Seeking Identity And Home - Interpreting Shirley Hazard 's Three Novels

Shirley Hazzard(1931-), born and educated in Australia, is a prominent female American writer. Her own expatriate experiences provide an unfailing source for her writing. The three successive novels studied in this thesis, namely The Bay of Noon, The Transit of Venus and The Great Fire, witness the maturation of Hazzard’s thoughts on diaspora.With the increasing impact of globalization, diasporic literature has gained more and more attention. Australian critic Bill Ashcroft introduced the word “transnation” to indicate the fluid migration both within the country and beyond national borders, which offers a more comprehensive perspective to examine modern expatriates, especially those voluntary ones. This thesis intends to analyze the process of searching for home and reconstructing identity in three major works by Shirley Hazzard from post-colonial perspective. It tries to argue that the ideal home for modern expatriates is transnation — the present beyond boundaries of time and place, and all expatriates are the subjects of transnation.The thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter One begins with a brief introduction to Shirley Hazzard and the three novels that are studied in this thesis. Post-colonial criticism and the term “transnation” are elaborated. Also, the lay-out of the thesis is included in this chapter. The body part is divided into three parallel chapters. Chapter Two discusses the identity crisis of Australian expatriates who are placed in the inter-space between different cultures and nations in The Bay of Noon in which Hazzard concentrates more on the psychological elements of expatriates’ identity crisis. Chapter Three displays outside social and cultural conflicts caused by colonization presented in The Transit of Venus and investigates the attempts made by expatriates to live in harmony with these conflicts. Hazzard shifts her attention from psychological elements to social background in this novel. Chapter Four focuses on The Great Fire, which is not only centered on the expatriate experience of Australians, but also touches upon expatriates from other countries as war victims. The conclusion chapter summarizes the preceding chapters by making clear that to the expatriates, home becomes approachable, for transnation pulls down the walls between nations and cultures, past and present, which provides the possibility of achieving an ideal diasporic identity.