Female Voices And Female Authority

Colleen McCullough is contemporary famous female writer. The Thorn Birds is one of her works and the most successful one. It won success immediately after its publication in 1977. It not only attracted millions of readers around the world, but also appealed many literary critics and researchers in the world. The Thorn Birds is an Australian saga novel. It depicts the story about three generations of the Cleary family from 1915 to 1965. The charm of this saga lies in the following aspects:the theme of love and fate, a lifelike portrait of the characters, the special narrative structure, and the poetic description of environment in it. In the past years, many researchers interpreted this novel from multiple perspectives, most of them studied the masterpiece from the perspective of feminism, Christianity culture, love and fate, characters, etc. However, the research from the perspective of feminist narratology was rare.Feminist narratology is a kind of interdisciplinary subject which sprung up in the 1980s. It provides a brand-new basis to recent research on female writers’works. The feminist narratology regards narrative forms as the tool and ground for political struggles. It focuses on females’"voice". The "voice" refers to a kind of narrative voice. According to feminist narratology, it expresses women-centered view. It also concentrates on the narrative discourse, the text of narrative works. The kind of narrative voice or narrative discourse adopted by narrator has a great impact on its narrative authority. Those female characters in The Thorn Birds are authoritative and influential, their thoughts are powerful, and their "Voices" influence the readers greatly. Colleen McCullough attained the authority of narrative voice in her masterpiece The Thorn Birds by her unique narrative style.This thesis will interpret this novel from the perspective of the feminist narratology. It will try to discuss the narrative voice (especially authorial voice and personal voice) presented by the three generations female characters in The Thorn Birds, so as to interpret the gender politics in the novel, and explain how the author subverts the male discourse and constructs the female narrative authority.This paper consists of five chapters. Chapter one is an introduction, which will mainly introduce the author and the content of the novel, the domestic and foreign study of The Thorn Birds and the feminist narratology, the significance of the study and the structure of the thesis. Chapter two will mainly introduce the theories adopted in the thesis, including the definition and development of the feminist narratology, the features and research approaches of it; narrative voice (especially authorial voice and personal voice). Chapter three will mainly interpret the authorial voice presented by three generations Cleary women in The Thorn Birds and how the author uses this kind of voice to subvert male discourse authority and constructs the female narrative authority. Chapter four will mainly discuss the personal voice presented by the three generations female characters in the novel. It aims to reveal how the author penetrates her female consciousness in the novel and realizes the narrative authority. Chapter five is conclusion. It will summarize the research result of the above chapters. It comes to a conclusion that The Thorn Birds is a novel with brilliant narrative techniques. It is a perfect combination of female consciousness and female narrative forms. It will also point out the research deficiencies existing in the study, and put forward the study plan in future.