The Construction Of Female Subjectivity In Swing Time

Zadie Smith is one of the most popular young women writers in the British literary world today.Her works have been well received and loved by readers in Western literature for showing readers the complicated conflicts and oppressions hidden behind the mediocre life through the simple experiences of ethnic characters.As a British writer of Jamaican descent,Smith is particularly concerned with the existential plight and construction of subjectivity of female immigrants from the Third World.Her latest novel,Swing Time,tells the story of a pair of brown-skinned mixed-race girls,the narrators "I" and Tracy,who encounter various inequality of treatment from race,class and gender while growing up,and eventually come to different ends because of their different choices.The novel reveals Smith’s concern for the plight of immigrant women from the Third World,and also provides new thoughts on the survival of women in the new era.This paper adopts Marx’s theories on subjectivity and postcolonial feminist subjectivity to interpret the construction of women’s subjectivity in Swing Time,analyze the survival of the mulatto Tracy,the narrator "I" and my Jamaican mother in the novel after they suffer from various kinds of discrimination and the reasons for the loss of their female subjectivity,and explore the ways in which the narrator "I" constructs female subjectivity and finally achieves her own liberation.This dissertation consists of six chapters.The first chapter contains the research background of this thesis,the current status of domestic and international research,the significance of the research and the research innovation points.The second chapter mainly outlines the relevant theories of subjectivity applied,focusing on sorting out the relevant theories of Marxism about subjectivity and the relevant views of postcolonial feminism about subjectivity.Chapter 3 is the main part of the paper,combining postcolonial feminist theory and subjectivity theory,and analyzes in depth the racial discrimination suffered by Tracy,the narrator "I" and the narrator’s mother in terms of education,occupation and ideology;the gender unequal treatment suffered in terms of economic power,voice and female body,and the class unequal treatment that coexists in white and African societies.The loss of Tracy’s and the narrator’s mother’s feminine subjectivity,and ultimately their tragic lives,are the result of class oppression and exploitation in both white and African societies.Chapter 4 analyzes how the narrator "I" tries to construct subjectivity by fighting for economic rights and discourse rights and clarifying gender consciousness,and finally establishes her ethnic identity,controls her female body,reclaims her discourse rights,and realizes the construction of her own subjectivity by combining the relevant theories of subjectivity,revealing the importance of the construction of female subjectivity for emancipation.It reveals the importance of the construction of female subjectivity for the liberation of women.Chapter 5 focuses on the revelations brought by the construction of female subjectivity in Swing Time,discussing them in two categories:theoretical revelations and practical revelations,and also combining the current situation of contemporary women’s existence in China and the problems of the construction of female subjectivity in China,and proposing corresponding solutions.The last chapter is a conclusion of the whole text.