摘 要

小说《喜福会》是反映中西方文化碰撞的代表作。近年来，随着移民人群的迅速增长，中西方文化碰撞所产生的问题越来越被重视。以往的研究表明，中西方文化的差异对移民人群有重要影响。近年的研究多关注《喜福会》中所表现的中西方文化异同而忽视了其产生的具体渐进过程。本文通过对女性形象的观念、关系和心理转变，对小说中的女性形象所代表的移民女性和美国本土华裔女性在多元文化背景下的性格成长和自我认同的过程进行调查研究，并探讨其中文化身份的重建。研究结果表明，在这个过程中，她们对自己的文化身份寻求和重建是艰难而漫长的，但最终她们都在文化夹缝中找到了平衡点。书中女性角色的个人经历已升华为历史与文化交融的历程。同时也传达出中西方文化必将从冲突走向融合的发展趋势。研究结果强调了华裔女性角色的成长过程和中西方文化的交融过程的发展性和曲折性，以及其展现出来的现实意义和启示。

关键词：《喜福会》；女性形象；碰撞与融合；自我身份意识

Abstract

The Joy Luck Club is a representative work reflecting the collision between Chinese and Western cultures. In recent years, with the rapid growth of immigrants, more and more attention has been paid to the problems arising from the cultural collision between China and the West. Previous studies have shown that cultural differences between China and the West have an important impact on immigrants. Recent studies have paid more attention to the similarities and differences between Chinese and Western cultures in the Joy Luck Club and neglected its specific gradual process. Through the changes of the female images’ ideas, relationships and psychology, this paper investigates the process of character growth and self-identity of the female images that represent immigrant Chinese women and native Chinese American women under the multicultural background, and explores the reconstruction of their cultural identity. The results show that it is very long and difficult for them to seek and rebuild their cultural identity in this process, but eventually they find the balance in the cultural gap. The personal experience of female characters in the novel has been sublimated into the process of blending history and culture. Meanwhile, it also conveys the trend that Chinese and Western cultures will move from collision to fusion. The results highlight the development and tortuosity of the process of Chinese female images’ growth and the blending process of Chinese and Western cultures, as well as the practical significance and enlightenment its show.

Key Words: The Joy Luck Club; female images; collision and fusion; self-identity awareness

Contents

1 Introduction 1

1.1 Brief introduction of the Joy Luck Club 1

1.2 Literature Review 2

2 The analysis of the changes of the four pairs of mothers and daughters 4

2.1 The change of eduactional views 4

2.2 The change of views on love and marriage 6

2.3 The change of mother-daughter relations 7

3 Cultural collision and fusion with the character growth and self-identity awareness 9

3.1 The famale images with Chinese cultural background 9

3.2 The female images with American cultural background 11

3.3 The pratical significance and enlightenment of the changes of the female images 15

4 Conclusion 17

References 18

Acknowledgements 20

The Collision and Fusion between Chinese and Western Cultures from the Female Images of the Joy Luck Club

1 Introduction

1.1 Brief introduction of the Joy Luck Club

The Joy Luck Club is the first novel written by Amy Tan, a famous Chinese American woman writer. It is also her best-known work. The novel takes the life tracks of four pairs of mothers and daughters as a clue to show the process from contradiction to mutual understanding between them, and also reflects the process from collision, conflict to integration between the two cultures. Amy Tan was born in the United States. Her mother, Tan Daisy, was separated from her three daughters due to the exile of the war. After three unfortunate marriages, she immigrated to the United States. Therefore, it has to be said that the Joy Luck Club seems to be a portrayal of her mother's poor life and is also a part of her real life. (Duan，2016)

The novel describes the struggle of immigrant women and native Chinese American women in the early 20th century with the background of the collision between Chinese and Western cultures. Since the Opium War, the image of China's "sick man of East Asia" has been deeply engraved in the minds of the people of the world. Although the establishment of the Republic of China in the first half of the 20th century improved the weak image of China, due to the years of civil war and the War of Resistance against Japan, China was still in a state of devastation. It can be imagined that the status of Chinese in the hearts of Americans was extremely low in those days. As the first generation of immigrants in the early period, the mothers in the novel were not only faced with the ethnic discrimination, but also faced with enormous cultural conflicts and cultural contradictions with the daughters growing up in the western cultural environment. As a native Chinese American woman, the daughters in the book are trying to find the balance of cultural identity in a foreign environment.（Yang amp; Guo amp; He，2014）