| In the1980s, American scholars Robyn R.Warhol and Susan Lanser pioneered the practice of feminist narratology. Because of their theory and narrative critical practice, both of them were recognized as the founders of feminist narratology. In1986Susan Lancer published Toward a Feminist Narratology in which she put forward the terms "feminist narratology" and proposed some thoughts about how to push feminist into narrative. By the same year, Robyn Warhol published significant articles "Toward a Theory of the Engaging Narrator:Earnest Interventions in Gaskell, Stowe, and Eliot" and "Poetics and Persuasion:Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a Realist Novel". By the light of the narrative intervention theory of discourse, she analyzed British realistic novels of19th century, and gradually went deep into the application of the feminist narrative. It should be said that influence is profound.Warhol divided the development of America feminist literary criticism into three periods:the imagination period, female image of the advocacy of "women’s writing" period, and post-modern feminism period. And the literary criticism practice in these three periods separately focus on criticizing the stereotypes of angel/devil woman, seeking women writers’ unique writing mode and eliminating gender identity. All the academic study eventually is aimed at some problems, and answering or solving some problems. The direct cause that feminist narratology emerged is based on the early experience of feminist literature summary, as well as the reflection and vision for the future. Feminist literary criticism has been heavily criticized, because they insisted gender ideology ahead of the interpretation of the text,and divided the men, women writers into two camps. It is more important that in the1980s, many Western scholars began to overflew gender identity with the development diversification, which directly endangered the existence legitimacy of feminist literary criticism. Warhol’s feminist narratology focused on women, returned to literature text and seeked to objective analysis, by which she opposed to deconstruction. Both the gender ideology and narrative method were basic characteristics of Warhol’s theory. Reading theory, narrative form of gender ideology, narrative mode of femininity culture,"effeminate", and feminist narratology methodology orientation, all were the main parts of Warhol’s theory.Warhol’s reading theory focused on how narrative form influenced the reading behavior and gender behavior of readers. Warhol took "resistng reader’that applied in the early feminist reading theory as "differences ghost". She believed that the practice of "resisting reader" promoted the reflections on traditional rigid female images in literature, but told us that the influence of literary activities must be achieved by the literary form, too. By her reading practice and the reading experience of others, Warhol proved that the activity of reading not only influenced readers’mind, but also shaped readers’body, which incited readers to reflect their indicative social genders on their behavior. The narrative form guides, restricts and shapes readers’gender action. In order to find how the gender consciousness is spread, feminist researchers must analyze specific narrative form. Personally involved, narratology methods, and the reader response all constructed Warhol’s reading theory.Not only concerned with reading, narrative form also conveyed the gender connotation of narrative techniques in the specific historical context. Facing the objective historical reality that gender culture bound women’s writing, early feminist literary criticism chose to find and praise women writers and women’s works, as well to build feminine language system only belongs to the female. Warhol stopped to study the theory and the practice of female images, female consciousness and female identity theories or definition, she set out to summarize the narrative form in women’s works. Warhol pointed out that there is no cross-era, cross-regional, or single "women’s writing ", but each era and each region always have some "women’s writing" mode conformed to the specific context. She emphasized the practical value of structuralism narrative theory for the study of "women writing", advocated strongly for the study of literary texts and literary form. As for why the phenomenon of narrative intervention existed widely in the realistic novels of19th century, she explained that it was the specific technique, which male and female writers chose consciously to intervene in social reality. Warhol listed narrative discourse intervention in English realism novel of19th century and proved that the different purposes of male and female writers in the specific cultural context would influence the different narrative forms. Warhol’s theory of narrative discourse intervention came from the "literary intervention" theory of Sartre and the "discourse intervention" theory of Booth, and she corrected both them with feminist characteristics.Besides analyzing of both gender writers’, men and women writers, different selection on narrative discourse form, Warhol also focused on the different narrative skills about plots that had gender connotation. Being strongly concerned with the issue of society and culture constraining narrative in text, based on the prototype of Prince’s "unnarrated events" theory, Warhol put forward "the unnarratable" theory, and applied the theory to analyze graphic and video narrative text. On the understanding of social culture, she divided "the unnarratable" into four styles:"the subnarratable","the supranarratable","the antinarratable" and "the paranarratable". Warhol pointed