Abstract

  Alice Walker is a famous black female writer in the 20th century in the United States. “Everyday Use” is one of her early excellent representative works. The novel describes a story about a conflict caused by two quilts among a black mother, a good educated daughter and a timid little girl. The author reflects the American black women’s living situation through describing these three women. This thesis has adopted womanism to interpret this novel, and analyzed the three typical black female characters and their inner world, which reflected the author’s focus on American black women and expressed her support for African American tradition culture. This thesis shows the different interpretations of the three women in the novel with womanism theory, illustrating that the self-fulfillment of different black women is different. It reveals the author’s womanist tendency and the inheritance of black traditional culture.

Key Words: Womanism    “Everyday Use”     Alice Walker
 
摘 要

艾丽丝・沃克是美国20世纪著名的黑人女性作家。《外婆的日用家当》是她早期优秀的短篇小说代表作之一。历来对该故事的解读多采用象征主义、文化研究、女性主义等不同角度，鲜有采用妇女主义角度进行解读的。尽管妇女主义文学批评概念是由沃克本人提出使用的，但关于沃克作品的妇女主义的解读多倾向于选择她的代表作《紫色》以及她后期的文学作品。论文结合妇女主义概念来重点审视《日用家当》中三位女性主人公身上所体现的妇女主义特点，如母亲的坚强，迪伊的独立和麦吉的姐妹情谊,进而论证了艾丽丝•沃克在她创作早期就已经形成了明显的妇女主义意识。

关键词：妇女主义 《日用家当》 爱丽丝•沃克

1 Introduction
Alice Walker is one of the most distinguished American writers in contemporary literature world. Alice Walker and her works have already been interpreted from a wide variety of critical perspectives. “Everyday Use” is a famous short story written in 1973. Though numerous critics have pointed out a major focus on the theme of the sisterhood, multi-dimensional symbolization, black culture, feminism consciousness reflected in the story, up to now, scholars who analyze the short story in terms of womanism can be counted on a few, as most scholars tend to analyze Walker’s later novels, such as The Color Purple from the perspective of womanism, therefore this thesis tries to analyze womanism in her early story “Everyday Use”, aiming at exploring how womanism is developed in her literature creation.