Tragic Mulatto and the Tropes of Passing in Gertrude Stein's "Melanctha" and Nella Larsen's Passing

黑白混血兒的悲歌：格特魯德•斯泰因的〈梅蘭克莎〉與內勒•拉森的《偶然》

10.29737/SJFLL.200803.0007

吳怡萍(Yi-Ping Wu)

黑白混血兒 ； 雙重身份之建構 ； 格特魯德•斯泰因 ； 內勒•拉森 ； 梅蘭克莎 ； 偶然 ； tragic mulatto ； tropes of passing ； Melanctha ； Passing ； Gertrude Stein ； Nella Larsen

東吳外語學報

26期（2008 / 03 / 01）

171 - 191

英文

本文以現代主義作家特魯德•斯泰因的〈梅蘭克莎〉與黑人作家內勒•拉森的《偶然》為例，進行跨文化與跨族群之閱讀，旨在不同的文本中尋找表意系統的移轉及互涉性。兩位作者均跳脫種族的狹隘定義，讓同是黑白混血兒的梅蘭克莎與克萊兒不但擁有又黑又白的雙重屬性，同時可自由徘徊遊走在黑白世界之間，卻藉由她們的死，體現其特殊的主體性被黑白社會視而不見的處境，籍以突顯並批判存在於美國社會中非黑即白、非白即黑的單一性種族屬性觀。

This paper aims to place Gertrude Stein's modernist work ”Melanctha” in dialogue with Nella Larsen's Passing to recognize cultural exchange between mainstream modernist and African-American expressive traditions. Stein's and Larsen's respective formulations of race, class and ethnicity in their passing narratives interrogate the nominal gesture towards the oneness of black Americans. While the existence of Melanctha torn between two worlds reveals the artificiality and oppressive of the color line, Clare's traversing the color line presents her biracial identity as one ramification of Black or American identity. As Melanctha and Clare refuse to have their identities collapsed into a monolithic black racial identity, their life stories thus share a tragic undertone: the mixed-race character must suffer from the cultural norm of monoracial imperative. Their tragic effacement critiques the principle of racial purity and interrogates the denial of legitimacy to mixed-race and biracial individuals.

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