超越黑白: 三位非裔女性作家小說中黑白混種女性角色之混種身分再現

Black, White, or Beyond Both: 'Mixed Race' Representations of Mulatta Character Identities in Three African-American Women Writers' Novels

李政慧(Zen-hui Li)

指導教授 ： 羅林

國立中正大學/文學院/外國語文學系/博士(2014年)

摘要

論文名稱：
超越黑白：三位非裔女性作家小說中黑白混種女性角色之混種身分再現
校院系：國立中正大學外國語文學系 頁數：207
畢業時間：中華民國103年7月 學位別：博士
博士生：李政慧 指導教授：羅林教授

論文提要
本論文研究三位非裔女性作家小說中黑白混種女性角色之混種身分再現。 作者自法蘭西斯‧哈波的《艾奧拉‧雷麗》、娜拉‧拉森的《逾越》及佐拉妮爾．赫斯頓的《凝視上帝》三部小說中探討黑白混種女性如何自掙脫種族、階級與性別三重歧視的艱辛過程蛻變為主宰自我命運的主體。 本論文引用二十世紀末在美國針對混種人種身分認同所誕生的新理論－多種種族論－剖析此三部小說中建構黑白混種女性黑人身分之各種與種族歧視相關的歷史背景。 作者並以自我主義－多種種族論中強調混種身分顛覆性的個人主義－分析混種身分再現如何以「超越黑白」的論點解構黑白二元對立論，進而在文本中傾覆種族歧視。
本論文緒論為研究動機、文本文獻、理論架構及研究方法之概要。 第一章概述美國歷史上基於種族歧視而建構黑白混種人種黑人身分的血緣法、美國文學史中對黑白混種女性的刻板再現的文學傳統，以及作者對黑白混種女性角色之描述受限於種族歧視和黑白二元對立論的觀點。 第二章自第四章剖析種族歧視血緣法和南北戰後之黑人民族躍進運動 如何影響三位非裔女性作家小說中黑白混種女性角色不同的身分認同觀點。 結論側重對赫斯頓小說中女主角之混種身分認同的探討，並分析混種身分認同如何使具混種血統的個體在種族歧視社會中顛覆黑白二元對立論以及掙脫種族歧視的桎梏。
本論文主題在英美文學研究中為最新研究領域，作者期望本論文能提供國內外文系及英文系同學對美國文學黑白混種女性角色再現之觀點和種族歧視歷史有清楚之了解，並開拓同學們對英美文學研究的新視野。

關鍵詞：種族歧視血緣法、混種、混種女性角色、黑人民族躍進運動、多種種族論、自我主義

________________________________________________________________________________________________________註: 黑人民族躍進運動為一九六○年代民權運動崛起前最重要的黑人政治社會運動，目標為以教育做基礎，提升南北戰爭後被解放的黑奴在白人主導的美國社中政治、經濟和文化各方面的競爭力。 此政治社會運動始於一八七○年代結束於一九四○年末，其成果為凝聚黑人共識對抗種族歧視、爭取平等、展現黑人文化與經濟的實力。 毋庸置疑，黑人民族躍進運動的成果是促成黑人民權運動成功的基礎。

