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如今，女性自我意识在文学，心理学甚至政治领域都颇受重视，越来越多的专家与学者也涉入该领域，使得女性自我意识在世界上尤其是文学作品中产生了广泛而又深远的影响。基于独创的细胞模型，该论文旨在对《最蓝的眼睛》与《第二性》中的女性自我意识进行比较。首先，概要的介绍了两篇作品和作者的背景，进而着重的阐释了什么是细胞模型，然后再对文中展现出的女性自我意识进行了详细的比较。同时，该论文也就当前许多关于女性自我意识的不正确观念和当今女性自我意识的地位尤其是在中国展开了讨论。根据细胞模型的分析，本文发现两篇文章中的女性自我意识的表现的最大差异之处在于形成过程。最后作者提出可以通过提高自身文化素质，独立的经济观念和政治参与能力来加强当今女性自我意识。
Abstract: As women self-consciousness has become all the more popular in the field of literature, psychology, even politics, more and more experts and scholars have set foot in it, hence women self-consciousness has widely and profound influence in the world especially in the literature works. Based on the innovative Cell Model, this thesis aims at comparing the women self-consciousness in the The Bluest Eye and The Second Sex. In the thesis, it first introduces background of two books and authors, demonstrates the Cell Model, and then makes the comparison in details. Also the thesis discusses incorrect opinions of women self-consciousness and shows the current situation of it in the world especially in China. The thesis explores the main difference of women self-consciousness in the two books is the formation, and women can strength their self-consciousness by improving the cultural quality, the independent economic consciousness, and the ability of political participation of women.
Key words: women; self-consciousness;cell model;comparison
CONTENTS
1. Definition of Women Self-consciousness
2. The Introduction of The Bluest Eye
2.1 Background Information of The Bluest Eye
2.2 Background Information of Toni Morrison
2.3 Summary of The Bluest Eye
2.4 The Theme of The Bluest Eye
3.The Introduction of The Second Sex
3.1 Background Information of The Second Sex
3.2 Background Information of Simone de Beauvior
3.3 Summary of The Second Sex
3.4 The Theme of The Second Sex
4. Comparison of the Women Self-consciousness in The Second Sex and The Bluest Eye by Cell Model
4.1 The Introduction of Cell Model
4.2 The Application of Cell Model in The Bluest Eye and The Second Sex
4.3 Comparsion of the Women Self-consciousness' Formation of The Bluest Eye and The Second Sex
4.4 Analysis of the Outstanding Opinion of Women Self-consciousness Between The Bluest Eye and The Second Sex by cell models.
4.5 Discussion of Women Self-consciousness
4.5.1 Analysis of Common Incorrect Opinions about Women Self-consciousness
4.5.2 Analysis of the Current Situation of Women Self-consciousness in the World Especially in China.
5.Conclusion
1.Definition of Women Self-consciousness
11Philosophical work on self-consciousness has mostly focused on the identification and articulation of specific epistemic and semantic peculiarities of self-consciousness, peculiarities which distinguish it from consciousness of things other than oneself. The relevant epistemic peculiarities are mainly those associated with the alleged infallibility and self-intimation of self-consciousness. It has sometimes been thought that our consciousness of ourselves may be under certain conditions, infallible, in the sense that it cannot go wrong: when we believe that some fact about us obtains, it does. Self-consciousness focus on the self-recognition and also the relationship with others.
From the definition of self-consciousness, the women self-consciousness has four levels. First of all, it means self-reliance that whether women recognize the whole independent individual or not. Secondly, it is self-ability evaluation, which is concentrated on the condition of women themselves. Thirdly, it is gender consciousness that pays attention to the cognition of relation between the two sexes. Last but not the least is self subjective feeling, which implies the subjective feelings about the current situation of society. Women self-consciousness is especially concerned on the relationship between male and female. The first two emphasize on the subjective feelings about themselves whereas the last two lay stress on subject's acknowledge of the relationship between self and others.
2 The Introduction of The Bluest Eye
2.1 Background Information of The Bluest Eye
18The Bluest Eye is a 1970 novel which written by American author Toni Morrison. She began this novel as Pecola's story in1962 and it became a novel-in-progress by 1965. It was written during the years of the most dynamic and turbulent transformations of Afro-American life. The story talks about a young black girl who named Pecola, in Lorain, Ohio, against the backdrop of America's Midwest as well as in the years following the Great Depression.
