| Joyce Carol Oates, one of America's most productive and versatile contemporary writers, is well-known for her erudite knowledge, vivid descriptions of social life and profound explorations into human psychology. Most of her works focus on the conflicts between individuals and the environment, human nature's alienation and individuals' dislocation. As the last work in her Wonderland Quartet, a loosely connected saga of American class conflicts in the 20th century, Wonderland is the turning point in Oates's literary career, in which she turned to people's inner world with realistic techniques. The present studies of Wonderland mainly concentrate on the personality and psychology of its protagonists, the feminist awareness embedded in female characters, tight control and order imposed by males in a family, its themes, structures as well as Oates's skillful employment of narrative techniques to present the social landscape of the period from the Great Depression to the 1970s.The thesis, from the perspective of spatial narrative, explores the spatial forms illustrated in Wonderland, in which the visible physical space and invisible mental space are intertwined together to represent the spatialization of the novel. Spatial variations of Jesse, the protagonist, facilitate the narrative process of the entire novel and constitute the development of main plot; moreover, the domestic space where characters live corresponds to their psychological landscape. Oates uses free association, monologue and memories to present the mental space of Jesse and employs exquisite writing to unfold the mental space of the Pedersens and the Vogels. The textual space (i.e. spatial form) of the novel presents an "orange structure", mainly reflected in recurring theme and images through which the physical and mental space are illustrated. The thesis aims to uncover the way by which Oates exposes the dilemma of modern man's existence and identity crisis with the artistic representation of space. |
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