对《飘》中斯佳丽的人物性格分析(15)

《飘》是美国现代女作家玛格丽特.米歇尔于1936年发表的一部长篇通俗小说,也是其一生唯一的一部长篇小说,《飘》问世70多年来,被广泛流传并受到广泛的好评,不失为一部旷世经典之作。然而《飘》所走过的路程却并不是一帆风顺的,在许多批评家看来,《飘》不能被称为一部优雅的艺术之作,甚至不能进入美国文学的神圣殿堂。小说的女主人公斯佳丽被他们描绘成一个极度自私、爱慕虚荣、冷酷无情、为达目的不择手段的女性。但是,经过

flypaper catches flies. It is a kind of fishing or hunting that requires great skill.” Slowly Scarlett is brought up, not apparently different from other girls. Like other girls, she is extremely interested in love and marriage. Scarlett s mother Ellen, by soft-voiced admonition, their common Mammy, constant carping and labor to inculcate in her the qualities that will make her truly desirable as a wife. She does not disappoint them in this aspect because, by the age of sixteen, she has learned to use the attributes of womanhood to advance predatory designs: the manipulation and seduction of men. Extremely selfish in love and marriage, “she was constitutionably unable to endure any man being in love with any woman not herself” (p.16). Bored by the Tarleton twins talk of war, she moodily changes the subject to something far more interesting to her: the next day s barbecue and hall at the Twelve Oaks. Deeply rooted in Western culture is the assumption that a woman s energies are properly devoted to the chores of her family. In the South, little attention is paid to women s education and educational opportunities for girls are more limited than those for boys. In the opening chapter of the novel, we got the information that Scarlett is not offered enough education and she has not opened a book since she left the Fayetteville Female Academy at the age of fifteen. However, the door of education is much wider for the boys. Stuart and Brent, the Tarleton twins, have been expelled from the University of Georgia, the fourth university that has thrown them out in two years, when they sit with Scarlett in the cool shade of the porch of Tara, the plantation of Scarlett s father Gerald O Hara. Unexpectedly, they are soon offered another chance to go on with their college education. All of a girl s education, if there is any, is reduced to the arts and graces of being attractive to men. It is universally acknowledged that scarlet eventually becomes a belle in the neighboring counties after years of the conbined efforts of her mother and Mammy. She does not feel sorry for her lack of education. In fact to all men in the South, lack of education carries no shame at all, though they are given more chances to receive education. The things that matter to men include such things as rainsing good cotton, riding well, shooting straight, dancing lightly, and squiring ladies with elegance and carrying liquor like a gentleman. Brought up in such an environment, Scarlett is actually a representative of Southern women who are deeply influenced by Southern culture.

Scarlett shares dissemblance, an essential trait of Southern Womanhood, with the other girls. Thanks to her mother s and Mammy s continuous admonition and harping, she becomes a fairly beautiful, sweet and demure girl. Men have a common interest in appreciating the beauty, sweetness and demureness of a girl. Scarlett s beauty is partially