| I argue that various writing practices that Louise Erdrich employs in her fiction place her in an emerging tradition of minority women writers, such as Maxine Hong Kingston, Leslie Silko, and Toni Morrison. What sets these writers apart is their ability to incorporate subversive strategies--plotlessness, metafiction, magical realism, achronicity--without being obscure. Ultimately, what I hope to show here is that Erdrich's aesthetic is a result of being doubly marginalized, that her artistic expression is profoundly shaped by a sense of a radical otherness that she does not share with her Anglo counterparts.;In the first part of my dissertation I examine issues that are related to gender. In chapter 1 I explore Erdrich's use of metafictional writing practices as a commentary on the old romantic plots in which the heroine is saved from spinsterhood by a man. In Chapter 2 I explore how women in Erdrich's novels often come to occupy a place of silence, replaying the historical situation of women who cannot find an appropriate speaking position in an androcentric mode of discourse. The silent woman becomes a recurring and provocative motif in Erdrich's fiction. In the third chapter, I look at how Erdrich deconstructs our notions of gender by shuffling gender roles and expectations. Her use of androgynous characters is a challenge to a society where rigid categorization and hierarchy is based on gender distinction.;In part II I explore the influence of culture on Erdrich's narrative strategies. In chapter 4 I analyze characters who are struggling in a world of contrasting cultures where identity becomes problematic. This problem is replicated in the reader's experience because she is presented conflicting narrative codes and finds herself in a hermeneutical impasse where meaning becomes problematic. In chapter 5 I look at the influence of the oral tradition as there is often self-conscious storytelling going on, underscoring its importance in the preservation of a culture and the empowerment of its people. In chapter 6 I examine the use of magical realism and why it is a subversive strategy in a culture like ours which tends to devalue nature and the supernatural.;And finally, in the conclusion, I hope to show how Erdrich's focus on the chronically marginalized as well as her strategy of de-centering her narratives reflects the interest of one who is doubly marginalized. I think that underlying all the aforementioned issues is that of marginalization, that the subversions we encounter in their multitudinous forms stem from their author having been twice alienated from white, mainstream culture: once as a woman and once as a mixed breed. |
