Disrupting the Legacy of Silence: Ellen Douglas's Can't Quit You, Baby
Disrupting the Legacy of Silence: Ellen Douglas's Can't Quit You, Baby
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打破沉默的遗产：艾伦·道格拉斯的《不能放弃你，宝贝》
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发表时间：
2000
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通讯作者：
K. Jacobsen
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作者：
K. Jacobsen
在《打破沉默》一书中，编辑雪莉·乔丹指出了黑人和白人女性之间存在的沉默遗产，并提出，“黑人和白人女性之间存在的关于她们共同历史的沉默，包括她们的差异和自然纽带，是我们社区中最具破坏性的力量之一”(十二)。正是这种跨种族的沉默，艾伦·道格拉斯在她的小说中反复审视。在她的最新小说《不能离开你》中，巴比·道格拉斯再次将我们大多数人想要忘记、忽视或否认的事情放在了突出的位置--黑人和白人女性在建立友谊方面仍然存在困难。在她的小说中，道格拉斯审视了社会建构的角色，这些角色在中上层白人女性科妮莉亚和她的黑人管家特威特之间制造了沉默。在对科妮莉亚和推特复杂关系的描绘中，道格拉斯揭示了女性打破她们之间的沉默是多么困难，特别是因为语言本身与将她们分开和沉默的角色的构建息息相关。尽管有这样的困难，但《宝贝》打破了这些局限的结构，设想了一种替代的社会秩序，黑人和白人女性在其中分享她们的故事，让她们形成真正的友谊。科妮莉亚和推特之间的沉默层层复杂而深刻。正如Jan Shoemaker所指出的那样，推特、科妮莉亚，甚至叙述者“因为他们的文化中的限制和期望，在根据他们的种族、性别和社区讲述他们的故事的选择和能力方面受到限制”(84)。关于种族的文化期望尤其会造成沉默，并决定科妮莉亚和推特之间的互动方式。这些文化期望植根于奴隶制，这是一种让黑人女性和白人女性相互竞争的制度。虽然白人和黑人妇女在19世纪的父权制度下都扮演着从属角色，但由于奴隶制的现实，承认她们之间的这种共同纽带是困难的。正如贝尔·胡克斯指出的那样，种植园的情妇和黑人女性奴隶几乎没有什么共同之处，“从理论上讲，白人妇女在父权制下的法律地位可能是‘财产’，但她绝不会受到奴隶命运中的非人性化和残酷的压迫”(“我不是一个女人吗？”126)。胡克斯还指出了奴隶制如何改变了白人妇女的地位：“在奴隶制之前，父权制法律规定白人妇女是卑微的人，是社会中的从属群体。对黑人的征服使她们能够摆脱被鄙视的地位，承担起上级的角色”(153)。19世纪的南方白人女性被认为是天使般的“淑女”或“美人”。另一方面，苏珊娜·琼斯指出，奴隶制社会将南方黑人妇女的角色定义为“滥交的荡妇、多产的繁殖者、辛勤工作的骡子或哺育哺乳动物”(141)。尽管安妮·菲罗尔·斯科特等历史学家透露，这些对立的刻板印象与旧南方真正的黑人和白人女性并不一致，但这些图像对南方女性看待自己和彼此互动的方式产生了强大的影响。尤其是，明罗斯·格温指出，旧南方的白人妇女经常将她们的“淑女”角色内化，成为“父权制及其种族结构的忠实旗手”(5)。在她对19世纪白人和黑人女性的自传和小说的研究中，格温发现了一个恒定的事实：“白人女性……很少感知或承认……她们黑人姐妹的人性。生活和文学中的大多数白人女性将黑人女性视为有色人种、仆人、儿童、附属品、性竞争、性自我的黑暗面--作为黑人他者”(5)。尽管Gwin在她的研究中发现了黑人和白人女性之间真正的姐妹关系，但她得出的结论是：“在大多数情况下。…
In Broken Silences, editor Shirley Jordan notes the legacy of silence which has characterized the relationships between black and white women and proposes that the "silence that exists between black and white women concerning their common history, to include their differences and their natural bonds, to be one of the most destructive forces in our communities" (xii). It is this interracial silence that Ellen Douglas has examined repeatedly in her fiction. And again in her most recent novel Can't Quit You, Baby Douglas brings to the foreground what most of us would like to forget, ignore, or deny--the continued difficulty that black and white women have in forming friendships with each other. In her novel, Douglas examines the socially-constructed roles which create silences between Cornelia, an upper middle-class white woman, and Tweet, her black housekeeper. And in her depiction of Cornelia and Tweet's complex relationship, Douglas reveals how difficult it is for the women to break the silence between them, especially since language itself is bound up with the construction of the roles which have kept them apart and silent. Despite this difficulty, Can't Quit You, Baby disrupts these confining constructs and imagines an alternative social order in which black and white women share their stories, allowing them to form authentic friendships. The layers of silence dividing Cornelia and Tweet are complex and deep. As Jan Shoemaker notes, Tweet, Cornelia, and even the narrator are "because of constraints and expectations in their cultures, limited in choices and ability to tell their stories by their race, their gender and their communities" (84). Cultural expectations regarding race especially create silences and dictate how Cornelia and Tweet interact with one another. These cultural expectations have their roots in slavery, an institution which pitted black women and white women against each other. While both white and black women occupied subordinate roles under the nineteenth-century patriarchal system, any recognition of this common bond between them was made difficult by the realities of slavery. As bell hooks points out, the plantation mistress and female black slave had very little in common, and "theoretically, the white woman's legal status under patriarchy, may have been that of `property,' but she was in no way subjected to the de-humanization and brutal oppression that was the lot of the slave" ("Ain't I A Woman?" 126). hooks also notes how white women's status changed as a result of slavery: "Prior to slavery, patriarchal law decreed white women were lowly inferior beings, the subordinate group in society. The subjugation of black people allowed them to vacate their despised position and assume the role of a superior" (153). Nineteenth-century southern white women were supposed to be angelic "ladies" or "belles." On the other hand, Suzanne Jones points out that the slavery society defined southern black women's roles as "promiscuous wenches, prolific breeders, hardworking mules, or nurturing mammies" (141). Although historians such as Anne Firor Scott reveal that these opposing stereotypes were at odds with real black and white women in the Old South, the images had a powerful impact on the way southern women viewed themselves and interacted with one another. In particular, Minrose Gwin notes that white women in the Old South often internalized their role as "lady" and became "faithful standard-bearers of the patriarchy and its racial constructs" (5). And in her study of nineteenth-century autobiographies and fiction by white and black women, Gwin finds one constant: "White women ... rarely perceive or acknowledge ... the humanity of their black sisters. Most of these white women in life and literature see black women as a color, as servants, as children, as adjuncts, as sexual competition, as dark sides of their own sexual selves--as black Other" (5). Although Gwin discovers moments of true sisterhood between black and white women in her study, she concludes that "for the most part . …