The thesis aims to read Zora Neale Hurston¡¦s Their Eyes Were Watching God to discuss how and why the white male dominant society marginalizes and subordinates black women by means of silencing their voices, restricting their freedom to explore themselves and the world around them, and suppressing their recognition of their sexual desires and bodily needs. The black woman, or in a sense, the mule of the world, could not always do and act according to her own desire. Instead, they are required to keep silence whenever a community¡¦s voice (usually the male one) is generated and furthermore to play the secondary role as a good wife whose sole purpose in life is merely to meet her husbands¡¦ demands. On the one hand, black female body, which has always been brutally beaten, closely examined, and sexually exploited in the hands of white/black men, is the very site of white supremacy and male dominance. On the one hand, it also serves as an outlet for black men to vent the humiliation, anger and shame that they have suffered in the predominantly white America. The black woman, therefore, is doubly marginalized in terms of both her race and sex.
In the first chapter of this thesis, I argue that Janie¡¦s disturbing silence is the inevitable result of her failure to find an ideal listener. In a male-centered society, not only is Janie denied a voice to articulate her desire, but she also fails to find an empathetic listener. Pheoby¡¦s ¡§hungry listening¡¨ unquestionably satisfies Janie¡¦s deep longing for self-revelation. Nonetheless, such a hungry audience is not always available even when a black woman chooses to voice her desire. Black female voice, in this respect, badly needs an ideal listener who is willing to keep his/her ears as well as heart open. The second chapter, moreover, engages with the major issues about why and how the heroine sets off on a quest for love and respect, freedom and possibilities. Janie, on the one hand, has to go to the far horizon not so much in time and space as in soul and spirit. That is, Janie must embark on a female quest to redefine herself aside from male definitions. On the other hand, Janie also brings back to the black community what she has experienced and learned in her
self-fulfillment journey and thus enriches her community with her hard-won knowledge and discovery. Janie¡¦s journey from self-doubt to self-fulfillment, from silence to speech, I would like to suggest, will be continued by anyone who sincerely responds to her life story. The third chapter is concerned with the issues of black female body. In this chapter, I argue that black female body has always been the object of oppression and the target of male dominance and white supremacy. Nevertheless, if black female body could be the site on which the patriarchal law is inscribed, it could also be an agent to speak for what remains unspeakable; more crucially, it could also provide the female subject access to experience that which is both pleasured and pleasuring.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-0126108-173346 |
| Date | 26 January 2008 |
| Creators | Lee, Yu-fen |
| Contributors | TEE Kim Tong, Shiuh-huah, Chou, Su-lin, Yu, Shuli, Chang |
| Publisher | NSYSU |
| Source Sets | NSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0126108-173346 |
| Rights | unrestricted, Copyright information available at source archive |
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