a feature film made by Ronald Bass and Amy Tan.

The thesis is divided into four parts. In the first part, some studies on the cultural conflicts and integration concerning Chinese Americans are illustrated. In the second part, the paper demonstrates factors leading to contradictions and conflicts. The third part focuses on the integration of mother-daughter relationship. The last is the conclusion of the whole thesis.

2. Literature Review

In the past twenty years, there were numerous papers about the research of The Joy Luck Club both at home and abroad, and it got mixed notices. It may be observed by combing some papers that the western, especially American academic circles, mainly concern the comments point about The Joy Luck Club from place to place and the aspects such as nationalism, race, class difference etc., but the western scholars have maintained great interest for this work since it was published. A great number of researchers have focused their attention on this topic and many papers have also been published. The primary reason for this kind of fascination is that sharp contrast between two kinds of quite different cultures embodied in The Joy Luck Club, including mysterious Oriental culture and sensible culture of western people. All of them have experienced a psychological process from monocultures identification to multicultural identification, which is in accordance with Hall’s viewpoint on culture identity: “Far from being eternally fixed” and “subject to the continuous ‘play’ of history, culture and power” (Hall, 1993:39).Therefore, this novel also becomes a tool for the mainstream white American critics to do some research about the differences between Chinese and western cultures. However, China’s domestic researchers have some different views on the directions of this novel. The Chinese academia study to The Joy Luck Club began in 1994, and since then, there has been an outpouring of literature researches in this field. And a large number of research literatures have been showed in the paper. Throughout the various comments on The Joy Luck Club, most of them are beginning to incline towards cultural political criticism. In the study of cultural problems, for example, they analyze the traditional culture displayed in the article, or discuss the cultural theme of identity from the perspective of cultural criticism and postcolonial perspective. For instance, Wang Xiaohong attributes the complexity of mother-daughter relationships in the novel to the cultural conflicts and integration between Chinese and American culture. She views the opposition between mothers and daughters as the contradiction between Chinese and American culture. It mainly combines cultural conflicts and integration with other topic in my paper, such as the mother-daughter relationship. Putting all factors together we can find the research of The Joy Luck Club from different levels. As a result, we embark on the paper from the aspects of cultural conflict, combining the different view to complete the paper.

3. Cultural Conflict of Mother-Daughter Relationship

In this novel, there are many conflicts between Chinese and American cultures in people’s ordinary life. Though this continuous conflict, we can notice the giant distinction between the Chinese culture and the American culture. And this kind of conflicts is a most important part.

3.1 Chinese Obedience to Parents and American Independence

We all know there are some different thoughts and feelings between mothers and daughters. The Chinese mothers in The Joy Luck Club expect their daughters to do things in the way as they do. They have been brought up to be obedient to their parents. It is impracticable for some parents to exact obedience from their children, but they regard the children as their underlings and expect total obedience from them. Owing to the different education, the mothers hold the belief that all the traditional values shall exist in the daughter’s mind. Thus, one thing that should be done is just sensitize it, and make this mind more shinning.

Born and grown in an opposite culture, their daughters have a deep confusion about their mothers. They suppose their mothers are different from them. In the novel, the unique American culture does not give the baking to the mothers’ warnings value. The daughters always try to counter to their mothers whenever the mothers express any wishes or want to control them, because they misunderstood the traditional beliefs that their mothers have represented.

In The Joy Luck Club, there is no doubt that Waverly were hindered by her mighty mother Lindo. Waverly felt shameful and yelled loudly when her mother showed off her success to everyone in the street. But the mother was very surprised at Waverly’s anger. Such is the human nature for the traditional Chinese mother who has been educated by Confucianism in China and does everything in the conventional Chinese way. Lindo could not accept the attitudes of her daughter, just as the daughter could not accept the way that her mother behaved in the street. In the Chinese mother’s opinion, a good daughter should be meek and submissive. It is inadvisable for the daughter to argue with her mother on a public occasion. The mother felt sad and depressed, even though Waverly did a lot to rescue the situation.

Now let us move our attention to Waverly’s boyfriend. In most of people’s eyes, Waverly is an intelligent and independent adult, but she is very scared and nervous that her mother disagrees on their love relations, which surprised her friends immensely. From this point of view, as a clever and unique woman, Waverly even “can tell the IRS to piss up a rope, but can’t stand up to her own mother, “and” tell her to stop ruining her life. Tell her to shut up.”　(Tan, 1989:173) But she was afraid of her mother.