2.2 Background Information of Toni Morrison
Chloe Anthony Wofford, later known as Toni Morrison, was born in Lorain, Ohio, which was "an escape from stereotyped black settings -- neither plantation nor ghetto," on February 18, 1931. After many rejections, Morrison mentored African American women writers and compiled and anthologized the works and histories of African-Americans. Subsequently, she published Sula, Song of Solomon, Beloved, Jazz, and most recently, Paradise. Her literary career is marked with many honors, including the National Book Critics Circle Award, the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and the Robert F. Kennedy Award. In 1993, Morrison was the first black woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. While giving a lecture at Princeton, Morrison was asked by a student "who she wrote for." She swiftly replied, "I want to write for people like me, which is to say black people, curious people, demanding people -- people who can't be faked, people who don't need to be patronized, people who have very, very high criteria."
2.3 Summary of The Bluest Eye 1
The Bluest Eye is split into an untitled prelude and four large units, each named after a season. The four larger units begin with "Autumn" and end in "Summer," with each unit being split into smaller sections.The novel's focus, on a girl named Pecola Breedlove. The Breedloves are poor, unhappy, and troubled. All of the Breedloves are considered ugly, although part of the novel's work is to question and deconstruct what that ugliness really means. Pecola is obsessed with blue eyes. She prays for them constantly, and is convinced that by making her beautiful the blue eyes would change her life. From Pecola's wish and from many other events in the novel, it becomes clear that most of the people in Lorrain's black community consider whiteness beautiful and blackness ugly. The novel has many women characters who long to look white, therefore they begin to lose thier self-consciousness.
2.4 The Theme of The Bluest Eye
In this novel whiteness stands for beauty. This is a standard that the black girls can not meet, especially Pecola, who has darker skin than the rest. Pecola connects beauty with being loved and believes that if she would just have blue eyes all the bad things in her life would be replaced with love and affection. This hopeless desire leads her to madness by the end of the novel. This novel contains several relationships, although the relationships never end pleasantly. Morrison sees love as a dynamic force, which can be extremely damaging depending on who is doing the loving. As Claudia points out in the final chapter of this novel,2 “Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly” While they definitely loves, the core of thierr personality forces them to manifest this love in violent ways. Because they lose thier self-consiousness and regards them as ugly and bad people, so thier love are extremely tainted.
3.The Introduction of The Second Sex
3.1 Background Information of The Second Sex
17The Second Sex (French: Le Deuxième Sexe, June 1949) is one of the best-known works of the French existentialist Simone de Beauvoir. It is a work on the treatment of women throughout history and often regarded as a major work of feminist philosophy and the starting point of second-wave feminism. Beauvoir researched and wrote the book in about 14 months. She published it in two volumes and some chapters first appeared in Les Temps modernes. The Vatican placed it on its List of Prohibited Books.#p#分页标题#e#
3.2 Background Information of Simone de Beauvior
3Simone de Beauvoir was born on January 9, 1908 in Paris. She was one of the most preeminent French existentialist philosophers and writers. Working alongside other famous existentialists such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Beauvoir produced a rich corpus of writings including works on ethics, feminism, fiction, autobiography, and politics. In 1948, Beauvoir published her revolutionary, two-volume investigation into woman’s oppression, The Second Sex in 1949. The Second Sex solidified her as a feminist figure for the remainder of her life. By far her most controversial work, this book was embraced by feminists and intellectuals, as well as mercilessly attacked by both the right and the left. The 70′s, famous for being a time of feminist movements, was embraced by Beauvoir who participated in demonstrations, continued to write and lecture on the situation of women, and signed petitions advocating various rights for women.
3.3 Summary of The Second Sex
4The main ponit of The Second Sex revolves around the idea that woman has been held in a relationship of long-standing oppression to man through her relegation to being man’s “Other.” In agreement with Hegelian and Sartrean philosophy, Beauvoir finds that the self needs otherness in order to define itself as a subject; the category of the otherness, therefore, is necessary in the constitution of the self as a self. However, the movement of self-understanding through alterity is supposed to be reciprocal in that the self is often just as much objectified by its other as the self objectifies it. What Beauvoir discovers in her multifaceted investigation into woman’s situation, is that woman is consistently defined as the Other by man who takes on the role of the Self. As Beauvoir explains in her Introduction, woman “is the incidental, the inessential, as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute-she is the Other.” In addition, Beauvoir maintains that human existence is an ambiguous interplay between transcendence and immanence, yet men have been privileged with expressing transcendence through projects, whereas women have been forced into the repetitive and uncreative life of immanence. Beauvoir thus proposes to investigate how this radically unequal relationship emerged as well as what structures, attitudes and presuppositions continue to maintain its social power.
