美国文学中摩门女性形象流变:1840s—1940s

Changes of Mormon Female Images in the American Literature:1840s-1940s

1840s-1940s,美国文学中摩门女性形象历经变迁,呈现出鲜明的对立特质。盐湖谷定居阶段,摩门女性文学书写突出“天母”意象,以此作为本族女性的理想化自我,借以强化族群特异性;犹他建州前后,美国主流文学中的摩门女性多以傀儡和受害者形象出现,被用以坐实摩门式婚姻是道德污染源的指控;废除多妻制的后《宣告》时代,摩门女性形象呈现兼具族群特色与美国属性的同质化特征,其曾刻意凸显的族裔特色最终难逃被消解的命运。摩门女性文学形象博弈的背后,蕴藏着摩门人在不同历史阶段的自我认知与自我形塑,揭示了民族融合大趋势下美国西部文化内部的冲突和裂痕。

Images of Mormon women in the American literature underwent drastic changes and registered antithesis between 1840s and 1940s. During the period of Salt Lake Valley settlement,“Mother in Heaven” was a prominent image in Mormon female writings, serving as the ideal self for Mormon women so as to consolidate the uniqueness of its ethnicity;during the period of Utah State establishment, Mormon female images often appeared in the mainstream literature as puppets or victims, helping to justify the charges of Mormon marriage as the source of moral contamination;during the period of Post-Manifesto, Mormon female images tended to embody the feature of homogeneity, namely, a combination of ethnic characteristics and American commonness, making the hard asserted Mormon ethnicity doomed to dissolve. Behind the literary combat on Mormon female images, there exist Mormon self-awareness and self-fashioning during different historical periods, which reveals the cultural conflicts and gaps against the general tendency of national integration in the American West.