- 期刊
Parenting, Childhood Trauma, and Healing in Toni Morrison's God Help the Child
童妮．摩里森《天佑小孩》中的親職、童年創傷與療癒
摘要
Framed basically as a quest narrative, God Help the Child is in the main concerned with the impacts of child abuse and childhood trauma upon the characters' current search for love and subjectivity. Toward the end of the quest, the two lovers in their reunion have put their respective childhood traumas behind and are about to advance toward a new stage of adult life, for Bride is pregnant with their baby. Composed of five sections, the paper attempts to make use of contemporary theories of child development, trauma, and psychoanalysis to explore the interrelated issues of parenting, trauma, and healing. Subtitled ＂Colorism: Through the Mother's Looking(-Glass), Darkly,＂ the first section examines the impacts of Sweetness's colorism on the psychic and emotional growth of Lula Ann/Bride along with the meaning and significance of the novel's narrative structure. The following three sections probe into the issues of poor parenting, childhood trauma, and healing respectively. As its subtitle aptly indicates, Section Two centers on the impacts of loveless parenting on the emotional and psychological development of the principal female character, Lula Ann/Bride. My focus in Section Three is on the childhood trauma of Lula Ann/Bride and her boyfriend Booker Starbern. While Lula Ann/Bride suffers from the trauma of parental neglect, of verbal violence in the midst of witnessing sexual abuse, Booker is inflicted with the childhood trauma derived from the abduction, sexual abuse, and murder of his elder brother Adam. As the subtitle implies, Section Four concerns itself with the healing of trauma in God Help the Child. I maintain that the novel's form or structure echoes its content, for the narrative text acts out the process of healing the traumatic past of the characters, including the wrongly-convicted Sofia Huxley, Rain/Raisin, Bride, and Booker. The Conclusion recapitulates the main ideas of the whole paper.
並列摘要
《天佑小孩》基本上以追尋敘事為框架，主要探討虐童與童年創傷對小說人物當前追求愛與主體性的衝擊。在追尋接近尾聲時，兩位情人在復合時已將各自的童年創傷拋諸腦後，即將開啟成年生活的新階段，蓋布萊德懷了兩人的愛情種子。本論文分五部分，旨在運用當代孩童發展、創傷與精神分析等理論，探討親職、童年創傷與療癒等彼此相關的議題。第一部分的子標題為「膚色主義：透過母親的視（鏡），暗黑地」，檢視香甜的膚色主義對盧菈．安／布萊德心理和情感成長的衝擊，以及小說敘事結構的意義與重要性。接下來的三部分則分別析論不良的親職、童年創傷與療癒。第二部分正如子標題所顯示的，聚焦於為人父母缺乏愛對女主角盧菈．安／布萊德情感和心理發展的衝擊。第三部分側重於探索盧菈．安／布萊德和她的男朋友布克．史達鵬的童年創傷。盧菈．安／布萊德遭受父母忽略的創傷和目睹性虐待時遭受口頭暴力的創傷，而布克在他哥哥亞當被誘拐、性虐待與謀殺後深受情感與心理衝擊。第四部分正如子標題所暗示的，主要關注於《天佑小孩》中的創傷療癒。個人主張小說的形式或結構呼應其內容，蓋此敘事文本展演出治癒小說人物的創傷過程，包括遭誣告的蘇菲雅．賀士黎、瑞恩／瑞芯、布萊德和布克。「結論」則概述整篇論文的主要論點。