On The Trauma And Identity Construction Of Female Characters In A Mercy By Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison is a prominent contemporary African-American woman writer. As aproductive writer, she has published ten novels up to now. In her ninth novel A Mercy,Morrison continues to pay close attention to the living conditions of women. But what isunlike in the past, she not only focuses on the black women in the novel, but also keeps awatchful eye on the struggle and suffering of the women of other colors and races.Morrison, by describing the tragic fate of the colored women in A Mercy which was setin the early North American colonies, exposed that slavery was the historical root of the painthat these colored people suffered. However, loss of self and spiritual enslavement were alsothe causes of the tragic fate of these colored women. The author makes an attempt to tell thereaders that, for a person, only by getting rid of the yoke of his or her spirit, can he or she beloved and respected and have a better life.By the analysis of main female characters’ traumatic cause, traumatic experiences, andtraumatic symptoms, this thesis makes an analysis of the female characters’ lose of self andtheir self-construction in terms of trauma theory.This thesis is divided into five parts, including the introduction, the three chapters in themain body and the conclusion.The first part is Introduction, which briefly introduces Toni Morrison’s life and writingcareer and her ninth book A Mercy, as well as the research results about the novel made by thescholars both at home and abroad. These results of research indicate that the present studiesrelated to A Mercy mainly concentrate on three aspects including the thematic study, thehistorical and cultural study as well as the narrative study and few of them are involve femaletrauma and identity construction thus this thesis gains researching space.The main body of this thesis is divided into three chapters. The first chaptersystematically introduces the trauma theory, discusses the development course of traumastudies, put forward the relation between trauma and other disciplines, and states theapplication of trauma theory in literature. There is also an introduction to the general conceptof female identity. The second chapter conducts analysis of psychological trauma and culturaltrauma of female characters in the novel and discusses the continuity and cruelty that thetraumatic memories impacted on their life. The third chapter takes the protagonist Florens asan example, which through her re-memory of her traumatic experiences, the journey offinding love and writing down her story, she ultimately obtained independent spirit andconstructed a complete self to explore the road to women’s self construction.By analysis in the above three chapters, the final part concludes that A Mercy is a novel related to trauma and female self-construction. Slavery is not determined by one’s color ofskin or his position. Instead, it depends on one’s mental freedom. Psychological trauma andcultural trauma lead to female mental slavery and at last they lost themselves and became realslaves. Only by facing their past and internal wounds bravely can they find their true value,complete their self-construction and become the master of their own destiny.