1。1 Literature Review

Overseas Literature Review

Oliver Evans carried out the earliest study of Carson McCullers’s works, and meanwhile, some researchers studied McCullers’s work from the perspective of new criticism which promoted that analysis was based on text reading。 The study of McCullers's works had a deeper exploration on the aspects of the south style and the artistic methods of grotesque by the new criticism。 However, new criticism emphasized too much on the text and separated literary studies from social background, culture, and history。 Some studies discussed Carson McCullers’s works from the view of feminist criticism, which focused on female image and analyzed the text based on women’s literature。 Feminist criticism analyzed the gender factor in McCullers’s works comprehensively。 Recently, a relatively new theory, queer theory, was applied in the study of Carson McCullers’s works。 Queer theory mainly centered on the perspective of gender, which gave the character in the novel a relatively responsible identity。 And other researches concerned about the theme of loneliness and spiritual isolation in McCullers’s works。   文献综述

Panthea Reid Broughton had explained the metaphorical meaning of the cafe and the discrimination on women in his paper “Rejection of the feminine in Carson McCullers’ The Ballad of the Sad Café” (1974)。 He concentrated on the theme of spiritual isolation to analyze the metaphorical image of the cafe, the town, the environment in this short story。 The main idea of Broughton was that the setting of the scenes served as metaphors of separation and isolation。 On the other hand, he noted that “none can achieve a satisfactory balanced human relationship” (Panthea Reid Broughton, 1974:38) by discussing the relation between the main characters。 He proposed that people were sensitive to sexual roles through analyzing the situation of Morris Finestein, which gave readers a clearly explanation about the status of man and woman。 Certainly, Broughton provided us with an intuitive interpretation about low status of female in the male-dominated society。

Constante Gonzalez Groba, in his paper, “The Intolerable Burden of Femininity in Carson McCullers’ The Member of the Wedding and The Ballad of the Sad Café” (1994), raised the necessity of women’s defeat from the perspective of the rejection of conventional femininity。 He pointed out that “an adult female who still retains a physical appearance and features of behavior far removed from those of conventional femininity”(Groba, 1994:143) and “this rejection of feminine is only a short-lived dream eventually crushed by male violence”(Groba, 1994:143)。 Groba analyzed the reason of Miss Amelia’s masculinity to show that female was completely oppressed by male in the patriarchal society。 Groba further pointed out that a community could not tolerate a woman who exerted the power normally associated with man through analyzing the characteristic of Marvin Macy。 By making comparison between Miss Amelia’s marriage with Macy and Miss Amelia’s love for Lymon, Groba claimed that woman needed bear the threat of domination or sexual possession from man, which could infer female low status。 Groba mentioned the final fight between Amelia and Macy to display that female was the victim of the restricted gender roles。 According to Groba’s research, it could be concluded that woman couldn’t transcend the limitations of female identity and transgress the gender role。