Narrative Strategies In Carol Shields’s Novels

This thesis applies feminist narratological approaches to explore the narrativestrategies in the novels by the famous Canadian woman writer Carol Shields. Inappropriating the structural narratological categories and conventions in a moreflexible way, feminist narratology takes gender into consideration and attempts tocomplement and revise those categories and conventions, thus forming a holistic andsystematic approach to study the form and significance of the works of art by womenwriters as a whole. Based on this epistemological framework, after delineating themain categories and methods of feminist narratology, the study makes use of them inanalyzing Carol Shields’s particular texts. On the one hand, attention is to be paid toavoiding the limitations of structural narratology which always emphasizes the formalstructures but is blind to the issue of gender, and on the other hand, to overcoming thesubjectivity of feminism based on impression. The aim is to have a comprehensivestudy of the narrative techniques of Carol Shields’s novels from the perspective offeminist narratology, including questions such as how narrative forms are connectedwith the meaning of ordinary life, and how the texts represent and construct thegender consciousness of the author, narrator, character, narratee and the reader.The early novels of Carol Shields mainly focus on representing femaleexperiences in a more realistic and traditional way. The1980s saw an experimentingtendency in her novels. Take Swann as an example, many postmodern narrativetechniques such as multiple shifting points of view, multiple narrating subjects andhybrid genres have been applied in her works, which have, in turn, been brought intofull play in her most acclaimed novel, The Stone Diaries. The subsequent two novels,Larry’s Party and Unless also display her tactful use of those techniques. However,Shields has never constrained herself to the pursuit of the perfection of the forms ofart. Instead, she is always seeking a coherent unity of content and form. She is intensively interested in history, politics, women and self, and at the same time, showsgreat talent in her ingenious deployment of genres, narratorial positions andcharacters’ speech. Her simply style and feminine ingenuity has won numerousreaders worldwide.This thesis applies close reading and the key feminist narratological categories asthe main approach to analyze the narrative modes of Carol Shields’s novels withinthe cultural and historical contexts. Her novels are not only highly artistic andaesthetic but have great ideological significance of gender politics as well. Theconstruction and production of female subjectivity engenders different degrees ofnarrative authority which female narrators or narratees strive to establish. Thereby,they hold different moral and aesthetic values from those created in hegemonic texts.This dissertation consists of seven chapters. The first chapter is a generalintroduction to the whole dissertation. It begins with an overview of Carol Shields’slife and works. The second section is a review of studies of Carol Shields at home andabroad. This part also points out a sharp contrast between the increasing interest inCarol Shields’s work abroad and relatively less attention to Carol Shields at home,which indicates that there is still much to be explored on Carol Shields. The thirdsection discusses the theoretical approaches applied in this study. It consists of threesubsections. It begins with a general background of the narratological study in termsof classical and postclassical approaches. As a pioneer approach in postclassicalnarratology, the key concepts and categories of feminist narratology are introduced inthe second subsection. The third one focuses on the feasibility and plausibility ofapplying feminist narratological approaches in the analysis of the narrative strategiesin Carol Shields’s novels. This chapter ends with an outline of the organization of thisthesis.Chapter two mainly deals with Carol Shields’s four early novels in terms ofidentity plot. The category of plot belongs to the story level. Before the analysis of theparticular novels, there is a review of feminist narrative theories on plot. There aredifferent plot types and each plot has a pattern which serves as a way of theconstruction of gender. In those novels, identity plot is a major strand which connects the storyworld and the inner world of the characters. It manifests the intense desire ofthe characters to construct their artistic identity and reach for a balance between themundane life and their individual selves.Chapter three discusses how Carol Shields experiments with genres. Genres areused as a narrative strategy for her display of the relationship between form andcontent. It begins with a brief review of genre theory and genre categories anddiscussions on the relationship between genre and gender. The second section focuseson subverting the genre of detective fiction in Swann. The third section deals with theform and theme in her romantic novel The Republic of Love. The fourth sectiondiscusses her innovation in the form of epistolary fiction in her novel A CelibateSeason. The fifth section is a discussion on The Stone Diaries, which focuses on theautobiographical genre writing. The last part is a chapter summary of this chapter andit notes how genre and gender work as a combination of revision, reflection andrecreation in Carol Shields’s novels.Chapter four is an analysis of the subjectivity and self-representation in TheStone Diaries. It points out that the structuring position of the narrating subjects is asignificant narrative strategy for the narrator to construct her identities in the process.The second section discusses the multiple subjects and their subjectivity in thenarrating process. The subjectivity is split, shifting and evasive which results in a gapbetween the form and the meaning of the text, but it thus expands the signifying spaceand intensifies the self-awareness of the narrating subjects. The third section discusseshow this multiple structural positions provide advantages for the narrator Daisy toconstruct and represent female subjectivity and this narrative mode also makespossible the construction of her identity in the process of negotiating with the world,others and her own body.Chapter five mainly deals with narration and focalization in Larry’s Party.Focalized through the male protagonist Larry Weller, this novel involves two mainnarrative strategies: free indirect discourse and internal focalization. Section two andsection three give a brief review of studies on FID and internal focalizationrespectively. The fourth section is an analysis of how FID and internal focalization are used and intertwined to display Carol Shields’s idea towards gender roles: thedifference in gender identity between the author and the narrator is not in the least anobstacle to her recognition of her male protagonist; as an omniscient heterodiegeticnarrator, she does not exert her narrative authority by making commentary remarks orintrusive judgment on Larry’s life, instead, she makes Larry as the center ofconsciousness by using free indirect discourse and internal focalization; the readermay as well be affected by her way of telling stories and her humanist feministperspective.Chapter six is a detailed study on Carol Shields’s last novel Unless. This novelcan be regarded as a sum-up or a summit of Carol Shields’s gendered narrativestrategies. It deals with identity plot first, which shows how women are struggling fortheir personal and social recognition in different ways, by writing, by keeping silence,or by self-destructing. It uses metafictional techniques as argument to demonstrate herfeminist perspective. It discusses ethics both as a thematic content and aesthetic formand their interrelations in the encountering of others’ lives both realistically andfictionally.Chapter seven is the conclusion of this dissertation. It points out implications andlimitations of this study. Feminist narratological approaches are applicable inShields’s novels from the level of story, discourse, cultural and historical contexts.The textual strategies such as identity plot, the innovation of genres, the constructionof subjectivity and identity, narrative discourse and metafictional practice worktogether to form the characteristic properties of Carol Shields’s own style of writing.In addition, her philosophical thinking about relationships between men and women,self and other, self and the world are interwoven with her textual practices of forms.She has established her narrative authority by constructing alternative worlds with herfemale pen. At the end of this chapter and the whole dissertation, suggestions aregiven for future study.