Construction Of Female Discourse-A Feminist Narratological Study Of Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse

Virginia Woolf is a distinguished English modernism novelist, literary critic in the20thcentury and the forerunner of the feminist literary criticism. To the Lighthouse, oneof her novel masterpieces, has attracted many scholars home and abroad. Most of thescholars study the novel from the writing technique of stream of consciousness andsymbolism. They seldom make analysis of the novel from the perspective of feministnarratology. Therefore, the thesis analyzes the novel from a feminist narratologicalperspective. Based on the theory of feminist narratology, the thesis, through the analysisof narrative voice, free indirect discourse and spatiotemporal narrative, attempts toexplore how the novel uses the narrative strategies to construct female discourse andestablish the female narrative authority. The conclusion of the thesis exposes that thesubstance of To the Lighthouse is Woolf’s intentionally planned narrative subversion oftraditional male narrative and exhibition of her own peculiar feminist consciousness.Through this novel Woolf establishes her own narrative authority.