유령 아버지와 그 딸들: 토니 모리슨의 「러브」

Abstract

Toni Morrison in her fictional works has examined African Americans’ emotional and psychological struggles and plights in white America and painful race matters from slavery to modern times. Examining the pervasiveness of racism, Morrison focuses on the African American family and the parent-child relationships with her unflinching presentation of violence, abuse, or inheritance of self-hatred or shame in the family and the relationship. Beginning with Cholly’s rape of his daughter, Pecola, in The Bluest Eye Morrison investigates the political oppressions, cultural anxieties, and realities of African American fathers. After continuous and in-depth observations of black fathers in her works, Morrison in 2003 Love presents a rich and powerful black father named Bill Cosey, who was a proprietor of a costal resort for black people in the 1940s and looms large even long after his death as his second wife Heed and his grand-daughter Christine feud over his will to claim his property. Love can be seen as Morrison’s attempt to highlight the effects of hegemonic American images of masculinity and fatherhood on African American women. To the female characters, Cosey evokes the image of a guardian, powerful father, and lover with the gaze in his portrait and the story of his success in business, personal charm and charisma. As the chapters with the headings－Portrait, Friend, Stranger, Benefactor, Lover, Husband, Guardian, Father, and Phantom－show, Cosey assumes power over the female characters－Junior, Vida, Heed, Christine, and May－as their yearning for protection or memory of hardships, hurts, and abuses drives them to find an ideal image of a male protector in Cosey. Cosey can be understood as an embodiment of patriarchal abstractions. He is powerfully present in the memories of those whose lives revolve around him and in the images created by the desiring subjects. While powerful as a figure in the portrait and as a phantom, he is also shown as weak, sentimental, selfish, and dangerous in Sandler’s and L’s stories. Morrison presents Cosey as an embodiment of the ideology of patriarchal hegemony and the paternal capitalistic system, and at the same time, as a black man whose power and business is secured through bribery to the white authorities and who inherited his father’s guilt in making a fortune from working as a police informer to persecute his own race. While Junior, Heed and Christine are moved by the gaze or the phrase in his will, “To the sweet Cosey child,” their stories reveal the sexual tension and domination in their relationship with Cosey. Delving into this drama of submission and domination in the young women’s relationship with Cosey, and alternating the abstract image and the fragile and dangerous image of Cosey, Morrison shows the ideological effects of patriarchal abstractions on African American women, and suggests that African American women should deal with patriarchy in its various manifestations and its psychological power.