out that women writers deal with different forms of plot strategies reflected the cultural codes of gender, and these plot strategies also could help female writers to avoid the censoring, which told us how women writers use narrative form to break gender cultural constraints to achieve social value of literature, and also proved that women writers had the literary form consciousness. Meanwhile, Warhol compared "the unnarratable" among the realistic novels in19th century, autobiographic comics, soap operas and television media in20th century. Her practice outlined the continuity and renewal between linguistic narration and pictorial narration, helped the feminist theorists to find clues on gender awareness among arts’ transmission.Feminist eventually have to define the term of "gender". Warhol attempted to change the dualistic thinking eagerly. She proposed "effeminacy" as the term to study gender. The "effeminacy" referred to those people whose behavior reflected the feminine characteristics, whether men,women,or gay,all can be called "effeminacy"."Effeminacy" was a term that had characteristics with anti-heterosexual, anti-dualistic and anti-physiological, and more inclusive when faced to gender differences.Crying and sentimentalism narrative had long been regarded as "effeminacy" and human fragile nature. Warhol analyzed sentimentalism literature text and video text, and then summarized seven kinds of narrative techniques that induced weeping. Her study proved crying was not an action of sentimental or addictive women, but the result of a particular narrative techniques and narrative form. Warhol refuted the traditional culture prejudices that regarded crying and sentimentalism narrative as inferior, sentimental fetish.Warhol’s feminist narratology has the following outstanding values:(1) Established the border of feminist literary criticism by returning to literary form research, advocated an inductive, rather than a deductive, method to do feminist literary criticism, which helped feminist literary criticism get rid of subjective tendency.(2) Extended the research object of narrative form from language to video, graphic novel and pictorial autobiography, which is an innovative and practical theory.(3) Reflected the course of gender studies, she not only criticized dualistic thinking, but also criticized the so-called "truth" of heterosexual social structure, which showed Warhol treated gender diversity on the basis of tolerance and freedom.(4)Contributed to the marriage of feminism and narratology, not only in theory but also in the text analysis practice.Chinese feminist literary criticism scholars are more familiar with Fictions of Authority, which is masterpiece of Susan Lanser, who is one of the founders of the American feminist narratology. This book is pressed in Chinese in2002by Beijing University Press with other books on narrative theory. Untill now, Warhol’s books hadn’t been translated into Chinese, and her advocates and writings were relatively poorly understood among Chinese scholars. It should be said that Warhol’s feminist narratology and Lancer’s feminist narratology were the two carriages of American feminist narratology. There were commonalities and differences in their theoretical proposition, such as, both Lancer and Warhol were in favor of combining feminist stance and narrative form, and detailed text analysis by narrative method. But to the future development of feminist narratology, they have different ideas. Lanser thought the future of feminist narratology was a different method from the feminist literary criticism and narratology.Warhol insisted that since the paradigm of feminist narratology belonged to the category of feminist literary criticism and narrative theory is only its basic tool,then feminist narratology merely had methodological significance.Warhol’s feminist narratology turned to the interaction of author, text, reader, social and historical context, which were all different from classical narratology. she researched texts refered to myths, folk stories and novels, in a word, to all narrative texts including speeches and image media. Warhol’s use of narrative theory is based on the concern for women writers and their works, so her theory not only enriched the research perspective of feminist literary criticism, also added more contextual meanings to narrative theory. It was obviously incomplete if we introduced and applied feminist narratology theory but were blind to Warhol’s theory.Since the1990s, Chinese feminist literary criticism have begun to enter the phase of reflection and reconstruction, they proposed an assumption "Gender Poetics" which is influential and controversial. The study of Warhol’s feminist narratology not only helps us see the difference and the developmental trend of American feminist narratology thoughts, but also provides more wealth about the theory of feminist narratology, and comprehensive research paths for Chinese feminist criticism. Promoting communication between Chinese and West feminist theory will finally realize common development.The construction of theory always needs the support of practice, the passionate argument promises the development of space. The development of feminist narratology, the construction of Warhol’s feminist narratology theory, and the improvement of the Chinese feminist criticism are all still far from the peak of the theory. What they need is constantly exploration, not a final verdict. We should adhere to understanding from analysis, drawing lessons from the reflection, by which we can keep a dialectical and objective attitude to review and discuss all kinds of theories. |
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