3.4 The Theme of The Second Sex
Beauvoir’s emphasis on the fact that women need access to the same kinds of activities and projects as men places her to some extent in the tradition of liberal. She demands that women be treated as equal to men and laws, customs and education must be altered to encourage this. However, The Second Sex always maintains its fundamental existentialist belief that each individual, regardless of sex, class or age, should be encouraged to define him or herself and to take on the individual responsibility that comes with freedom. This requires not just focusing on universal institutions, but on the situated individual existent struggling within the ambiguity of existence.
4. Comparison of the Women Self-consciousness in The Second Sex and The Bluest Eye by Cell Model
In general, cell model is usually used to explain biology problems, however, in this thesis, I try to apply the model into analyzing the structure of The Bluest Eye and The Second Sex and the comparison of the women self-consciousness between this two books.
4.1 The Introducation of Cell Model(Figure 1)
5From Biology, cell means the smallest structural unit of an organism that is capable of independent functioning, consisting of one or more nuclei, cytoplasm, and various organelles, all surrounded by a semipermeable cell membrane. However, in this thesis, the big cell means society and the small cell means woman as individuality. This cell model takes cytophagy as its prototype. When small "cell a" meets big "cell A", there are two different reactions respectively. One is that "a" enter into "A" that means women are totally effected by the society and would like to turn out to be what society and men' want they are. Another situation is that when women have self consciousness, they would like to escape from the definition of women which set up by society and men.
4.2 The Application of Cell Model in The Bluest Eye and The Second Sex(Figure 2)
From the structure of cell model, we can see that the model of The bluest Eye is totally different from The Second Sex. But they also share the same things such as the aspect of society environment and concept.
When comes to the model of The bluest Eye, it shows, at first, black women are not melt with the whole society and want to be accepted. Meanwhile they know they are different from white women that means they have perceiving of themselves who are ejected by the white society. Therefore they are in hoping to change from themselves to women accord with society and men. And they imitate what others do in traditional culture. From this aspect, we know they began to lose their self-ability evaluation and have the compliance of the incorrect cognition of relation between the two sexes. Finally, they are belong to the big circumstance and they enjoy that even though they lost self-consciousness.
From the model of The Second Sex, it shows that women are tied in traditional society concept which about gender and women. Hence, women are trying to be adapt to the society and without self-consciousness. At this time, women do not take themselves as independent individual and they are just the second sex which differ from men. They even do not know in which situation they stand. However, when the society concept tends to be diversified and open, then female becomes to self-examination, they began to think about who they are and what they really want to do. At this time, situation begins to change. Meanwhile, women begin to have self-consciousness and want to be real women not only as the second sex beyond men. In the same time, they gain new opinion about relationship between men and women. They begin to know the relationship should be equal in many aspects such as economic and political status.
4.3 Comparsion of the Women Self-consciousness' Formation of The Bluest Eye and The Second Sex
First of all, from these different cell models, it illustrates that the formation of women consciousness in The Bluest Eye and The Second Sex is in contrary. The evolution of women' opinion in The bluest Eye is from self-identity to be assimilated by the society. In this novel, it describes an unfortunate destiny of a little black girl who's name is Pecola, and she pays all the efforts to own an alleged blue eyes, however she is not only own the blue eyes and becomes insane. This is a tragedy story which reflect that due to the strong white people society concept and their consciousness shock, the black women are undergoing the lost of self-consciousness and want to be gain beauty and status as white women. Nevertheless, the real ending for these women is not merely confused about what is beauty and also compels them to lost self-consciousness. They just turn out to be replicas of white people and at sea which is even fed up of their own culture. The whole story reflects the procedure of these pathetic black women begin to lose their self-reliance, self-ability evaluation, gender consciousness and self subjective feeling.
In contrary, the procedure of formating the self-consciousness of women in The Second Sex is from zero to sprout and walking to the mature. In this book, Beauvoir demonstrates the history of women date from nomadism time to the Great French Revolution, depicts the situation of women from girl time to aged women, and makes assumption of women liberation of self-consciousness. Subsequently it is represented in the model is from being inside to escape from conventions which made by the society and men, and finally deliberate what they really suppose to do and who they really are. This is a inward development history of women. The whole process interprets the women gain the self-reliance, self-ability evaluation, gender consciousness and self subjective feeling.
