On The Postmodern Narrative Skills Of The Well

Elizabeth Jolley is one of the greatest writers in Australian literature. She started her writing career early but only established her fame in her fifties. Her postmodern writing style not only enchants the readers but also bewilders the critics, and her exploration of the social taboos, such as lesbians, makes her and her fiction controversial.This paper aims to analyze the postmodern narrative skills Jolley employs in The Well. Jolley’s work is considered to be difficult to understand, because everything is bizarre and grotesque. It is necessary to lay bare the narrative skills to better apprehend Jolley’s concern on the marginalized group, represented by Hester Harper in this fiction.The frequent shifts between third person omniscient point of view and the stream of consciousness, the parodies of classical fairy tale and pastoral life, and metafictions are the most striking features of the fiction. This paper endeavors to explore these narrative skills and make it easier to apprehend Jolley’s excellent techniques and her focus on the outsiders, especially female outsiders, of the society.This paper includes five chapters. In the first chapter, this paper gives an introduction of Elizabeth Jolley and her seventh book The Well, and it makes a review on the research condition of Jolley and her works both abroad and at home. It also contains the purpose and structure of this thesis.Chapter Two studies the narrative points of view in this novel. The third person omniscient point of view not only draws distance between the readers and the characters in the fiction, but also enables the readers to observe the characters and make moral judgments, while stream of consciousness bridges the distance and arouses the readers’compassion for Hester, a female outsider of the society.In Chapter Three, this paper tries to analyze the parodies of fairy tale and pastoral life in the novel. Happy endings can never be acquired by Hester, a lesbian who is banished by the patriarchal society, and pastoral life only belongs to people who are always content with what they have, unlike Hester, who harbors longings and desires for the same sex and always wants to keep Katherine with her. By parodying fairy tale and pastoral life, Jolley tends to deny and criticize the traditional ideology and conventional narrative mode.Chapter Four discusses the metafictional features of this novel. To the same accident, there are three different versions, the third version is even not complete, and Hester’s adoption of the role of the story-teller reveals the distance of fiction and reality. Metafiction makes people calmly survey their positions in life, and to strike a balance between reality and creation, between meaningfulness and meaninglessness, between truth and illusion.The fifth chapter is the concluding chapter. By analyzing Jolley’s narrative skills we can better understand her concern on the marginalized people of the society. In a diversified society, we need more comprehension especially to the outsiders of the society.