In America, they show us a totally free mind about their life: people learn to do their personal affairs on their own and become increasingly independent. So her finance and friend can never understand Waverly’s anxiety. In America, they think marriage a very personal thing, so they will not consider lots of mind about their parents. t is regarded as a very right and necessary period. But it has strongly negative state in China, which means loneliness or isolation from the family. Though Waverly was born in the American and learned value in the American way, in her mind, she still care about her mother’s idea.

3.2 Chinese High-Context Culture and American Low-context Culture

In our daily life, communication is an important way for people. But due to the different ways of thinking, different people behave differently when talking with others. In China, people like to express their mind indirectly, while Americans tend to say something in a simple and straight way. We can easily see the conflicts of Chinese high-context culture and American low-context culture appearing frequently in Tan’s novel.

“A high context (HC) communication or message is one in which most of the information is already in the person, while very little is in the coded, explicitly transmitted part of the message. A low context (LC) communication is just the opposite; i.e., the mass of the information is vested in the explicit code.” (Edward, 1990: 27)

The interacting questions aroused frequently during the dialogue between June and Su-Yuan, “My mother and I never really understood each other. We translated each other’s meanings and I seemed to hear less than what was said, while my mother heard more” (Tan, 1989:27) When June talk with her mother, she does not understand that her mother’s important information exits in the dialogue. But the mother assumes that her daughter knows it and can infer it. We must know the meaning hidden in the sentence in high-context cultures conversation. Others are expected to understand the meaning during the conversation without explanation or specific details. People in a high-context culture always talk in a roundabout way, while members of low-context culture like American just utter it directly. If the daughter is unfamiliar with this high-context way of talking, they will draw conclusions according to the verbal meaning. In this period, they seldom discover what has been left remaining unsaid. Plenty of misunderstandings were caused by these differences. It is the most important reason in intercultural communication between the mothers and daughters.

One day, something happened when Waverly had a meal together with her family. And the situation turned out to be out of control. Her finance Rich totally misunderstood the Chinese mother’s meanings and did some impolite comments on the shortcomings of the meal. More important thing was that he even knew nothing about his fault. It showed the huge difference again. During the traditional Chinese dinner party, Waverly’s mother did a special dish and said it was not salty enough. According to the Chinese custom, her finance should have tasted them and spoken very highly of the mother’s dish. However, Rich just poured out the comment of the dish’s being salty. It led to Waverly’s mother’s dissatisfaction about Rich’s dullness.

3.3 Family’s Honor and Individual Achievement

We all know that China is a collectivism country. People attach great importance to the relationship among people. The family is seen as a small society. In this kind of family, an individual achievement will be seen as the whole family’s glory. In the novel, Chinese mother longed to see his children succeed in life. They consider their daughter’s success as the whole family’s success. So they concerned much about the children’s upbringing, their future, and everything in their life.

For another, in this kind of culture atmosphere, individual struggle was highly valued. Born in this culture they adhered to the concept of individuals. Self-realization and independent values are highly appreciated in their family. Individualism was the main point of American value. They ascribed their individual success to personal effort, even though they also expressed thanks to the family. But the most important reason was her effort. So they wanted to do the thing on their own without outer interference or help. Therefore we can know clearly the reason why the daughters were unfavorably disposed toward that their mothers meddling in their achievements and affairs. In this novel, the mothers learned the traditional way. But individualism value was a cardinal principle in American.

“She brings home too many trophy,” Lamented Auntie Lindo that Sunday. “All day she plays chess. All day I have no time to do nothing but dust off her winning.” She threw a scolding look at Waverly, who pretended not to see her.” You luckily you don’t have this problem,” said Auntie Lindo with a sigh to my mother. And my mother squared her shoulders and bragged: “Our problem worse than yours. If we ask June wash dish, she hear nothing but music. It’s like you can’t stop this natural talent.” (Tan, 1989:149)

We can see this kind of difference from June’s family as the dialogue above. When June was nine, her mother told her that she had the talent; she was the cleverest girl and would win honors. “Of course you can be prodigy, too. You can be best anything. What does Auntie Lindo know? Her daughter, she is only best tricky.”(Tan, 1989:132) Here is an acrid tone to her remarks in this sentence. From this we can see that June’s mother considered Waverly’s mother as a kind of enemy to an extant, and their tool was that they could compare their children with the others Although they were good friends, but at the same time, they spent the whole lives keeping up with each other.

At times people are always very contradictory, like the two mothers. But one thing we can make sure is the opposite reaction and mind between mother and daughter. From this, we can obviously see that the differences between Chinese and American cultures on the view of family’s honor.