In conclusion, when faced of the same circumstance, although there are some difference of background between the two authors, such as Toni Morison is just a writer while Beauvoir is a writer and an ideologist, Beauvoir represents the enlightenment of women self-consciousness and hopes women to be themselves not just as the second sex affiliated to men. By comparison, Toni Morrison tells a tragedy story of black girl who loses women self-consciousness, and this girl does not form her own opinion of beauty and love. Different attitude to women self-consciousness leads to different outcoming. We can also inspire from this contrast that the women self-consciousness is not only vital for our women but also takes an important position in the human history development.
4.4 Analysis of the Outstanding Opinion of Women Self-consciousness Between The Bluest Eye and The Second Sex by Cell Models.
6The Bluest Eye as a whole documents this invasion--and its concomitant erasure of specific local bodies, histories, and cultural productions--in terms of sexuality as it intersects with commodity culture. Furthermore, this mass culture and, especially, the traditional concept of women that gave rise to it, is in large part responsible--through its capacity to efface history--for the "disinterestedness" that Morrison condemns throughout the novel. Beyond exempting this, Morison's project is to write the evolution of the black Americans women who struggle in the consciousness.#p#分页标题#e#
In The Second Sex, Beauvoir argues that women throughout history have been defined as the "other" sex, an aberration from the "normal" male.[7] Men have objectified women in a case of Hegel's master-slave dialectic.The first thing Beauvoir wrote was that she was a woman, but she realized that she needed to define what a woman was, which became the intent of the book. She concludes The Second Sex with a picture of a future in which men and women are equals: "recognizing each other as subject, each will remain an Other for the other...."[8] Judith Butler says that Beauvoir's formulation that "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman",[9] distinguishes the terms 'sex' and 'gender' and this is a signal of finding self-consciousness in women. Beauvoir regards woman as a construct or an idea, rather than woman as an individual or one of a group. The book suggests that "gender" is an aspect of identity which is "gradually acquired". Butler sees The Second Sex as potentially providing a radical understanding of women self-consciousness.[10]
As following, I compare the contrary opinions of The Bluest Eye and The Second Sex by using respective sentences from this two books.
As long as she looked the way she did, as long as she was ugly, she would have to stay with these people. Somehow she belonged to them. Long hours she sat looking in the mirror, trying to discover the secret of the ugliness, the ugliness that made her ignored or despised at school, by teachers and classmates alike. (The Bluest Eye 1970:36-37)
Not having that alter ego, the litter girl is not alienated in a material thing and cannot retrieve her integrity. On this account she is led to make an object of her whole self, to set up herself as the Other. (The Second Sex 1949: 74)
These sentences which are picked up from The Bluest Eye and The Second Sex summarize the two kinds of women self-consciousness differentiate from each other in self-reliance. First sentence indicates that the litter girl initially not knows who is she, she just distinguishes herself from others in degree of surface, and judges that she belongs to ugly group and this maybe the root of the tragedy. Unlike the first sentence, the second sentence illustrates the litter girl has her own thoughts and know what she likes and finally built up an individual.
Nor were they from that sensitive breed of young girl, gone wrong at the hands of fate, forced to cultivate an outward brittleness in order to protect her springtime from further shock, but knowing full well she was cut out for better things, and could make the right man happy. (The bluest eye 1970：46)
Furthermore, I shall pose the problem of feminine destiny quite otherwise: I shall place woman in a world of values and give her behaviour a dimension of liberty. I believe that she has the power to choose between the assertion of contradictory drives; she devises solutions of diverse values in the ethical scale. (The second sex 1949:76)
The first one describes the acknowledge from three prostitutes in the story, they know which situation they stand in and have clearly picture of what they can do to please men. Meantime, the second one shows that Beauvoir has profound recognition of women in that time, she holds opinion that women has potential to acquire capability of themselves. These two sentences outline different women self-consciousness from two books in aspect of self-ability evaluation.
Showing brown teeth, China seemed to be genuinely enjoying Mr. Henry. The sight of him licking her fingers brought to mind the girlie magazines in his room. A cold wind blew somewhere in me, lifting little leaves of terror and obscure longing. I thought I saw a mild lonesomeness cross the( The bluest eye 1970：63)
New relations of flesh and sentiment of which we have no conception will arise between the sexes; already, indeed, there have appeared between men and women friendships, rivalries, complicities, comradeships—chaste or sensual—which past centuries could not have conceived.(The second sex 1949: 686)
Following on, these sentences reflects difference of two books in gender consciousness. While the litter girl watches the scene of romantic love at this young age, she feels nervous, bashfulness, and desired. Under writes of Beauvoir, she empathizes the modern women nearly have equal relationship with men, and this is a break through.
