An Analysis Of Jane Fourth’s Cultural Identity In Crossings Through The Perspective Of Spatial Criticism

Chuang Hua’s Crossings merits a special niche in Asian American literary history.“It is Asian America’s first modernist novel.”(Ling,1986, p.2) It depicted a shiftingworld of a Chinese female-Jane Fourth, who was born in an upper-class immigrantfamily.This paper aims to analyze the special changes that Jane Fourth has experiencedthrough Henri Lefebvre’s and Edward Soja’s spatial theories. Theories such as HenriLefebvre’s social practice, spatial representation and the representation of space, aswell as Edward Soja’s first space, second space, and third space are the majorsupporting spatial theories of this paper. This paper is going to use Soja’s three spacestheory as the framework to analyze Jane Fourth’s three spaces journeys.The main character Jane Fourth actually lived in three spaces: one was in thephysical space in real life, which was related to Lefebvre’s social practice and Soja’sfirst space; another was the mental space abundant with memories of the past, whichwas related to Lefebvre’s spatial representation and Soja’s second space; the last onewas the space where the real world mingled with the imagined world, which wasrelated to Lefebvre’s representation of space, and Soja’s third space. This space wasthe actual space that Jane Fourth lived in. She always shuttled back and forth betweenthe real and the imagined world. And in her own body (Henri Lefebvre thought thatthe human body was a natural space, so everybody had their own space), a third spacewas established with the combination of the first and the second space. With thechanges of spaces, Jane Fourth kept searching for her own identity. She was trying tofind the right and final identity for herself.After analyzing Jane Fourth’s identity searching process with Lefebvre’s andSoja’s spatial theories, another chapter is dedicated to the analysis of the writingtechniques that Chuang Hua employed in her novel, such as free association, thechange of point of view, the omission of verbs, linking literation as well as the use ofmovie techniques. All these writing skills contribute to the natural change of spaces,to the smooth transition of the real world and the imagined world.In short, this paper is composed of five chapters. The first chapter is dedicated tothe introduction to the author and the novel and the literary review, as well as thepaper’s framework. The second chapter covers the introduction of Henri Lefebvre’smain spatial theories, and introduces Edward Soja’s three spaces theory, with whichthe paper is equipped to analyze Jane Fourth’s journey through three spaces. The thirdchapter contributes to the writing techniques that Chuang Hua used. And the fourthchapter is committed to the analysis of Jane Fourth’s cultural identity and culturalidentification process. The last chapter is the conclusion of the essay’s arguments.