| In writing about motherhood,western women writers in the 20 th century strove to break through the traditional cultural constraints of motherhood and maternity.They found a way to shape motherhood in the mother’s body,and the social and cultural information carried by the mother’s body was explored by women writers,and on the basis of the body narrative,they illustrated the dilemma of motherhood in modern society and how women could express themselves in modern society.The written mother has a new perception of motherhood and maternity in the female writers’ writing.Under this perception,the connotation of motherhood image reshaping extends from the past to the future of mother,giving different ways of care to motherhood,a female identity vital to the continuation of human civilization.Taking motherhood image as the research object,exploring the issues related to the reshaping of motherhood image by western female writers in the 20 th century,it has a key revelation and significance for social development,female culture,even gender future.This thesis is divided into three parts.The first part is a cultural tracing of the mother image,which illustrates the influence of the mother goddess culture on the traditional mother image through the study of goddesses in archaeology,among which the social culture and messages behind the two kinds of mother images,namely the loving mother and the evil mother,are mainly explained.In addition,it is an overall overview of the image of motherhood portrayed by female writers in the 20 th Western century.The general flow of motherhood can be seen in the efforts of female writers to try to break through tradition and reshape the image of modern motherhood under the effect of many factors.The second part takes the works of three women writers,Toni Morrison,Winsett and Jelinek,as examples,to analyze the body narratives in the works of women writers and their important role in reshaping the image of motherhood,to clarify that women writers discovered the maternal power contained in the mother’s body beyond fertility and traditional motherhood,and the positive influence of writing about the mother’s body on the construction of the mother’s self in modern society.The third part takes the works of three writers,namely,Sai Pearl,Lessing and Duras,as examples to show that motherhood has been given a more profound cultural connotation in modern society where information exchange is diversified and the structure of family relations has developed and changed,and the literary image of motherhood has changed from a single solidified traditional image to a full and personalized female image.The conclusion part is a summary of the whole thesis.The complex and varied images of mothers created by women writers not only reflect the characteristics of women’s writing in the 20 th century,but also rely on the mother as a female character to penetrate into the inner world of women and make assumptions and care for the future and development of contemporary women.Women writers did not only stay in the single mode of exploring maternity,motherhood,and parent-child relationship,but also wrote about the aesthetic principles and identity choices of mothers in the family,society,and gender system with reshaping the image of mother. |
