The Construction Of Female Authority

Alice Munro is known as “Chekhov of Canada” who starts writing from girlhood. The first collection of short stories was published in 1968 and won the Canada’s Governor General’s Award. Since then, she has written fourteen books and attained numerous awards. The contents of her works are all about the everyday life of ordinary people, especially women, but the themes are seriously related to sickness and death. Her words are succinct and clear, and she pays attention to details. Her excellent writing skills fully embody the inner voice of females in the works. The collection of short stories Runaway was published in 2004. The book is made up of eight short stories, and three of them correlate to each other. Judges of Giller Prize praised that the stories were unforgettable, the words were precise and unique, simple and beautiful, and memorable. Munro’s works are almost short stories therefore she has been long ignored by the literary critics in China. Before she won the Nobel Prize in literature, Runaway was her only book translated into Chinese. Scholars mainly focus on the aspects of feminism and themes, less analysis on narratology, while seldom article takes Runaway as a case to make systematically analysis from the perspective of feminist narratology.This article utilizes feminist narratology from the aspects of narrative voice, narrative point of view and narrative discourse to discuss how narrative techniques construct female authority. The thesis consists of three parts: introduction, main body and conclusion.The first part is introduction. It introduces Alice Munro and her works, and the collection of Runaway. Next, it studies the current research status of Munro and Runaway at home and abroad. Then, it points out the meaning of writing the thesis.The second part is the main body of the thesis, which is composed of three chapters.Chapter one starts from the perspective of narrative voice, analyzing how the three modes of narrative voice construct female authority. It is divided into three parts. Firstly, it explores the application of authorial voice in Runaway. Taking the short story Runaway as an example, Munro applies authorial voice to describe the living conditions closely related to characters, which implies changes of feminine consciousness. Through the description of female characters and the male character, it objectively shows the reconstruction of female identity and authority. Secondly, it analyzes the personal voice in Runaway, in which the diaries, notes and letters all reflect the personal voice. By taking use of personal voice, female characters directly announce their voices to establish female authority. Thirdly, it introduces communal voice which includes three forms: singular form, simultaneous form and sequential form. In Runaway, each story can be viewed as a singular form, and the eight stories constitute an overall simultaneous form. The conversation between Carla and Sylvia is a sequential form. The application of communal voice rebuilds feminine subjective consciousness.Chapter two analyzes the narrative point of view in Runaway and includes three parts. The first part discusses the female protagonists’ point of view. Through the female protagonists’ views, it observes male characters and other female characters, revealing the traditional image of males and reinforcing self-awareness of females. The second part introduces the narrator’s point of view. Runaway uses the third-person narration so that the narrator’s view is omniscient. It mainly introduces the backgrounds of characters and the mental activities of female characters, so that it enriches the images of female characters and constructs female authority. The third part analyzes the conversion of point of view. Munro employs the narration of the same events from different aspects and the conversions between different angles, allowing readers to feel the inner world and the growth process of female characters.Chapter three researches three kinds of narrative discourse in Runaway. It consists of three parts. To begin with, through taking three pieces of dialogues for example, it analyzes the using of direct discourse to express female characters’ real thoughts directly. Then, it introduces the indirect discourse which is mainly used for reporting past experiences of characters, such as the description of Carla’s and Juliet’s parents, and the past life of Ollie and Tessa. Therefore, readers can learn more about the female protagonists and feel the oppression and pain of them. Part three analyzes the use of free indirect discourse on the construction of female authority. Free indirect discourse strengthens links between readers and characters. Meanwhile, free indirect discourse combines narrator’s thoughts with character’s thoughts; it establishes female identity and authority when expressing the same position.The last part of thesis is the conclusion which concludes the analysis of previous parts and claims the meaning of the thesis. Feminist narratology supplies a new angle of analyzing Runaway, enriches the study of Munro’s works, and also enhances the application of feminist narratology. Females in modern society still confront the same problems as the protagonists in the stories, therefore it also offers reference and inspiration for modern females to reexamine themselves and find their own identities.