The Consolidation And Subversion Of The Image Of The Other

Submission and defiance is a universal theme and the black female is a typical subject therein. African-American women writers, Toni Morrison and Alice Walker, in their novels The Bluest Eye and The Color Purple, create black females who suffer from racial and sexual discrimination. In white society, they are usually disfavored by white people consciously or subconsciously. In their family, they often suffer from domestic violence. Sometimes they are even taken as sexual tools by their husbands. Some young black females suffer from the sexual assault of their fathers, either natural or adoptive. Therefore, these black females can be considered as the Other of white people and black males.Different black females respond to the racial and sexual discrimination differently. Some choose to grin and bear all the unfairness or fight in an incorrect way, thus consolidating their image of the Other. Some choose to affirm their own value and fight in a relatively correct way, thus reverting their Otherness in white society and their family.This thesis concentrates on the representation of black females’ image of the Other on racial and gender relations and how they consolidate it through self-denial and subvert it through self-affirmation. At last, it summarizes the approaches for them to improve their condition both subjectively and objectively. There is a dual aim in this thesis:Firstly, it illustrates the unfavorable conditions of black females under the double oppression of white people and black males, how they resist or submit to the oppression and the result. Secondly, it discusses the possible ways out of their plights.