The image of the exotic is the portrayal and depiction of people from other countries in the literature of one country. With the expansion of Britain's overseas trade and industrial revolution, and the growing power of the United States, the racial superiority of being white became increasingly prominent, and this racial superiority was accordingly reflected in the works of British and American writers. The portrayal of the Jewish Shylock in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, the depiction of the Jamaican Mason Bertha in Charlotte's Jane Eyre, the scandalization of the gypsy Heathcliff in Emily's Wuthering Heights, the discrimination against the Chinese in Jack London's The Yellow Peril, and the gradual process of Indian expulsion in James Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans all reflect some subconscious discrimination and stigmatization of other people of color by the white race.
The Merchant of Venice has long been known as one of Shakespeare's four great comedies, and almost all the characters in the play end in comedy, except for Shylock, the wealthy Jewish man who is despised and scorned by countless people for his existence as a loan shark, who takes on almost all the tragic overtones of the play. Shylock is a representative of usurious capital, a penny-pinching miser, a rich Jewish man living in Venice, Italy.
Shylock becomes a cruel and ruthless a miser, there is an unknown reason behind it. "Mr. Antonio, many times you scolded me in the exchange, saying that I was exploiting for profit, and I always swallowed my anger, shrugged my shoulders and did not argue with you, because it was a characteristic of our people to endure persecution. You called me an infidel, a murderous dog, and spat on my Jewish robes, just because I was earning a few interest on my own money." In fact, for the Jews in society at that time, it was forbidden to engage in a decent profession. The business of lending money for interest was to some extent a forced one. It was against the Christian doctrine to charge interest on debts, and this was the main reason why Jews were scorned. The Jews were a lonely group in society.
Shylock hated Antonio and insisted on taking a pound of his flesh because they belonged to a different race and had different religious beliefs. Antonio is an authentic white Englishman who believes in Christianity; Shylock is a Jew and believes in Judaism. In Antonio's eyes, Sherlock was a heathen. "He has humiliated me, taken away hundreds of thousands of dollars of my business, ridiculed my losses, gouged my surpluses, insulted my nation, sabotaged my trade, diverted my friends, and incited my enemies; and what was his reason? Simply because I am a Jew." This is Shylock's struggle, this is the furious denunciation of a loner, the last dignity of a marginalized man, the determined resistance of an oppressed man in the face of adversity.
As a gentile, Shylock was not protected by the law. The Venetian law provides that "whenever a foreigner attempts to murder any citizen by direct or indirect means, and it is found to be true, half of his property shall be used by the party who attempted to murder him, and the remaining half shall be forfeited to the public treasury; the life of the offender shall be at the disposal of the duke, and no one else shall interfere." It is also clear from this Venetian legal provision that Shylock, as a gentile, was legally inferior and did not enjoy the same rights as the whites. If a gentile committed a transgression, his property would be confiscated and even his life would be delivered into the hands of the Duke.
Jane Eyre is a classic masterpiece of love about Jane Eyre and Rochester, which comes from the hand of Charlotte, a talented 19th century English author. The story tells the story of Jane Eyre and Rochester's happy union through hardship and danger.
When Jane Eyre and Rochester finally stand in front of the priest to be united across the difference in status, a madwoman appears and shatters all of Jane Eyre's dreams, this madwoman is Rochester's wife - Mason Bertha. Most readers are so immersed in the love of Jane Eyre and Rochester that they do not pay attention to Bertha, the madwoman. Bertha was a Jamaican from the English colony, and her father was good friends with Rochester's father. According to the law of England at that time, because Rochester was not the eldest son, he had no right to inherit property. To escape the fate of becoming poor, Rochester married Bertha, who had a dowry of 30,000 pounds.
But their union lasted less than four years before Bertha became a demon, a "madwoman locked up in the attic. In Charlotte's writing, Bertha's intelligence is as low as a dwarf. She howls like an animal, her screams are "wild, sharp and piercing"; she bites like an animal. The slightest negligence on the part of the janitor, she would run out and do evil. The first time she almost burned Rochester to death in bed, and the second time she burned Jane Eyre's wedding dress like a demon. Bertha's final act of evil was to set fire to the entire estate, blinding Rochester and burying her in the flames.
Bertha exists as the antithesis of Jane Eyre, the same woman, Jane Eyre is white, Bertha is colored, their skin color determines their different ways of behavior and different life outcomes.
Similarly, "Wuthering Heights" is also a classic masterpiece about love, which comes from the hand of Emily, a talented English writer in the 19th century. The story is told through the mouth of Nelly, the housekeeper of Wuthering Heights, about the love-hate relationship between Heathcliff and Catherine, Hendry and others.
But if "Wuthering Heights" is defined as a romance novel only, it ignores the discrimination and insult of white people against gypsies embedded in the work. The hero of the novel, Heathcliff, is a gypsy outcast who is taken home and adopted by the old master of Wuthering Heights, Enshaw. The old master doted on the poor little thing, and he took away the old master's favor from the young master, Hindley. After the old master's death, Hindley became the master of Wuthering Heights, he deprived Heathcliff of his right to education, making him work all day long, often lost no time to insult him, but also forbade him to get involved with his sister Catherine.
