A Narrative And Stylistic Analysis Of The Marriages

This thesis is a study of point of view, speech and thought presentation, mind style and deictic expressions in Henry James’novella The Marriages through the combination of narratology with stylistics, and makes a further study of Henry James’ writing style.With the rapid development of narratology and stylistics since the 1960s, the study of narrative techniques and stylistic techniques has done some innovative practices in the novel theory. Many narratologists’and stylisticians’studies have contributed a lot to constructing a scientific framework for the fiction’s construction and form and have improved the reader’s aesthetic consciousness. Based on these, this thesis mainly discusses the following questions:whether the approach of combining narratology with stylistics to the study The Marriages is a complement with each other? How does the narrator depict the main characters’feelings, world view and cognitive ability through point of view? How does the narrator change point of view, controls the narrative distance, and reveal Adela’s inner world through speech and thought presentation, mind style and deictic expressions?Based on these questions, this thesis consists of five parts, including the conclusion. Each chapter is subdivided into sections.Chapter One introduces the research methodology, the objective and the significance of this thesis, research data and the layout of this thesis.Chapter Two is a brief introduction of narratology and stylistics together with the literature review of Henry James and his works at home and abroad.Chapter Three attempts to construct a theoretical framework for this thesis, such as clarifying some basic concepts of narratology, exploring the classification, characteristics and functions of various modes of speech, presenting the definition of mind style and three approaches to studying mind style.Chapter Four, the core part of this thesis, is a case study of The Marriages from such perspectives as point of view, speech and thought presentation, mind style and deictic expressions. Section one mainly discusses three modes of focalization in The Marriages. Henry James adopts zero focalization to describe the setting or background of the story. The narrator with zero focalization can have a bird’s-eye view of the story’s development and shows an unrestricted knowledge of the story’s event. Due to the fact that zero focalization easily spoils the realness of the story, Henry James often changes point of view from zero focalization to internal focalization. The Marriages is a story which is mainly told from Adela’s point of view. Adela is "the center of consciousness" in this novella. What Adela sees, hears and thinks is the main clue of the story. In The Marriages, such characters as Godfrey, Mrs. Churchley are the objects of Adela’s observation. Mrs. Churchley’s vision and feeling is restricted and the reader has no privilege to know anything about her inner world. To a large degree, the reader’s sympathy to Adela and antipathy to Mrs. Churchley are fulfilled by Henry James’shift of point of view. Section Two focuses on analyzing various modes of speech and thought presentation among Adela, Godfrey, Mrs. Churchley and Colonel Chart. These characters’ dialogues, interior monologues and narrative discourse reflect their own attitudes and characterization. Section Three combines narrative point of view with lexical patterns and rhetorical devices to explore Adela’s and Godfrey’s mind style. Section Four explores how the narrator changes modes of focalization and adapts the narrative distance with such deictic expressions as person deictic expressions, time deictic expressions and place deictic expressions. Section Five concerns itself with the interaction of point of view, modes of speech and thought presentation, mind style and deictic expressions reflected in The Marriages.The final part is the conclusion, which is a retrospect of the whole thesis. Being only a tentative research, there still remain unresolved problems to exert more efforts in the future.This present thesis proves that the narratological-stylistic approach contributes to an effective device to study The Marriages. This study enables the reader to have a comparatively comprehensive understanding of thematic significance of The Marriages and appreciate its stylistic effects and aesthetic values.