摘 要

《夏伊洛》是美国作家鲍比·安梅森于1980年出版的第一篇短篇小说，讲述了在快速发展的城市化环境下，勒洛伊·莫菲特和他的妻子诺玛·简个人角色错位的故事。本文从女性主义的角度出发，旨在探索在第二波美国女权运动浪潮下，诺玛·简女性主体意识觉醒的进程，以及追寻自我所带来的心理困惑。

本文分为四个部分。第一部分旨在介绍内容和背景信息，包括作者、作品和相关文献综述。第二部分从生命意识和性别意识两个层面分析诺玛·简女性主体意识的觉醒历程。生命意识层面重点围绕身体训练，经济赋权和追求教育三个方面展开论述。性别意识层面重点探索诺玛·简对不平等的母女关系和不自由的婚姻关系的反抗历程。第三部分以诺玛·简为例，透视1970年代美国南方女性争取独立过程中伴生的心理困惑，如精神虚无，不确定性和不稳定性。第四部分总结全文。女性主体意识的觉醒伴随着阵痛，其建立更需要对自我有更深的认识，对未来有清晰的规划。

关键词：《夏伊洛》；女性主体意识；生命意识；性别意识

Abstract

“Shiloh”, published in 1980, as the American writer Bobbi Ann Mason’s first short story, tells the story about how Leroy Moffitt and his wife Norma Jean change their social roles with the rapid development of urbanization. This paper, from the perspective of feminism, aims to explore the main female character Norma Jean’s awakening process of female subjectivity consciousness intensified by the second-wave American feminist movement and psychological perplexity in the search of self-identity.

This paper is divided into four parts. The first part introduces the background information of this paper, including the background information of the author, the work and relative literature review. In the second part, Norma Jean’s awakening process of female subjectivity consciousness is introduced from two perspectives including life consciousness and gender consciousness. Life consciousness primarily centers on three aspects: disciplining the body, economic empowerment and pursuit of education. Gender consciousness emphasizes Norma Jean’s rebellion against both the domineering motherhood and unfree marriage. The following part focuses on the psychological perplexity in the search of self-independence like the spiritual void, uncertainty and instability. The last part is the conclusion. The awakening of the female subjective consciousness is accompanied by pain, and its establishment requires a deeper understanding of the self and a clear plan for the future.

Key Words: “Shiloh”; female subjectivity consciousness; life consciousness; gender consciousness

Contents

1 Introduction 1

1.1 Bobbi Ann Mason and “Shiloh” 1

1.2 Literature Review 3

2 Awaking of Female Subjectivity Consciousness 7

2.1 Life Consciousness 8

2.1.1 Disciplining the Body 9

2.1.2 Economic Empowerment 10

2.1.3 Pursuit of Education 11

2.2 Gender Consciousness 13

2.2.1 Rebellion against Domineering Motherhood 13

2.2.2 Rebellion against Unfree Marriage 14

3 Perplexity of “Downhome Feminists” 15

3.1 Spiritual Void 16

3.2 Uncertainty and Instability 18

4 Conclusion 21

References 23

Acknowledgements 25

Awakening and Perplexity of Female Subjectivity Consciousness in “Shiloh”

Introduction

Bobbi Ann Mason and “Shiloh”

Bobbi Ann Mason is one of the American contemporary writers. She is regarded as one of the representative figures in the new southern fiction.

Mason was born in 1940 and grew up on a dairy farm in a region of western Kentucky where many of her stories are set. In these early years, both the land and her family life shaped the themes of her works. When she was a child, Mason became interested in writing such as imitating the writing style of the mystery series novels she read and writing for her high school newspaper. After that, she graduated from the University of Kentucky in 1962 and then wrote for fan magazines. However, deeply drawn to academia, she quit her job and majored in English literature as a postgraduate student at the State University of New York at Binghamton. After earning her master’s degree in 1966, she went further study and was awarded her Ph.D. in literature at the University of Connecticut in 1972. Next Mason published her critical studies Nabokov's Garden (1974) and The Girl Sleuth: A Feminist Guide to the Bobbsey Twins, Nancy Drew, and Their Sisters (1975) as a college tutor. When she was in her thirties, Mason then began to write collections of short stories one after another including Shiloh and Other Stories (1982), Love Life (1989), Midnight Magic (1998), Zigzagging Down a Wild Trail (2002) and Nancy Culpepper (2006). In 1985, she published her debut novel, In Country, about a girl’s story of seeking out her father murdered in Vietnam before her birth, which was adapted into a feature film in 1989 starring Bruce Willis and Emily Lloyd. Country singer Rick Trevino even released a popular song called “Bobbie Ann Mason”. Following In Country (1985), Mason has continuously offered abundant well-received novels like Spence Lila (1988), Feather Crowns (1993), An Atomic Romance (2005) and The Girl in the Blue Beret (2011). In 2016, Mason was selected as the second living writer to be inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame.

