Construction And Deconstruction Of Orientalism In The Hundred Secret Senses

The Hundred Secret Senses is another masterpiece by the famous Chinese-American writer Amy Tan after the publication of her first two novels The Joy Luck Club and The Kitchen God’s Wife. The conflict and reconciliation between the half-sisters Olivia and Kwan reflect the confrontation and dialogue between Chinese and Western cultures. The novel attracted hundreds of thousands of readers after its publication in1995and remained on the New York Times best-seller list for Three months and was short-listed for the Orange Prize for Fiction in1996.Orientalism put forward by the well-known critic and Orientalist Edward Said in his masterpiece Orientalism is a theoretical cornerstone for the Postcolonial criticism. In the Orientalist discourse system, the Orient is low and controlled while the Occident is a high and controlling, which is in fact an expression of the binary relationship between the Orient and the Occident. This dualistic model has not only deeply rooted in the mind of the Westerners, but also affected the self-identity seeking of the Chinese-American ethnic group.This thesis discusses the construction and deconstruction of Orientalism in Amy Tan’s third novel The Hundred Secret Senses with the method of text reading and macroscopic understanding.This thesis is composed of five sections. The first chapter introduces the life experiences and literary works of Amy Tan and makes an overall review of academic researches on The Hundred Secret Senses both overseas and at home and then put forward the necessity and feasibility of my research. The second chapter focuses on the life of Said and Orientalism that provides a theoretical basis for the research topic of this thesis. The third chapter discusses stereotypes of China, Chinese people and Chinese culture in the novel and points out that these stereotypes are the products of the collective imagination of the Western society which constructed Orientalism. The fourth chapter argues that Amy Tan deconstructed Orientalism to some extent by probing Olivia’s identity-seeking, creating two western villains who are similar to those "ugly" Orientals and using unique narrative strategies. The fifth chapter makes a conclusion about this thesis and restates the main points of the whole thesis, that is, The Hundred Secret Senses both constructed and deconstructed Orientalism.