A Reading Of Nora Webster From The Perspective Of Feminist Narratology

Colm Tóibín(1955-)is one of the most representative contemporary Irish writers.The works composed by Colm are various,including novel and short novel,drama,essay,and literary criticism.Most of his works focus on marginalized people like homosexuals and females.Colm's writing is elegant and visceral,which always renders the amazement from readers and critics about his deeply moving portrait of the female inner life.Colm's eighth novel Nora Webster(2014)still focuses on the female.The background of this story sets on a small Irish town—Enniscorthy in the late 1960 s.At that time,the second wave of feminism was popular in Europe.Meanwhile,Irish people were experiencing violent conflict for the aim of “All-Ireland”.The voice of freedom and revolution prevailed in Ireland.Enniscorthy is no exception,though it is an outpost for its isolation.The heroine,Nora Webster just lost her husband-Maurice in her forties.The constantly visiting mourners in town broke her peaceful life.The burden of life is enormous now for Nora.Having four kids to look after alone,Nora is also in the midst of pain for losing the love of her life.As a housewife,she has no job to support their life,which makes her have to sell their house and work again for her old boss.The sorrow inside her heart is hidden during the daytime.But when night comes,she is surrounded by loneliness,grief,and nothingness.At first,she is unwilling to face the limited and boring life in Enniscorthy.However,with the increase in opportunities for taking part in social life,Nora becomes positive in her life.She becomes interested in those political issues which she detected before.And she learns to make choices on her own without any consideration of others' ideas,including her dead husband's.One time,by accident,she regains her passion and gift on singing with the help of her new friends.Then,music has changed Nora's life.Finally,she burns the letters which her husband had written to her before they got married,which means that she really abandons the past and welcomes the new life as a real herself with freedom.It is a luminous story about a female awakening from pain and discovering herself and her own place.As the most representative novel of Colm Tóibín in the female subject,NoraWebster is undoubtedly the one who ultimately reflects Colm's female consciousness.The researchers at home and abroad study this novel mainly from feminist criticism,female experience,and the Irish culture.In this thesis,Nora Webster will be discussed under the theory of feminist narratology to reveal the heroine Nora's flowering after experiencing the loss of her husband,overcoming the pain and suffering,becoming a real independent woman and finding her meaning of living a new life.Unlike classic narratology,feminist narratology is to study the narrative skills connected with social and cultural context,which brings new meaning for both narratology and feminist criticism.In Nora Webster,Colm Tóibín selects the limited third-person narrative perspective to tell a story.And he chooses Nora as the central consciousness in this novel with the free indirect discourse to depict a woman's growth starting from discovering her space to awakening her own will in a limited small town.The thesis is divided into five chapters.In Chapter One,the story of Colm Tóibín and his works will be introduced in detail.Also,the studies of his works at home and abroad,the significance of this thesis,and the theory of feminist narratology are well introduced in this chapter,too.In the context of feminist narratology,Chapter Two to Chapter Four,respectively,discusses this novel from the three perspectives of the narrator's voice,narrative focalization,and free indirect discourse.Chapter Two discusses the characteristics and limitations of Colm's authorial voice.Chapter Three focuses on the narrative focalization applied in this novel.In Nora Webster,Everything happens from the look of Nora.The struggle of discourse authority and gender politics reflected on Nora's look are discussed in this chapter,too.Chapter Four involves the free indirect discourse used by Colm in Nora Webster to reveal Nora's female consciousness,and it still discusses how Colm uses free indirect discourse to speak for women.Chapter Five makes a conclusion and lists the findings and drawbacks of the thesis.Through the analysis of Nora Webster from the perspective of feminist narratology,readers may find a great understanding and attention paid by Colm on females.As an Irish writer with broad international vision,Colm Tóibín always stays a firm attitude on appealing to Irish society for more freedom and tolerance for women.