Feminist Narratological Reading On The Joy Luck Club

Amy Tan shot to fame and became one of the famous best-selling writers for thework The Joy Luck Club in America. As a female Chinese-American writer, Amy Tansuccessfully edged herself into American mainstream culture after Kingston and sincethen, American publishers started paying much more attention to Chinese Americanwriters and more of their works entered into mainstream society which set off a boomof Chinese American literature. Her narrative skills were also highly praised and sheherself was honored as a master story-telling (The Joy Luck Club.2006), and her novelis dazzling (The Joy Luck Club.2006).One of the reasons that The Joy Luck Club acquires a large readership is that it isnarrated by those women whose suffering is similar to the Chinese women in Anerica.By applying the feminist narratology, eight women were active in papers and gainedvoice of authority.(Susan Lanser.1992:264)Feminist narratology integrates theanalyses of form with the study of ideology, and therefore remedies the weakness offeminist literary criticism and structuralism narratology. In a classical work Fictionsof Authority: Women Writers and Narrative Voice, Susan S. Lanser has proposed threetypes of narrative voices to indicate that for women writers, to balance the relationbetween different groups of readers, voice of authority should be established in threeways, authorial voice, personal voice and communal voice. Because the femaleChinese-American writers were suppressed by male dominance, by using voicecleverly, women writers will be able to make her female characters claim their socialpositions and rights, and deconstruct voice of male discourse.This thesis is an attempt to probe into the narrative voice of The Joy Luck Clubfrom the perspective of feminist narratology, and discusses how Amy Tan achieves theauthority of feminine narration by the adoption of different narrative voices. It startsform the literature review on the study of JLC and then makes a brief introduction to the novel, author and feminist narratology, which take up two chapters. In the thirdchapter, the authorial voice appropriately leads the development of characters’thoughts and embeds author’s consciousness into readers unconsciously. In the fourthchapter, the personal voice enables invisible women to explain their thoughts anddeeds freely. In the fifth chapter, the communal voice enables a group of people whosuffer the similar miseries make appealing arguments and wash away the stains thatmen imposed on. Through detailed analysis of these unique narrative skills in JLC,this thesis comes to the conclusion that women writers can establish voice of authorityby combining narrative skills and social ideology. Hoping this thesis may shed somenew light on the research of Amy Tan from the perspective of feminist narratology.