Edging into life from the back door. Becoming. Everybody in the world was in a position to give them orders.White women said, "Do this."White children said, "Give me that." White men said, "Come here." Black men said, "Lay down." The only people they need not take orders from were black children and each other.( The bluest eye 1970：112)
To emancipate woman is to refuse to confine her to the relations she bears to man, not to deny them to her; let her have her independent existence and she will continue none the less to exist for him also: mutually recognizing each other as subject, each will yet remain for the other an other. (The second sex 1949: 686)
Finally, this group of sentences compare women self-consciousness from two books in field of self subjective feeling. From the first one, we can know that black women in American not only lose their self-respect but also need to be adapted to the circumstance which they yield to. In contrast, the second one talks about a wellbeing of women due to they know they are independent individuals and should have equal status with men.
To sum up, combined with the cell models, the most different opinions of women self-consciousness between The Bluest Eye and The Second Sex is the process of women self-consciousness. Women in The Bluest Eye want to be accepted by the surroundings and never think about the situation of themselves, what they strive for is to look like beautiful white women. While under Beauvoir writes, women have to recognize they are a gender of women not the second sex after men, they are not only born to be women but also become women.
4.5 Discussion of Women Self-consciousness
With a long history of discussing women self-consciousness, there are several opinions about it. For this part I would like to show some incorrect ideas about it and the current situation of women self-consciousness in the world especially in China. From this, we can make more profound cognition of women self-consciousness.
4.5.1 Analysis of Common Incorrect Opinions about Women Self-consciousness.
With the long period of women self-consciousness development, it experiences tribulation and misunderstanding time however it still has no end to progress.
In the history,11the nineteenth-century, the opinion of women is a woman’s morality is directly pro-portional to a man’s successful appropriation of her body, and successful appropriation is measured in the woman’s maternal status.
Nowadays, with the words which are related with women streaming into our world, such as sex, gender, feminism, and women self-consciousness. However, people often are confused by the last two ideas. Due to the popular of feminism, many people regard the feminism and women self-consciousness as the same thing. In fact, feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights for women. In addition, feminism seeks to establish equal opportunities for women in education and employment. [12] In contrast, women self-consciousness pays attention to whether women realize they are independent individual and the relationship between women and men. Even these two theories lay emphasis on women, they distinguish from each other. 13What women self-consciousness concerns about is not to establish femininism center or system of female chauvinism, but to think about women existence in a rationalistic way and takes gender as a starting point.
4.5.2 Analysis of the Current Situation of Women Self-consciousness in the World Especially in China.
14Women are generally not treated as equals in the modern world. While Western country women show strong self-consciousness in striving for their sovereignty, Eastern country women are obviously lack of women self-consciousness. For instance, China, there are women who bear the brunt of poverty and suffer disproportionately from its effects in a long history and become to have thier own self-consciousness step by step. 15Because of differentiated cultural background and social situation, women self-consciousness in China has significant personalizing characteristics. Chinese women self-consciousness pay more attention to the whole women group rather than the individuals.
Currently, women self-consciousness become a hot topic among discussions of women problems in China. After reforming and open policy, Chinese women becomes to realize they are women and they need to dress them up but not know why they want to do that. And in their mind that self-consciousness is primarily the concept of their charms. With the development of society and the opening of gender concept, new women self-consciousness grows rapidly and tenaciously. They get a start with finding new selves , new recognition and life meaning of themselves. Nowadays, women in China begin to pursue status in social politics economic life, and make continual clamors for equality in gender.#p#分页标题#e#
16In order to strengthen women self-consciousness and keep the equality between men and women, we can concentrate on raising the cultural quality, the independent economic consciousness, and the ability of political participation of women.
5.Conclusion
By comparison of women self-consciousness between The Bluest Eye and The Second Sex through Cell Model, it shows that women become liberal and independent, thus they begin to own self-consciousness and grow to be real women not the Other in The Second Sex while black women fail to appreciate themselves and want to be integrated into white society, hence they lose their self-consciousness and have sad ending. Therefore, the women self-consciousness is not defined exclusively by their sexuality but reflects a situation that depends upon the economic organization of society, which in turn indicates what stage of technical evolution mankind has attained. Thus the fate of woman and that of socialism are intimately bound up together and we can improve the situation from raising the cultural quality, the independent economic consciousness, and the ability of political participation of women.
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