Interracial Love And The White Woman's Construction Of Identity

Honored as"Conscience of South Africa", Nadine Gordimer is an important contributor to the South African writing. Her writing career spans the duration of official apartheid in South Africa. As a recipient of many literary prizes, she was awarded the Booker Prize in 1974 and the Nobel Prize for literature in 1991. In most of her novels, she frequently characterizes the white female images and clearly presents their inner world and outer life before the reader,through which Gordimer exposes white South African women's struggle for identity during the course of historical process.Applying Stuart Hall's and Linda Martin Alcoff's theory of identity and Lacan's theory of the Other, this thesis is meant to make an analysis of the white woman's construction of identity in Nadine Gordimer's three novels—Occasion for Loving(1963), A Sport of Nature(1987) and The Pickup (2001)—to present the white woman's uncertain identity in three different historical periods, especially the changes of identity before and after their interracial love.This thesis focuses on the white woman's otherness in the white circle, their efforts to construct their identities through different ways, Gordimer's"White Consciousness"as well. Through the three unique processes of identity construction, it suggests that the essence of identity is dependent on historical milieu of one's nation and construction of identity is a dynamic course that will change and renew during human history. Furthermore, the thesis reveals that Gordimer's writing is limited due to her own racial identity, she does not deliberately depict the black's identity, and instead, she shows great concern for the identity construction of white women in South Africa.This thesis is composed of five chapters. Chapter One is an introduction to Nadine Gordimer and her literary career, and also offers a definition of identity and related theories. The body of the thesis includes Chapter Two, Chapter Three and Chapter Four. These three chapters respectively deal with the procedure of white woman's identity construction: loss of identity, construction of identity and reconstruction of identity which is respectively embodied in the three novels. The last part is Conclusion, in which Gordimer's determination to depict the white woman's construction of identity as well as the limitation in her writing is summed up.