Heathcliff could endure Hindley's oppression and insults, but he could not stand the fact that Catherine had fallen in love with him. Catherine is the driving force and pillar of Heathcliff's stay at Wuthering Heights. Once Catherine had moved on, Heathcliff's pillar would collapse. After overhearing Catherine's promise to marry Edgar Linton, the master of the Painted Hills, Heathcliff leaves home in anger, vowing to take revenge on the people who made him suffer. A few years later, Heathcliff returns rich. In Emily's writing, the vengeful Heathcliff becomes the devil. After he returns to Wuthering Heights, he begins a brutal revenge plan against the two families of Enshaw and Linton. He takes away Hindley's family fortune through gambling. Hendry himself died of drunkenness and his son became Heathcliff's slave. He also deliberately married Edgar's sister Elizabeth, thereby tormenting Catherine and Edgar. Catherine, who was in internal pain, died in childbirth. More than ten years later, Heathcliff forced Edgar's daughter, Catherine Jr. to marry his dying son, Linton Jr. Both Edgar and Linton died, and Heathcliff eventually took the Edgar family's property for himself. Heathcliff achieves his revenge by various despicable means. But Heathcliff did not get pleasure and satisfaction from his revenge, and he eventually died without eating or drinking bitter love.
To the two families of Enshaw and Linton, Heathcliff, as a gypsy, is an intruder and avenger. His arrival breaks the balance between the two families and brings them endless disasters and sufferings. In this sense, Emily portrays Heathcliff with tinted glasses. Emily, as a white person, is somewhat prejudiced and discriminatory against the Gypsies.
Jack London is a famous American realist writer in the 20th century, known as "the son of wolf" and "an American myth", who has left an indelible mark in the history of American literature. But Jack London was such a writer, but he came from a poor background and had no fixed place to live. Forced to make a living, he once went to the banks of the barbaric Clondique River in the north to pan for gold, but only got a few grains and returned in defeat. The real gold he got was the first-hand experience of struggling in the cold nature and the miserable experience of listening to a group of people in the tavern. After he came back from the cold and polar regions of Canada to catch the "gold rush", he wrote the "Clonedick Stories", especially "The Call of the Wild", "The Love of Life" and "White Teeth", which were famous in the American realist literary world in the early 20th century and were regarded as "famous" in China. It was also known as a "masterpiece" in China and was included in textbooks. His autobiographical novel Martin Eden has even become a "classic" for those who study English and American literature in China. In this sense, Jack London has long been regarded as a "socialist" and a "progressive writer", and has even been hailed as the "American Gorky".
However, the general Chinese do not know that, in addition to the above masterpiece, this writer also published the article "The Yellow Scourge" in a San Francisco newspaper in 1904 after covering the Russo-Japanese War, and wrote two so-called novels, "The Chinaman" and "The Unprecedented Invasion" in 1908 and 1910, respectively, as well as other works dealing with the subject of Chinese immigrants abroad, "White and Yellow", "The Yellow Silk Handkerchief", "Chen Ah Chun", "Ah Jin's Tears The Tears of Ah Jin" and many other works. In this series of carefully concocted "yellow legends," the author spares no effort to slander the Chinese as an "inferior race" and to designate the Chinese nation, which has been bullied by the Western powers throughout history, as the "yellow scourge. "It is a "yellow scourge" that poses a threat to the white world in Europe and the United States and must be subjected to "genocide" in order to achieve peace in the world. This seems difficult to explain by a lack of understanding of China, or by a general prejudice. In Jack London's mind, the United States was an Anglo-Saxon nation that was born as a result of the subjugation of inferior races by superior white men. If we face the historical reality, we should admit that he represents the deep-rooted racism of some intellectual "elites" in Western countries in Europe and America.
James Cooper's longevity in the literary world is due in large part to his frontier novels, such as The Last of the Mohicans. This novel describes the process of westward expansion of the United States, in which the whites gradually plundered the land of the Indians and drove them to the barren land. This process of enclosure was full of bloody massacres. Washington, the founding president of the United States, instructed his generals to attack the Iroquois and "trample down all the settlements until the land was not only occupied but destroyed. Before another attack, he emphasized that "no offer of peace should be entertained until all Indian settlements have been effectively destroyed. In 1783, Washington compared Indians to wolves, "both are predatory beasts, differing only in form". Jefferson was the third president of the United States and the main drafter of the American Declaration of Independence, which advocated the "natural rights of man". However, during the war with the Indians, Jefferson repeatedly emphasized the total destruction of hostile tribes, whose "ferocious savagery was the reason for their eradication," and that "in war, they would kill some of our people, and we would exterminate them all."
From the remarks of the two American presidents, we can realize that what they call "all men are created equal" is limited to the superior white people, and the Indians are not included in it. In order to take the land and wealth from the Indians in name only, they labeled them as animals.
Barraud, a leading contemporary French scholar of comparative literature, points out that the portrayal of the foreigner has the dual function of speaking of the "other" and the "self": "'I look at the other, and the other The image of the foreigner also conveys a certain image of 'me, the watcher, the speaker, the writer. ...... This 'I wants to speak of the Other, but while speaking of the Other, this 'I tends to negate the Other and speaks of the self from the side." This statement applies to the portrayal of the foreigner by five British and American writers. By analyzing the portrayal of foreigners in the different works of these five writers, we can see the sense of racial superiority and the deep-rooted collective unconsciousness of white supremacy that they nurtured with the increasing rise of Britain and America.
