The Strategies Of Constructing Female Identity

As one of the influential African American women writers in Harlem Renaissance and contemporary time, Zora Neale Hurston creates numerous works with various themes. Compared with other black writers, Hurston has paid more attention to the black female living condition and the construction of their identity, which has been showed in her first published novel Jonah’s Gourd Vine. Recently, foreign and domestic critics have done research on its theme, plot, symbol and narrative strategies and so on, but only a few scholars study its writing strategies when discussing the construction of black female identity from the perspective of Feminist Narratology. Under such circumstance, this thesis will discuss and illustrate it elaborately.The thesis will introduce Zora Neale Hurston’s life and her novel Jonah’s Gourd Vine first, and then literature review and Susan S. Lanser’s Feminist Narratology are fully discussed in next two chapters. The body part of the thesis mainly analyzes the writing strategy in Jonah’s Gourd Vine during the construction of black female identity, including the application of double text, narrative voice and shadow plot. More specifically, with the introduction of black folk culture such as black music and black religion, the surface text constructs black identity by showing their sense of belonging and pride in their race. But the deep text explores the construction of black female identity where black women challenge black male authority and show their wisdom to deconstruct their submissive image and construct a new black female image that fights against male authority and show their merits. The application of authorial voice intends to discover the domination of black men over black women while the use of communal voice offers black women discourse to defend themselves and to fight with black men. The use of shadow plot indicates the internal and external connection with the the novel. As for internal level, there is an imbalance relationship between black women and black men when the events within the text are examined. And this imbalance relationship can be transmitted to one generation another, which is not good for the construction of black female identity. Then the social context is discussed in external level, especially the influence of slavery on black people. Slavery has an effect on self-recognition of black people, on the relationship between family members and on the construction of black female identity. The course of constructing black female identity becomes tougher because of deep-rooted slavery.The conclusion of the thesis is that Hurston did apply some writing strategies in her creation of the novel for constructing black female identity under certain social context. This writing strategy illustrates the problems between black men and women, classifies the unchangeable historian facts they experienced and expresses the tough course of the construction of black female identity.