To Kill or Not to Kill, That is the Question: The Enslaved Mother's Remapping of Love and Self in Toni Morrison's Beloved

唐妮•莫里森《摯愛》中的母職探討

林熒嬌(Ying-Chiao Lin)

《華梵人文學報》 1期 (2003/07) Pp. 1-21

https://doi.org/10.29930/HJH.200307.0001

摘要

唐妮‧莫里森的《摯愛》乃作者對於奴隸制度下的母親之於母職的看法與施行之一事件上提出的質疑。受奴隸之母親如何能在其所處之劣勢狀態下完成母職，又她如何能在母愛和自我空間二者之間做適當之衡量，乃是作者之關注焦點。該小說中的女主角席思，乃一受困於強烈的母職觀念的母親，此乃導致其緊張和危險的母女關係之主要原因。她之弒殺其女嬰，雖出於欲使其免於遭受自身所經歷之痛苦奴隸生活的母愛表現，卻是一幕對詮釋母愛的最悲慘描述。而作者讓此女嬰於十八年後復生而來，一方面她代表了集體奴隸史的過去記憶，另一方面，她以一憤怒和復仇之姿態的女兒，急欲向其母索取應有之母愛。此復生之女兒，對於其母親之渴望之表達方式是一種吞噬性的佔有，而其心理狀態則一直停滯於前伊狄帕斯期，呈現對於母親永不滿足的嬰孩需求。而身爲母親之席思，最終仍未能肯定自我，仍在母職與自我意識二者中猶豫。

關鍵字

母職 ； 唐妮•莫里森 ； 摯愛 ； 前伊狄帕斯期 ； 吞噬 ； 殺嬰 ； 奴隸制度

並列摘要

Toni Morrison's exploration, in Beloved, of maternal love restricted by the conditions of slavery is an inquiry into the special psychological, as well as moral, problems which may arise. The central theme (or scene) of the novel is Sethe's murder of her own baby daughter (Beloved) in order to prevent her from living life as a black slave of white (especially male) masters. But years later Beloved returns (at least in Sethe's mind) as a ghost. The mother-”daughter” relationship, grounded in the mother's guilt and her sense of having been deprived (due to slavery) of her own mother (one of the psychological determinants of her infanticide) as well as in the daughter's sense of deprivation and all-consuming hunger for maternal love, can be read as an expression of the mother's own warped and distorted conception of motherhood. Sethe has never had, never been allowed to have, a clear sense of her own (free) self or individual subjectivity; the whole space of her subjectivity is occupied by ”others,” mainly her children. Morrison thus explores the interrelation between the historical and socio-political forces (enslavement) which have formed Sethe and the operation of the psychic forces themselves, especially in the Sethe-Beloved relationship; as a ”ghost from the past” Beloved also may be tied metaphorically to historical guilt and the ”mourning of the past”-that is, to the tragic historical weight, the cultural memory of black slavery in the United States. Just as this traumatic experience must be remembered (and mourned) in order to be forgotten, so Sethe must remember and mourn her dead baby in order to forget and get beyond her, even if the child's desire for the mother here threatens to devour its own maternal origin. Here, within this context of the narrative interweaving of purely psychological with historical-political and even mythic forces in the mother-daughter relationship, I want to further explicate the psychological dimension via notions of maternity and the maternal body.

並列關鍵字

mother-daughter relationship ； Toni Morrison ； Beloved ； preoedipal ； rememory ； slavery ； devouring ； infanticide ； maternal body

參考文獻

Darling, Marsha Jean(1988).In the Realm of Responsibility: A Conversation with Toni Morrison.The Women's Review of Books.5(6),5-12.

Demetrakopoulos, Stephanie(1992).Maternal Bonds as Devourers of Women's Individuation in Toni Morrison's Beloved.African American Review.26(1),51-60.

Friday, Nancy(1987).My Mother/My Self: The Daughter's Search for Identity.New York:Dell.

Hirsch, Marianne,Donna Bassin,Margaret Honey,Meryle Mahrer Kapla (Ed.)(1994).Representations of Motherhood.New Haven:Yale UP.

Jessee, Sharon,Amritjit Singh (Ed.),Joseph T. Skerrett (Ed.)(1994).Memory, Narrative, and Identity: New Essays in Ethnic American Literatures.Boston:Northeastern UP..