摘 要

《喜福会》是当代美籍华裔女作家谭恩美的代表作，小说讲述了四对华裔母女的成长故事和人生经历。一方面，谭恩美通过在小说中讲述母亲们在旧中国封建社会中所经受的苦难与艰辛，进而罗列出各式的中国传统文化元素和伦理观念，由此向西方读者展现了一幅“东方”化的中国景象；另一方面，作者从女儿们的视角入手，通过营造和刻画四对母女关系的冲突与矛盾，使母亲和女儿不同的思维模式和价值观念形成鲜明的对比，将处在美国主流社会的女儿眼中的无知、愚昧的母亲形象展现出来，突出了母亲“他者”化的中国妇女形象。

本文一共分为四个部分，第一部分是对小说《喜福会》和赛义德《东方主义》的概述。第二部分是文献综述，首先回顾了学术界关于《喜福会》的主要研究成果与现状；其次总结了文学批评领域对东方主义理论的讨论与反思。第三部分分析了东方主义在《喜福会》中的呈现。笔者认为三个因素造成了《喜福会》的东方主义倾向，即社会历史条件、文化霸权主义和谭恩美个人主观因素。在《喜福会》中，中国妇女的形象时常表征为文化的他者，这具体表现在小说中母女的冲突以及母亲们的失语现象和对四位母亲形象的塑造两方面。第四章是结论部分，即身处美国主流社会的谭恩美，受东方主义的影响，在《喜福会》的创作中呈现了中国妇女落后、封建、缺乏独立性等“他者”化的刻板印象。

关键词：东方主义；喜福会；文化霸权；他者

Abstract

The Joy Luck Club is one of the most representative works of Amy Tan, who is a contemporary Chinese American female writer. The stories of four pairs of mother and daughter are written respectively in this novel, in that way, Amy Tan describes the hardships and tribulations experienced by mothers in the feudal society of old China on one hand with a large number of traditional Chinese elements of culture and ethics are listed, which clearly presents the orientalized image of China to Western readers. On the other, by displaying the contradictions and conflicts between mothers and daughters from the perspective of daughters, she makes a sharp contrast with diverse thought patterns and values between these four pairs of mother and daughter, in order to present the ignorant, benighted characteristics of Chinese women in the eye of daughters who are stand in the mainstream American society, and show their images as the Other.

This paper is divided into four parts, the first are introductions of The Joy Luck Club and Orientalism. The second part is literature review, in this part, the author gives an overview of major research findings of The Joy Luck Club; then, it reviews some of the important discussions about Orientalism. The third part probes into the construction of Orientalism in The Joy Luck Club. Three main factors account for the causes of Orientalism: the historical and social factors, the emergence of cultural hegemony and the subjectivity of Amy Tan. In The Joy Luck Club, Chinese women are usually otherized and orientalized in the following ways: mothers have difficulties in communicating with their daughters and are usually put into the state of aphasia; the image of the mothers are usually being depicted as backward, feudal and dependent in the novel. The last part draws the conclusion that Amy Tan, who stands in the mainstream American society, presents the image of Chinese women as the other in The Joy Luck Club under the influence of Orientalism.

Key words: Orientalism; The Joy Luck Club; cultural hegemony; the other

Table of Contents

1. Introduction 1

1.1 An introduction of The Joy Luck Club 1

1.2 An introduction of Orientalism 2

1.3 Structure of the paper 3

1.4 Significance of research 3

2. Literature Review 4

2.1 Researches on The Joy Luck Club 4

2.2 Researches on Orientalism in literary criticism 5

3. The Construction of Orientalism in The Joy Luck Club 7

3.1 The causes of Orientalism in The Joy Luck Club 7

3.1.1 Historical and social factors 7

3.1.2 Cultural hegemony 8

3.1.3 Subjectivity of Amy Tan 9

3.2 Representing Chinese women as the other in The Joy Luck Club 10

3.2.1 The images of the mothers 10

3.2.2 Miscommunication and the state of aphasia 12

4. Conclusion 14

References.....................................................................................................................15

Acknowledgments.......................................................................................................16

