Thunderous Silence:A Study Of Multiple Narrative Voices In Jean Rhys's Novels

Jean Rhys(1890-1979)has not been placed in a proper position in the history of literature for racial,sexual and cultural reasons and the like.Nowadays,her novels have been rediscovered and rated as canon,but their alterity brings an intricate puzzle for us.This dissertation is intended to discuss multiple narrative voices in her novels,namely,the voice of character,narrator,and implied author;the personal,authorial and communal voice,and so on.The Rhys Study usually follows thematic category which studies modernist,feminist,and post-colonial thoughts embodied in her novels,and this research is no exception,but goes further in the complex relationship of narrative methods and identity construction,aiming at revealing the narrative traits of identity crises.This dissertation is made of six parts,besides introduction and conclusion,which explores modernist voices,schizophrenic voices,feminist voices behind masochistic narratives,Nora's leave-takings of the Rhys Woman,post-colonial strategies and voices,and the construction of narrative authority.Based on Rhys's oeuvre,we find her own voices as a creole female writer through the pattern of multiple narrative voices,which makes profound internality,reflexivity,objectification,liminality,non-duality and West Indian Sensibility for the construction of multi-cultural identity.It not only endows her novels with a feast of narrative voices,but also introduces a poetics of voices for post-colonial and post-modernist literature/culture,pioneering the "Caribbean Voices".We can say that such a study will lead world literature readers to the crossroads of cultures,carefully listening to thunderous silence from the margin.This dissertation probes into the relationship between narrative voices and cultural identity,as the first Chinese research paper of all Rhys's novels.It answers Rhys's "puzzle of voices",combined with diachronicity and synchronicity.Rhys now is not only canonical,but also marginal,and the Rhys Study can provide narratologies and culture studies with literature interpretation and theorical breakthough.