4. Factors Leading to Contradictions and Conflicts

4.1 The View of Life and Value

At the very beginning of The Joy Luck Club, Chinese mothers’ expectations and best wishes for their children can be clearly seen. It says that “After I get to the United States, I want to give birth to a girl who will look like me. Moreover, she does not have to observe her husband’s countenance and live a humble life. She is in the United States from her birth and I will make her speak a fluent and beautiful American English. She will not receive contemptuous look, will be satisfactory about everything, and will have all the things that she desires. She will show understanding and sympathy for my great pains as a mother. I decide to polish her into a genuine beautiful noble swan which is much better than I expect.” As a result, the mother Su- Yuan placed great hopes on her daughter and she believed that the daughter Wu Jingmei was a genius. After failure in her initial attempts to make Jingmei into an underage film star like Shirley Temple, the mother Su- Yuan cut sorts of intelligence tests and hoped that her daughter could be a prodigy, which also ended up with failure. But as a mother she did not lose heart and began to coax the daughter to practice the piano. Meanwhile, she assisted other people to do the cleaning in order to afford her daughter’s piano lesson once a week. Her daughter did not comprehend the mother’s great pains at all and she made up her mind that “I will not be at the mercy of my mother and I am not her slave. There is not China.” In order to put out her mother’s “stupid arrogance”let her mother lose face, the daughter made a show of her on purpose at the piano concert. The daughter finally insisted on her own freedom, while her mother’s hope came to nothing accordingly. In the traditional Chinese culture, parents always hope their children will have a bright future, and they hold the belief that children’s success is the parents’ success and pride and parents have a right to arrange their children’s fife, marriage as well as their future. What’s more, the children must obey their parents’ arrangements to show their filial obedience to the parents. The mother Su- Yuan comes to the United States and places every piece of hope on her daughter.

On the contrary, what the daughter Wu Jingmei looked forward to was the western free fife style. The traditional thought that “only the obedient daughter can live in this house” made the daughter, Wu Jingmei, think that she was not her mother’s child but her slave. In the daughter’s opinion, the United States was not China. And she should get democracy and freedom just the same as other white children did. There is no doubt that the mother and the daughter deeply loved each other. But the different cultures that they stand for respectively prevent them from going on real communication and understanding each other, and make it inevitable to arouse conflicts and contradictions between the mother and the daughter. As time passes by, the elder people who immigrate into the United States feel that they are just passers-by for the United States. They are afraid that the American culture will take away their children, and they also concern whether the children will lose the inheritance of Chinese culture. As a result, they try hard to require the children to accept the tradition of the family to maintain contact with the past traditions.

4.2 “Self” and “Others”

In The Joy Luck Club, the mothers and daughters build their own “self” in a long period of time and inspect others as well. Theoretically speaking, the image of “self” is generated through the process of visualizing “others”. In this sense, the image of “others” is actually the underlying self, the “self in the mirror”. Looking in the mirror of “others”, they can find the “self”. For the daughters who are born in America, China is distant from miles and from their hearts. Their mother’s constant nagging in Chinese is just like the myth story for them. They try to adjust themselves to the mainstream of the American culture and be the real Americans.

However, the inborn face with the Chinese feature and inherited traditional Chinese values make the daughters become the “others” in the eyes of Americans. As for the mothers, they lose their original identity and can not find the new right place in the new environment. The emigrant mothers are the outsiders in the American culture and the daughters are the marginal person in America. The marginal person refers to the half-breed person in culture. They live in the two different groups of people who come from different cultures. They share their lifestyles and traditions and can not get rid of the past and the conventions of their own culture. However, since there is the racial discrimination, they can not be totally accepted by the new society. Standing at the margin of the two cultures and societies, they have never mixed into either of them. The ethnic-Chinese women who are born in America are sensitive to the totally different sense of values between the Chinese culture and American culture. Quite different from their Chinese mothers, these daughters are facing the demand of the two conflicting cultures. Although these women are born and grow up in America, they still understand the Chinese lifestyle. When they have to make a choice between the Chinese and the American, they do not know how to manage it. As for their Chinese mothers, they seldom are confused about their identity. They never ponder on the question that whether they are Chinese or American. The daughter Wavely can speak English fluently. She is smart and successful on her work. Somehow she can be regarded as a successful American on all aspects. However, in her emotional life she still can’t win her mother or we can say herself. Although the misunderstanding between the daughter and the mother make no room for them to communicate with each other, the daughter still is afraid to challenge her mother. This is because that the child who lives in the traditional Chinese background has the unnamed fear towards the parents.

