Conflict And Reconciliation: An Analysis Of The Hundred Secret Senses From The Perspective Of Post-colonialism

Amy Tan is undoubtedly a prominent Chinese American writer among contemporarywriters. Her novels appeal to large numbers of readers at home and broad through vividdescriptions of cultural conflicts and reconciliation, mother-daughter relationship, andcharacters’ emotional development. Tan probes into the dynamic process of changing frominitial rejection to gradually mutual understanding and recognition in her third novel TheHundred Secret Senses. Up till now, few critics at home have furthered research on it in depth,particularly from the post-colonial perspective. This thesis applies Spivak’s post-colonialtheory to analyze the female subaltern from the third world women and to disclose the effortsto speak for herself.The word “subaltern” is coined as minor group marginalized in mainstream dominanceand the female subaltern as the other of the other in particular. This thesis adopts Spivak’spost-colonial theory to analyze the Chinese sister Kwan. It aims at uncovering the plight andsuppression that the third world women encountered in western society, as well as praisingKwan’s pursuit of equality, her selfless love to resolve conflicts, and her endeavors to realizeOlivia’s wholeness via acceptance of Chinese culture which successfully speaks for herselfand on the way to de-colonization. The paper exposes Kwan’s Aphasia in every respect bydescribing the double oppressions Kwan suffers under colonization of imperialism andpatriarchy in her former and present lives. The paper further illustrates Kwan’s efforts ofbreaking silence to seek discourse power. The contradiction between Chinese traditionalculture and western industrial civilization is smashed by returning to China to search forChinese culture. In addition, it expatiates on reconciliations of identity confusions by tracingtheir ancestry—Kwan’s returning to nature and Olivia’s integration of Chinese traditionalculture. While Kwan’s returning precisely manifests that man is an integral part of nature inChinese traditional culture, Olivia’s appreciation of Chinese ancestry indicates that ethnicidentity could be an integration of both, rather than purely in opposition. Investigated fromthis new perspective, this paper elaborates marginal culture concealed by grand narrative inhistory and literature. To be more specific, the discourse power of female subaltern could bepursued only by unearthing the facts from marginal figure’s points of view.This thesis expects that the analysis of The Hundred Secret Senses from the postcolonialperspective could shed some new light upon the research on Amy Tan’s novels and the thirdworld culture, hoping to provide enlightenment to cultural communication in the age ofglobalization.