Breaking Silence: A Dialogic Reading Of The Woman Warrior

Maxine Hong Kingston is one of the outstanding female Chinese American writers in contemporary American Literature. Her representative work, The Woman Warrior: Memories of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, is lauded by the literary establishment as a milestone in Chinese American literary history. The Woman Warrior depicts a Chinese American girl Maxine's experiences growing up in America. It vividly reflects her struggle living in "between worlds" and her inner thoughts during the process of establishing her identity as Chinese American. Since it was published in 1976, The Woman Warrior has been the focus of the critics. They have analyzed it from many perspectives, like postmodernism, feminism and multiculturalism.This thesis uses Bakhtin's dialogic theory to analyze The Woman Warrior, which consists of the dialogue between mother and daughter, feminism and patriarchy, Chinese culture and American culture, as well as the heroine's inner dialogue. The dialogue in The Woman Warrior not only contains the dialogue between different consciousnesses ("the great dialogue"), but also the double-voiced discourse within the heroine's mind ("microdialogue"). This thesis analyzes the dialogicality in The Woman Warrior from four different angles. The thesis consists of five chapters:The first part of the thesis introduces Bakhtin's dialogic theory. According to Bakhtin, "All else's is the means; dialogue is the end. A single voice ends nothing and resolves nothing. Two voices is the minimum for life, the minimum for existence. ... To be means to communicate dialogically. When dialogue ends, everything ends" (Bakhtin, 1984: 252). Bakhtin introduces gtreat dialogue and mircodiaogue. Great dialogue mainly includes the dialogue between the author and the hero, and between different consciousnesses on equal foot. Microdialogue refers to the two interacting voices within the hero's mind.The second part explores the dialogue between mother Brave Orchid and daughter Maxine in The Woman Warrior. The dialogic relationship between mother and daughter contains many conflicts: the Chinese stories told by mother Brave Orchid repress the daughter Maxine, but it also intimates her imagination, which offers her materials for her talk-story later; although Maxine listens to her mother's talk-story, she reconstructs them according to her understanding and life experiences with whole new angles. Brave Orchid hopes that Maxine can inherit the traditional Chinese culture, while Maxine tries hard to break out of the bind and to establish her own identity. Maxine gradually becomes mature during the process of dialoguing with her mother.The third part of the thesis discusses the dialogue between feminism and patriarchy. Bakhtin's dialogic theory emphasizes on respecting other's voices, which offers the feminism the theory basis to resist against the oppression of patriarchy and to save women from the situation of silence and marginalization. Through dialogue, Kingston expresses her goal of feminism: to build a world with the harmony and balanced relationship between man and woman.The fourth chapter analyzes the dialogue between Chinese culture and American culture, which is the core of the whole book. The Woman Warrior reflects the Chinese American girl Maxine's bewilderment when she faces the conflicts of two cultures. Bakhtin's dialogic theory takes "Cultural Hegemonism" and "Cultural Separatism" as the targets, calling for a true "cultural self-consciousness" by means of dialogue. It is in correspondence with cultural pluralism. It suggests that different consciousnesses of culture are independent and they interact with each other in an equal position. By positioning Chinese culture and American culture in dialogic relationship, Kingston shows her aspiration that Chinese culture and American culture can coexist harmoniously in an equal position and can communicate and learn from each others' strong points.The fifth part of the thesis discusses the double-voiced discourse in The Woman Warrior. There are always two different voices and consciousnesses interacting with each other in Maxine's mind. It is just by this microdialogue that Maxine finally establishes her identity: Chinese American.This thesis analyzes The Woman Warrior from a new angle by using Bakhtin's dialogic theory. Through the above analysis, this paper may at least claim the following conclusions: dialogue is a powerful method for Chinese American women to break silence and to establish their own identity. Through dialogue, Maxine finally breaks silence and articulates her voice, during which process she establishes her own identity as Chinese American.