Gaze And Oppositional Gaze

As the significant representatives of African American women literature,Toni Morrison(1931-2019)and Alice Walker(1944-)are mainly concerned about the plight of lower-class black females,and contemplate the marginalized races’ living conditions.Both of them focus on the oppressed black females and their resistance.Love(2003)by Toni Morrison and By the Light of My Father’s Smile(1998)by Alice Walker both represent the oppression of black males on black females and black females’ confrontational strategies.Besides,they reveal the underlying intral-racial issues of Afro-Americans.This thesis is a postcolonial feminist reading of Love and By the Light of My Father’s Smile.It analyzes how black male gaze objectify black females and how black females respond to male gaze by taking oppositional gaze strategy.It aims to explore the power of gaze and black females’ endeavor to deconstruct the subject-object binary opposition and eliminate gender discrimination.The thesis contains five chapters.The first chapter briefly introduces the authors and their works,the literature review as well as the study’s method,purpose and significance.The second chapter analyzes how black females lose subjectivity under male gaze.Through the intervention of power,the black males in both novels discipline black females and make them become silenced subalterns and docile accomplice.Meanwhile,scopophilia is exercised by black males to turn black females the objects of desire.The third chapter analyzes how black females construct subjectivity by means of oppositional gaze.Their purpose is to gain discursive power and body autonomy.Love among black females in both novels is also important factor in constructing subjectivity.The fourth chapter puts the emphasis on the genders’progress proposed in both novels.Within the marginal Afro-American race,black females not only establish female alliances,but also view black males as compatriots to reach gender reconciliation.The fifth part of the thesis is the conclusion.Under black male gaze,the black females in both novels lost their subjectivity.However,they did not take it as their fate and surrender to the patriarch power.Black females’oppositional gaze strategy helps them to construct their subjectivity.They try to deconstruct the subject-object binary opposition not to establish new center but to strive for gender reconciliation.This will be ongoing process.