In this thesis there are five chapters. The first part gives a brief introduction to Toni Morrison and her novel A Mercy. The second part briefly tells what people have studied on this novel home and abroad. The third part explains the term “ecofeminism” and focuses on natural ecofeminism, which will be used as an angle to analyze the novel. The fourth part is the main part of the whole paper; it is about the seemingly peaceful life of the four women on the farm at the beginning of the novel and how the four finally figure out their identities and complete their self-pursuits after their owner Jacob died from the revenge of his destruction of nature. The last part is the conclusion.

2. Literature Review

Since Toni Morrison’s A Mercy was published in Nov. 2008, many people have conducted research on the novel. Jennifer McKeown’s review “Mother and Daughter” talked about what women had suffered in slavery, and said that “all women in this world are at the mercy of the men in their lives; without them, these women are as good as lost”(Morrison, 2008: 50). In her view, being a female in slavery is just like an open wound that will never heal; even if the scar forms, the festering is still underneath. Michiko Kakutani published his article Bonds that Seem Cruel Can be Kind, which considered A Mercy as a variation on Beloved’s exploration of the personal costs of slavery—a system that moved men, women and children around like checkers and cast a looming shadow on both parental and romantic love. 

As A Mercy becomes popular in mainland of China, many people have paid more attention to this book, and among those people Wang Shouren and Wu Xinyun have to be mentioned first. They study Morrison’s works mainly from the angles of gender, race and culture; as to A Mercy, they focus on analyzing Florens to remind people that “the race or the color of a person’s skin is not the reason for him or her to be enslaved.” (Wang Shouren & Wu Xinyun, 2009: 44) In the aspect of culture, they think “only the blacks know their own roots can they survive.” (Wang Shouren & Wu Xinyun, 2009: 35) Other domestic studies on A Mercy from the perspective of ecofeminism mainly focus on racial discrimination, cultural identity, the growth of Florens and the themes in this novel. The uniqueness of this paper is that it analyzes the four female characters’ changes before and after the destruction to nature. This thesis analyzes A Mercy from the perspective of ecofeminism, mainly natural ecofeminism, to illustrate the hard life experiences and the self-pursuit of the four female characters after the destruction of the ecological environment, revealing how men control women and destroy the nature both in patriarchy and in slavery. 来.自/751论|文-网www.751com.cn/

3. A Brief Introduction to Ecofeminism

Ecofeminism originates from 1970s, and is put forward by a French feminist Francoise d’Faubonne. She thought women being oppressed is connected with nature being controlled; hence she called on women to carry out an ecology movement and reconsidered the relationship between humans and nature. “Ecofeminists concern about the oppressed, but their focus is on femininity and nature.” (Gaard & Greta, 1993: 20)