“Shiloh”, her debut short story, first came out in The New Yorker magazine in 1980, then it was included in her first collection of short stories, Shiloh and Other Stories (1982). This collection not only received wide attention but also became the winner of the Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award in 1983, as well as a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the American Book Award, and the PEN/Faulkner Award. Additionally, her short stories have often appeared in various magazines, including The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker and The Paris Review. Based on her knowledge of the southern society of tradition and community, Mason depicts a true portrait of the lives of the working-class southerners who are struggling to make sense of the new changes represented by malls, subdivisions as well as fast food franchises. Mason’s distinctive short stories not only have promoted a rejuvenation of American regional fiction but also are famous for their stripped-down and unadorned writing style. Joel Conarroe, as executive director of the Modern Language Association, editor of PMLA and former president of the PEN American Center, acclaimed the kind of literary style as the realism of shopping mall style in The New York Times Book Review (Conarroe, 1985). In another review in The New Republic, famous novelist and short story writer Anne Tyler hailed Mason as “a full-fledged master of the short story” (Price, 2000, p.20).

Set in a small town in Western Kentucky in the late 1970s when Kentucky converts from a rural environment to its more suburb surroundings, the short story “Shiloh” is written from the perspective of Leroy Moffitt’s third person narration in the present tense. The central narrative is around a married couple, Leroy Moffitt and his wife, Norman Jean, who are arduously dealing with the inversion of their relationship after Leroy’s unemployment caused by his miserable truck accident. After the accident, Leroy and Norma Jean appear to be strange bedfellows who live in their own worlds respectively even under the same roof. Leroy is immersed in his wishful thinking of constructing a log cabin for Norma, hoping to reestablish his dominant position in this way while Norma Jean seizes opportunities to achieve personal growth in the way of disciplining the body, working outside, pursuing education as well as learning songs on the organ. It has shown that Norma Jean’s female subjectivity consciousness is gradually awakening during this period. Nevertheless, it is not until Norma Jean’s mother, Mabel Beasley, catches her daughter smoking marijuana that Norma Jean recognizes that she is still under the control of her mother and her husband. Meanwhile, her female subjectivity consciousness and rebellious spirit are intensified by both the dominating motherhood and the unfree marriage. Therefore, she resolves to fly the coop, leaving Leroy and the past for a more fulfilling future. Yet, since changes often cause uncertainty and instability, Norma Jean’s awakening process of female subjectivity consciousness is also accompanied with perplexity. As the open ending shows, although they reach Shiloh, a Civil War battlefield, where Norma tells her husband about her decision of leaving him, she is still confused about the real self she tries to disclose. In the last scene, Norma Jean stands on the cliff, turns toward Leroy and waves her arms, but Leroy cannot make sense of what her gesture indicates. Hence, in order to better understand the theme as well as the character, this paper aims to analyze Norma Jean’s awakening process of female subjectivity consciousness and the perplexity it brings about from life consciousness and gender consciousness.

Literature Review

Since its publication in 1980, the short story “Shiloh” has attracted wide and ongoing attention from critics abroad and at home. In general, domestic research and foreign research each has its own focus. Domestic studies focus more on the interpretation of the themes through text analysis while studies abroad pay more attention to the interpretation of the characters especially the male character from different perspectives. Yet there are still common perspectives between domestic studies and foreign studies, such as gender research and minimalism analysis.

Among the six academic papers on the short story “Shiloh” on the CNKI, three papers are about the themes of the short story, two about the characters of the short story and one about the narrative of the short story.

Among three domestic studies on the themes of “Shiloh”, Yang Li (2012) in the essay “Gender Identity Disorder in ‘Shiloh’”, puts her attention to the theme of the inversion of gender roles. She analyzes the gender identity disorder and reveals the dialectical relationship between man and woman. Zhang Kun (2017) in the essay “The Fading History, the Flickering Candle — Conception of History in Mason’s Short Stories”, takes “Shiloh” as an example to emphasize the theme of the death of history. Different from the two, Jiang Zhaoxia (2017) in the essay “Interpretation on Themes of Bobbi Ann Mason’s Work — Taking ‘Shiloh’ as an Example”, generally summaries various perspectives of the themes such as fading history, twisted family relations and absence of faith.