Loss And Reappearance

Pearl S.Buck is the first female writer in the history of American literature to win both the Nobel Prize for Literature and the Pulitzer Prize,renown for her writing on Chinese themes.East Wind:West Wind,the first full-length novel that Buck publishes formally,tells the story of Kwei-lan,a traditional Chinese woman,who grows up in the Chinese feudal ideology of male superiority,changes her values and awakens her consciousness of feminine subject slowly by the request and influence of her husband who returns from abroad.Studies on Buck’s East Wind:West Wind at home and abroad mainly focus on the topics of Chinese and Western cultures,female images,writing techniques,etc.,but the relevant studies on the perspective of postcolonial feminist narratology are limited.This thesis will study the narrative strategies of Buck’s writing and the transformation of subaltern women’s images and their subject consciousness.It also analysis Buck’s"theoretical view" of subaltern women through the"methodology"of narrative techniques,which breaks the traditional narrative mode of Western female literature and provides a new construction strategy and interpretation strategy for the narrative text of the women in the Third World.This thesis composes of five parts.Chapter One is a brief introduction to Buck,her novel East Wind:West Wind,literature review of relevant studies at home and abroad and theories used in this thesis,mainly including postcolonial feminism,Spivak’s theory of subaltern women,as well as the theories of discourse and story in feminist narratology.Chapter Two takes "discourse" as the entry point to analyze the changing process of the heroine from aphasia to speak by giving her the personal voice and first person internal perspective,so as to reveal the changes of.her subjective consciousness and construct the discourse power of subaltern women.Chapter Three takes"story" as the entry point to analyze the transformation of subaltern women’s subject consciousness by setting up the binary plot pattern and character pattern,so as to create different images of subaltern women.Chapter Four,based on Buck’s life experience and education experience,analyzes the reasons for the formation of her narrative strategy,as well as the construction of subaltern woman’s discourse power in her works.The last part is the conclusion of this thesis.Through the analysis of discourse and story of the novel,this thesis finds that no matter the narrative voice,perspective or plot pattern,all of them can contribute to the creation of female characters in the text and show the author’s postcolonial feminism thoughts while constructing the narrative authority of female characters.