關鍵字

黑人民族躍進運動 ； 混種女性角色 ； 混種 ； 種族歧視血緣法 ； 多種種族論 ； 自我主義

並列摘要

Abstract

This dissertation studies mixed race representations of mulatta character identities in three African-American women writers’ novels: Frances E. W. Harper’s Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted (1892), Nella Larsen’s Passing (1929) and Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937). My argument is that the subject of mixed race identity not only brings together these three novels but also achieves mulatta characters’ emancipation in fiction through the following processes: the erasure of mixed race identification, the protest against mixed race lack of identity, and a mulatta woman’s self-empowerment of her identity as an individual mixed race subject. In order to explicate my views of the connection between representations of mulatta characters and mixed race identity, I use multiracialism as my theoretical approach—a new theory focused on American history of slavery, black-white miscegenation, and the one-drop rule—conditions shaping black-white mixed race individuals’ racial blackness in the United States. Moreover, because mulatta characters’ emancipation in fiction resulted from the subversive power of mixed race identity, I use the powerful multiracial discourse of mixed race individuals’ self-empowered view of individuality and uniqueness—Iamism discourse—as grounds for supporting my analytical views.
Since my study is associated with American historical contexts of the construction of mixed race people’s racial blackness, my dissertation aims to offer my readers an overview of how the one-drop rule as a racist law and custom constructed black-white mixed race people’s black identity in the United States. For this reason, the introduction includes the follow aspects: a brief description of a mulatta story’s main point—her black-white biraciality—an overview of the texts’ critical perspectives, findings and a brief introduction to multiracialism. Chapter one introduces the one-drop rule, the tragic mulatta literary convention and my argument. Because the novels of Harper, Larsen and Hurston were published during the heyday of the Racial Uplift Movement—a political movement that united all coloreds as a black race after the Civil War—their depictions of the connection between mulatta characters’ black-white biraciality and mixed race identity were inseparable from the context of this political movement and its influence on African Americans. Hence, the main body of my dissertation—from chapter two to chapter four—features my analyses of how the values and ideologies of the Racial Uplift Movement informed Harper’s, Larsen’s, and Hurston’s representations of mulatta characters’ mixed race identity. Chapter two explores: first, Harper’s erasure of mixed race identification through her construction of a politically and collectively-oriented black identity based
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on the one-drop rule; second, the propagation of African-American racial politics and
the Racial Uplift Movement through the noble mulatta—a politicalized black female ideal. Through these explorations, I show that Harper, as the pillar of the Racial Uplift Movement, constructed a politicalized black identity grounded on the one-drop rule actually reinforced racial binarism and the racist classification of blacks in the 1890s. Chapter three analyzes Larsen’s protest against mixed race lack of identity in Passing. Larsen’s opposition to the whites’ institutional and blacks’ ideological erasure of mixed race identification of her time revealed the destructive power of mixed race individuals’ lack of identity. For this reason, she uses her two mulatta heroines’ self-destruction to highlight how mixed race individuals were impacted by the force of the one-drop rule. Chapter four centers on how Hurston enables her mulatta heroine’s achievement of emancipation through a mixed race selfhood in Their Eyes Were Watching God. Using an anti-racist and egalitarian view of the mulatta heroine’s black-white biraciality, Hurston creates a mulatta character who holds an Iamism-oriented self-empowered view of her identity as an individual mixed race subject. In this way, Hurston enables her heroine to live beyond the one-drop rule in a racist world. In the concluding chapter, I further stress the connection between Hurston’s novel and her own Iamism-oriented view of her colored subjectivity.
My contribution to the study of African-American women’s fiction and the tragic mulatta literary convention resides in the two following aspects: first, a multiracial interpretation of Hurston’s masterpiece, and second, the significance of mulatta characters’ emancipation in fiction. For me, both viewpoints bring one fact to focus—the vindication of individual freedom in a racist era, when all coloreds in the United States were forced to identify themselves with a politically and collectively-oriented black identity for the sake of African-American racial politics. Individual freedom is a belief grounded on the Declaration of Independence. Thus, the fictional emancipation of a mulatta in Hurston’s novel is an inspiring story of a colored woman’s claim of her powerful status as a subject—her capacity to be free from her socially constructed powerless black identity based on the one-drop rule.

Key words: one-drop rule, miscegenation, tragic mulatta literary convention, passing, Racial Uplift Movement, Multiracialism, Iamism discourse

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並列關鍵字

Racial Uplift Movement ； passing ； tragic mulatta literary convention ； miscegenation ； one-drop rule ； Multiracialism ； Iamism discourse

參考文獻

Works Cited

I. Primary Sources

Child, Lydia Maria. “The Quadroons.” The Online Archive of Nineteenth-Century

Larsen, Nella. Passing. 1929. Ed. Thadious M. Davis. New York: Penguin, 1997. Print.

II. Secondary Sources