Abstract:

Toni Morrison is the winner of Nobel Prize in literature in 1993. Most of her novels address the theme of conflict between white culture and traditional black culture. Beloved is Toni Morrison’s masterpiece，which tells a story of slavery which happened in the 1930s and 1940s. This paper mainly discusses the causes for the tragedy of black women in Beloved from the perspectives of social background, racial background and the personalities of Babe Suggs, Denver, and Sethe so as to understand the tragedy of the American black women.

Key words: Beloved; tragedy; causes 

摘要：

托尼•莫里森,1993年诺贝尔文学奖的获得者.“白人文化和黑人传统文化之间的冲突和对峙”这一主题总是贯穿于她的小说。《宠儿》是托妮•莫里森最成熟的代表作，其讲述的是一个发生在奴隶制盛行的19世纪三、四十年代的故事。本文主要探讨《宠儿》中黑人女性的悲剧命运成因，首先从社会背景，种族背景等客观因素进行讨论，然后再从贝比•萨格斯、丹芙和塞思的性格原因进行更深一层次的分析，从而可以进一步的了解美国黑人女性的悲剧命运。

关键词：《宠儿》；悲剧；成因

1. Introduction
    Toni Morrison (1931--  ) is one of the greatest African-American women writers. As the first black woman writer who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1993, Toni Morrison makes immeasurable contributions to the contemporary American and African-American literature, especially the black women literature, and has been recognized as one of the most shining, most excellent and most respective black authors. Her works are always on behalf of the black women and full of tragedies. During her writing career, she wrote several novels, which are The Bluest Eye (1970), Tar Baby (1981), Beloved (1987), Paradise (1998) and Mercy (2008) and so on. Her works are well-known for poetic narration, profound thoughts, copious emotions, rich images and impressive depiction of characters and settings of Black American society. A general theme goes through all her fictions --- the tragic life of the black people and the conflict between the white culture and the black culture. Because of her great achievements in her literature works, she received several prizes, such as the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize in literature, and the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.