The Pursuit Of Identity In The Woman Warrior’s Intertextual Narrative

The Woman Warrior is the masterpiece of the Chinese American female writer Maxine Hong Kingston. Since its publication, it has attracted the attention of readers and critics home and abroad for its unique Chinese cultural elements and feminist view. There have been hot debates on the myth, legends, historical figures and other texts that appear in this novel. From the intertextual perspective, this thesis analyzes the intertextual narrative device of parody, collage and allusion applied in the novel so as to explore how Maxine Hong Kingston accomplishes her representation of the protagonist’s self-identity seeking in the intertextual narrative of this novel.The first chapter of this thesis gives a brief introduction to the intertextual theory and three important intertextual narrative devices: parody, collage and allusion, so as to provide theoretical foundation for the textual analysis in chapter two, three and four. The second chapter deals with the writer’s application of the intertextual narrative device of parody in "No Name Woman" to represent the awakening of the protagonist’s identity awareness. Then the third chapter analyzes the intertextual narrative device of collage which is applied by the writer to portray the image of Hua Mulan as the protagonist’s ideal model of identity seeking in her teenage imagination. By using the intertextual device of collage, Kingston gives Hua Mulan, the typical traditional Chinese woman, the supreme power to break the traditional constraints of gender and culture, This demonstrates the protagonist’s surreal ideal to break the traditional constraints in the social reality and to redefine herself with a gender identity and a cultural identity. Chapter four is devoted to analyzing the writer’s using of allusions. It first deals with the allusion to Ghost, which is applied by Kingston to reveal the dual oppression from the patriarchy and American white culture on Chinese American women and to represent the fighting against the oppression and the identity seeking of two generations of Chinese American women:the protagonist and her mother. Then it analyzes the writer’s allusion to Cai Yen, the ancient Chinese poetess, which implies that the protagonist, like Cai Yen, may find her gender and cultural identity by integrating herself into foreign culture and devoting herself into transcultural women writing. This also reflects the writer’s hope of seeking her own identity through her transcultural women writing. It henceforth concludes that The Woman Warrior aims at representing Chinese-American women’s unique experience of identity seeking under patriarchal oppression in the bi-cultural environment through its intertextual narrative.