Afro-american Woman,Afro-american,Human:An Interpretation Of Maud Martha From The Perspective Of Michel Foucault's Theory Of The Subject

Gwendolyn Brooks' s sole novel,Maud Martha(1953),is a thoughtful reflection of African American women's domestic life and experience in the 1950 s.From the perspective of the heroine Maud Martha,this novel portrays the dilemmas of the family and females of African Americans in the middle or lower class living in the southern shore of Chicago and depicts how the heroine suffers and survives in a country full of racism and gets close to the subject of being a “black” woman and an independent person.The African American's compatriot consciousness and the state of bemoaning the life around the world turn Maud Martha into a good woman as she wished.This thesis echoes Michel Foucault's theory of subject and combines the complementary relationship between discourse and power to explore how Maud Martha obtains the “black” female consciousness from the marginalized female image of the other without discourse power through the vocalization and resistance in the family field and working environment.Combining the gaze with the disciplinary role of the panoramic prison,this thesis explores how the heroine crosses the local consciousness to turn to the collective consciousness of the black community.Using the aesthetics of existence in Foucault's subject theory,this thesis gives attentions to the way Maud Martha crosses from the black subject to a higher level of humanistic care via the transition of self-awareness to the philosophical thinking of life and death.These three steps progressively render Maud Martha a path of growth in a credible way.This thesis consists of five parts.The first part provides a brief introduction,which mainly presents the life experience of Gwendolyn Brooks,the main plot of Maud Martha,scholars' studies at home and abroad of the academic characteristics of Gwendolyn Brooks,the rare plot analysis of this work,as well as the relevant Michel Foucault's subject theory and the significance and framework of this thesis.Chapter I mainly discusses how the heroine overturns the control of the mainstream discourse in the family field and in the relationship between husband and wife and how Martha's Afro-American female subject is triggered in the historical context.Chapter II is based on the analysis of the American apartheid policy and depicts the way that the African Americans adapt and respond to the imprisonment and gaze of the central figures to form a black compatriot consciousness as well as racial self-confidence.Chapter III focuses on the heroine's self-care,who is trying to change her fate by changing self-awareness in a better adaption to society,to measure the importance of an individual to others and the whole world,and Martha's philosophy of life and death.The last part is the conclusion part,reaffirming the arguments of this paper,summarizing the contents of the above analysis,and indicating the research significance and value of this thesis.