Representations Of Masculinity:Transformation Of Male Images In Amy Tan’s Novels

Amy Tan is one of the best representatives of Chinese American writers and occupies an important position in the study of contemporary Chinese American literature.Her works profoundly reflect the life experience of immigrant Chinese groups in the United States,deeply loved and welcomed by both Chinese and foreign readers.As a Chinese-American female writer,the double marginality of her identity has endowed her works with distinctive feminist characteristics.She subverts the traditional writing style,placing women in the position as the main protagonists of her works.Through expressing the conflicts and contradictions between mothers and daughters,the different influence of Chinese and American culture is fully shown.In recent years,domestic and foreign scholars mainly focus on the mother-daughter relationship and the composition of cultural identity in Amy Tan’s works,and the analytical perspectives are bent on feminism and Orientalism.Few researchers study the male images in detail.To fill the gap of analysis of Amy Tan’s works,this thesis is intended to make a systematic and in-depth study of the transformation of Amy Tan’s male images from the perspective of masculinity.In order to present the transformation,three works have been chosen,which are The Joy Luck Club,The Bonesetter’s Daughter and The Valley of Amazement.From the publication of her first novel The Joy Luck Club in 1989,during the later 24 years,altogether she has published six novels and the latest one is The Valley of Amazement.These three works were published 12 years apart,so will reflect the influence of Chinese and American culture on her and her changing attitude toward men in different phases.The main body of this thesis is composed of five chapters.The first chapter is the introductory part.It mainly introduces the history of Amy Tan,comments on her works,and summaries of the three selected novels.The second chapter is about the theoretical framework.Four masculinity theories are introduced:hegemonic masculinity put forward by R.W.Connell,the dyad of wen and wu put forward by Kam Louie,Asian American masculinity and American masculinity.This thesis will utilize these four theories to analyze Chinese and American images in Amy Tan’s three works.Chapter three to five are detailed analyses of The Joy Luck Club,The Bonesetter’s Daughter and The Valley of Amazement.By interpretation of the texts and comparisons,this thesis sums up the changing process of Chinese and American male images in Amy Tan’s works.From The Joy Luck Club to The Valley of Amazement,the number of Chinese male characters increases and their image has gradually shifted from negative to positive while American men are relegated from the original saviors of women to foils for Chinese men.The last part is the concluding paragraph.It summarizes the overall image of the Chinese and American male characters in the three works;and the reasons for the transformations of male images in Amy Tan’s novels are explored from the perspective of social dynamics and her distinctively racial and gender identity.