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were doing, and they gavealmost a semblance of dignity to the tawdry musicand inane words” (42). Here Dunbarregarded popular entertainment as an opiate for the black people, especially for it hasnegative effects for people like Joe who holds the idea of racial uplift.

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2.2Assimilation by the Black Criminality in the Banner Club

Thomas Alan Dicher gives an explicit discussion about the modern discourse ofblack criminality in the novel. In New York, the black population grew by twenty-fivethousand between 1890 and 1900. The migration’s life in big cities attracts many eliteblacks to pay attention to the correlation between urbanization and moral chaos. DuBois praises that the novel delivers an idea of the temptations that surround the youngimmigrant. In the description of the Hamiltons’ voyage to the North, Dunbar presentsthe negative effects of black urban life rather than depicts New York as heaven. NewYork is regarded as the mecca by all aspiring young men and women from the ruralSouth to cities. Joe and his family members are the representations of these people.After they arrived in New York, they found the difficulties of making a decent living through work with their education and status aspirations. The idle, shiftless Northernblacks despair the Hamiltons. Their environment promoted crime and obliterated themoral sense, andtheintelligent,moral, andindustriousSouthernmigrantsarepowerlessto rescue these fallen masses in Northern cities.

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Chapter Three Psychological Degradation by the Mulatto ............... 32

3.1 Disgrace as Subordinate “Dog”................... 32

3.2 Destruction as Black “Frankenstein”.................. 36

Conclusion .................. 41

Chapter Three Psychological Degradation by the Mulatto

3.1 Disgrace as Subordinate “Dog”

According to Dunbar’s description, the mulatto figure, Hattie, has multiplesymbolistic meaning. On the one hand, she is a subversive figure which represents thetransgression of race and gender boundaries in American society. On the other hand,she symbolizes the whitecoercive power whichcontains the blackpeople. Hattie’slightskin metaphorically signifies white femininity. She draws Joe farther away from his family members and pulls him closer to the culture of the Banner Club. She does notonly threaten the family affection; she is also the embodiment of the threat that themulatto poses to the national family. She is a version of the fallen woman as a femalegrotesque, but she also has the power to ruin others. Hattie serves as the master of Joe,in other words, she is also one of the Gods to Joe. It is Hattie who deepens themonstrosity of Joe. She tries to “educate” Joe throughout the novel by exposing him tothe urban psychological realities of suffering, loving, losing, and desiring that transpirebetween men and women—elements that position her as a blues character not only inher profession but in her lifestyle. Dunbar molds Hattie as a “blues woman”, accordingto Hazel Carby, “brought to the black, urban, working-class an awareness of its socialexistence and acted creatively to vocalize the contradictions and tensions of the terrainof sexual politics in the relation of black working-class culture to the culture of t本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。