A Narratology Analysis Of The Secret River

Australian literature has been marginalized for a long time in the main stream of Englishlanguage literature. Its international process develops much later than the literatures in manyother western countries. Australian literature did not integrate into the world literature, begunits internationalization process, and moved into a period of diversified cultures until PatrickWhite got the Nobel Prize in Literature in1973. During recent years, Australian literaturestudies in China have developed into a matural stage. The publication of various Australianstudies monographs and thesises reflected that foreign literature researchers pay more andcloser attention to Australian literature than before. This thesis, under such a background,chooses The Secret River written by Australian women novelist Kate Grenville to do textanalysis, with the purpose of finding out its unique narrative techniques on the basis ofNarratology theory.Narratology is a literary researching theory which started developing fast since thesecond half of the20thcentury. Based on the classification to the composing unit of meaning,Narratology discusses the inner composing mechanism, the relationships and links among theinner composing parts of a narrative text in order to verify the unique principles in which anarrative text is distinguished from other texts. Generally, a narrative text is different from thestory itself, and the final text established by the author is required to reconstruct the originalstory material. Therefore, analyzing the narrative structure of a novel is essential to explainand understand the work correctly. This study starts from two innovative aspects: on the onehand, it explores the unique narrative significance by analyzing the text of The Secret River,taking the story level, plot level and narrative level in Narratology as theoretical basis; on theother hand, it not only guides readers to correctly understand the meaning and implication ofthe novel, the varied and complicated attitudes of the colonists toward the Aboriginals’resistance, but also contributes to readers’ further appreciation of humanity. This thesisbelieves that this study has certain academic significance, and can also help accelerate thedevelopment of foreign literary narrative text study in the west of China. In addition, itexpects to attract more readers to give more attention to Australian women literature.The Secret River is a historical novel which focuses on the benefit conflicts and culturalcontradictions between the colonialists and the colonized Aboriginals. The background of thestory is Britain and Australia in19th century. A white man William Thornhill is exiled to thegreat prison of Australia because of theft. A few years later, Thornhill gets his freedom andoccupies a piece of belong-to-nobody land. He intends to starts a new life with farming.However, the local Aboriginals, the real land-owners, fight against the white colonialistsfiercely to guard their right to the land. Thornhill, even though always shows sympathy to the Aboriginals, has no alternative when other white colonialists suppress the Aboriginals withforce of arms. The Secret River displays not only the severe struggle of land controllingbetween the Australian Aboriginals and the white colonialists, but also the psycho-complexityof Thornhill as a colonist, and the fascinating and charming of Australia as well. There are notmany studies on this book in China. Only Guo Yingjian, Ni Yun and Gong Xiaoping analyzedthis novel from different perspectives.This thesis starts from the brief introduction of the studying purpose, studyingsignificance, the present research situation of The Secret River in China, Kate Grenville’s lifestory and her major narrative styles. Then it elaborates the narrative theories related with thisnovel in detail. The macroscopic factors include the development, the current situation ofNarratology, its significance to literature and literary study; the microscopic factors containthe connotation, story level, plot level and narrative level of Narratology. Next, it analyzesThe Secret River from three Narratology levels. The story level deals with the historicalbackground, the outline of the story, and the features of main characters and their specialfunctions in the story. The plot level probes into different narrative rhythms and theirinfluence to the development of story plots. The narrative level discusses the application ofthe representations of speech and thought, and the point of view. The conclusion summarizesthe whole analysis and points out that the characters in The Secret River are true to life andconvincing, stereo and round; the narrative rhythm makes the whole story develop smoothly;the application of free direct speech and the third person omniscience attached with the localfocus are the most prominent features in narrative of The Secret River.