In order to make her mother happy, Wavely married a Chinese man in her first marriage. When she wanted to find her own happiness and took her boyfriend to her mother’s home, she bore lots of pressure. The opinion of her mother was still significant in her heart. Wavely constantly and carefully watched mother’s smiles, and she felt released. If her mother frowned, she could even mention her idea of the new marriage. She was in a dilemma between the free love of the western culture and the filial duty of the Chinese culture. Another daughter Lena had her own job, and she followed the type of “go Dutch” with her husband in their marriage. She thought that it was a way to claim independence; however it made her make the trophy wife in the marriage. Gradually, Lena lost her respects unconsciously in her love life and their marriage was hindered by the issues on money. She did not know what blocks in her marriage and felt depressed and helpless. Another daughter Rose who had the elegant appearance and aloof personality earned the love of the son of a publisher tycoon, but the mother of the man did not accept Rose just because Rose’s race might affect her son’s development of his career. In the western culture people who rank in the mainstream of the society always distinguish themselves from the others who come from the secondary rank. In order to protect the superiority of their nationality, people usually label the marginal person as the low grade. The American scholar Amy Lin once said “no matter she is a new emigrant or born in America, she will always find herself stuck in the middle of the two worlds”. Their facial features state the facts that their ethnic are Asian. However, they are Americans in sense of their education and birth. In the mainstream of the western culture, the color of their skin makes them become the “others” in the margin of the society. Rose was also affected by the others’ opinion in her deep heart. Although she married the man she loved, she still treated her husband as an accessory by her side. She lost her personality and freedom, and finally she lost her husband’s love and respect.

4.3 The Family Education

In The Joy Luck Club, mothers’ family education towards their daughters is in the mode that they manipulate their daughters. Mothers make daughters stay at their side all the time. Daughters have no private time or space since they are inseparable with their mothers. In this situation, the daughters hardly can find their own life position. Maybe the only advantage in this mode of education is that most daughters do not go astray under the mothers’ instructions. However, children under this kind of family education have no independence and individualistic spirit. They may never get rid of their reliance on parents. Although in this novel there is no clear description about how the American mothers teach their daughters, the life experiences of Rose and Lena who are born and grow up in America and their conflicts with their parents can still show the differences of family education concept between China and United States. Family education in America promotes the idea that parents should train their children to be independent. They give more personal time and space to their children and make them understand and know the culture and the society. Parents mainly advocate an open, free family education mode in the United States. Therefore the American education ideas are inevitably conflicted with the traditional Chinese family education mode. Although the daughters seem to be obedient to her mothers in their childhood, as the American culture gradually accumulated in their mind, the daughters have more and more ideas of their own. They have various different opinions towards things and have furious argument with their mothers, thus the conflicts between mothers and daughters are inevitable.

5. The Integration of Mother-daughter Relationship

The Joy Luck Club shows the conflict and fusion between two countries, although the conflicts during the four mother-daughters keeps occurring, we can not ignore the strength of love. By the incessant communication with each other in order to understand their problems, a good mother- daughter relationship is like a two - way street that is always under construction.

5.1 The Mother’s Understanding of Her Daughter

The collision between mother and daughter exists in the whole novel, and there is no doubt that they love each other. But they have misunderstandings between them. The daughter always said: “you don’t know me.” Such a phenomenon in a very great extent was caused by the two kind of different cultures. The traditional Chinese thinking cannot vanish at once. In the mind of the mothers; children should follow their steps at all times. In other words, the daughters are the accessories of the parent.

Due to the love between them, the mothers began to accept the new sense. During their daily life, they speak poor English, even being laughed at by their daughters, and began to join the American religious activities every weekend.. They all tried to understand each other.

Take Hsu family as an example. When Rose Hsu was blamed by her husband because of her eastern cowardice and docility, she even showed no courage to fight for her right. An-mei Hsu, with bitter hatred, realized that her daughter’s self-awareness was frittered away in this marriage. She told her own story to her daughter that how her mother suffered from the sadness because she was powerless to resist. The most important thing is that she learned to fight for herself. In modern time, the female is independent, and they needn’t ask men to decide their fate. So she told to her daughter “I don’t want to save your marriage, but at least, you, have to say a few words loudly” She hoped that her daughter could cheer herself up and cast off fear. She told her daughter that self-surrender only brought her more trouble. From her mother’s words, Rose got the courage and deep love, and she made up her minds to fight for herself. She was not scared of her husband, nor at being abandoned. Instead, she strived hard to stand up for her own rights.

And there is also the story between Ying-ying and her daughter Lena. In Lena’s childhood, she also became her mother’s helper to translate her mother’s Chinese into English to other people. Lena’s husband, Harold, was also her boss. He demanded financial equality in their marriage. He always took the credit for Lina’s business. Though he had a larger salary than Lena did, he insisted on the equal payment for all household expenses between them. Harold believed that their relationship would be equal if they made everything equal too. Lena felt frustrate and powerless at first. But later she got used to it.

剩余内容已隐藏，请支付后下载全文，论文总字数：41643字