Orientalism in The Joy Luck Club - Representing Chinese Women as the Other

1.Introduction

1.1 An Introduction of The Joy Luck Club

The Joy Luck Club is a novel written by Chinese American writer Amy Tan, which is adapted according to the experiences of her own mother and grandmother. It is a lifetime story that four Chinese American immigrant families in San Francisco are involved. The joy luck club is the name of a club where the traditional Chinese game called mahjong is played for money during spare time. The Joy Luck Club consists of four parts. Each part started with a short statement made by Mothers or Daughters to indicate the theme. The first part of “Feathers From a Thousand LI Away” and the fourth part of “Queen Mother of the Western Skies” are stated by mothers, while the other two parts, “The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates” and “American Translation” are stated by daughters. There are sixteen stories that contain completely both past experiences and present life of mothers in the joy luck club and the rebellious growth process of their daughters. The relationship between mothers and daughters is delicate and sometimes even conflicting. By describing conflicts and contradictions between the four mothers and their daughters, collision and incompatibility between backward, barbaric Chinese culture and advanced, enlightened American culture are represented. In the novel, China was set up in pre-industrial times. It was a country suffered from war and full of hunger and disasters. In that way, the image of Chinese Mothers who then immigrated to America is worth analyzing. These four mothers who had experienced poverty, ignorance, and indignity in wartime were victims of old feudal society. Although they moved to America, they still lived with old Chinese imprints. As for daughters, they were born in the United States, and they had been well educated with the idea of democracy and freedom. They wanted to have a place in American culture and not be marginalized, at the same time, it was difficult for them to get rid of the shackles which came from old China and their mothers. In fact, it has been a continuous struggle existing in Chinese American group include Amy Tan.

1.2 An Introduction of Orientalism

Edward Said is an important contemporary critical theorist in the United States, who was born in Jerusalem, Palestine. His book Orientalism has been documented as a pioneering text for post-colonial studies, and his theory still remains critically significant today. In this book, an influential argument was put forward, that is, scholarly writing from Western countries presented inaccurate, misleading and stereotyped cultural representations of the Orient. A concept must be comprehended before Orientalism to be introduced in detail, that is, binary opposition theory. It divides the whole world into two parts and interprets all physical existence as two opposite sides, such as culture and nature, public and private, object and subject, assimilation and identification, phenomenon and essence, West and East, male and female, etc. In Said' s Orientalism, the term "Orientalism" describes a patronizing Western attitude towards other cultures, especially the Oriental. As it states, the Orient is the opposite of the West at most of the time. Thus, a series of binary opposition hierarchical distinctions can be regarded as the core of Orientalism. In Orientalism, the binary opposition manifests as West and East, superiority and inferiority, advanced and backward, civilization and barbarism, rich and poor, etc. In terms of it, the East always signifies an image of a nation with inferiority, backwardness, barbarism, and poverty. Said argued that the Orient is the stage on which the whole East is confined. He believed these biased perceptions impeded a true understanding of the Oriental cultures. In Orientalism, Said also systematically expounds the Post-colonial Theory in a way of using the above-mentioned binary opposition expressive system to distinguish the characteristics of the East and the West in advance, and then label these characteristics essentially, so as to make the differences between the Orient and the West deep-rooted. By doing so, the stereotype of the East is shaped and framed. As it is mentioned earlier, the average distribution of the two forces in binary opposition structure cannot be made, one force must be restricted by the other, that is, these two forces must be the Other and the Self respectively. Other and Self are the most distinctive core concept in Post-colonial Theory. In this theory, Westerners are often referred to as the subjective Self, while colonial people, especially Easterners, are referred to as the colonial Other or Other directly. Said thought Western scholarship held strong ties to the authoritarian imperialist societies that bred it, concluding that much Western scholarship was inherently political and relatively dubious. Said also mentioned that stereotyping has become a justification for the Western colonization of Eastern countries. Even today, under the background of globalization and multi-culture, the West is still deeply influenced by Orientalism. In the eyes of Westerners, the East is always a backward, superstitious, foolish and impoverished Other. Said deduced that either the West is blinded by its own failings and doesn't recognize it is stereotyping, or it believes its own culture is superior. In conclusion, Said mainly expressed the four main points in the study of Orientalism: Firstly, pure knowledge does not exist, instead, adhesion exists essentially between knowledge and politics. Secondly, whether the distinction between Orient and West is imaginative or regional, it is coercive at the first circumstance. Thirdly, the identity of a human being is not formed naturally, and it is not stable and unchangeable, conversely, it is sometimes constructed and created out of nothing. Fourthly, Orientalism is based on the premise of exteriority.

1.3 Structure of the Paper