社会歧视下美国黑人女性的生存智慧——艾丽斯·沃克的《紫色》体现的批判现实主义

The Survival Wisdom of American Black Women under Social Discrimination——Alice Walker and "The Color Purple"

美国黑人女作家艾丽斯·沃克的代表作《紫色》是当代西方女性文学经典。沃克以批判现实主义手法,通过讲述主人公西丽艰难的成长历程,生动地展现了置于双重边缘地位的黑人女性遭受多重压迫的悲惨生存现状。小说的独到之处还在于它并没有停留在对性别歧视和种族歧视的罪恶的暴露与批判上,而是进一步探讨并提出关于女性出路的妇女主义理念,极力倡导女性在经济上独立、妇女之间发展姐妹情谊以及与男性达成和谐共存。鉴于美国黑人女性所面临的残酷的历史与现状,这些理念略带有乌托邦色彩和面向未来的倾向,使小说在对社会残忍现实方面的批判减弱了力度,却传递了处于逆境中的黑人女性的生存智慧和人类社会进步的正能量。

'The Color Purple'by American black woman writer Alice Walker is considered a classic in modern women's literature. As a critical realist writer,Walker vividly demonstrates the miserable existential plight of doubly marginalized black women by telling the hardships of the protagonist Celie. This novel is unique in not only exposing and criticizing gender and racial discrimination,but further seeking a way out for black women's freedom and liberation by advocating their economical independence,sisterhood and harmonious coexistence with the other sex. However,in view of the cruel history and reality facing the black women,those proposals,though with slight tendency to idealism and utopianism which may weaken the novel's power of criticism of the grim social reality to a certain degree,embody the survival wisdom of black women and instill positive energy into the progress of human society.