Space Presentation And Its Narrative Functions In Snow Flower And The Secret Fan

As a Chinese American female writer,Lisa See is still active in the field of contemporary literature.In 2005,Lisa See publishes her famous novel Snow Flower and the Secret Fan,which is one of the bestsellers receiving enormous praise from both readers and critics all over the world.The book has been sold for more than one million copies so far and has been translated into thirty-five languages,including Chinese.It centers on two girls' intense friendship with one another at the end of the nineteenth century in China.Traditional studies of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan have been concentrated on aspects of feminism,orientalism,traditional Chinese cultures and sisterhood.Besides,there are few researches about space,not to mention the systematic study of the narrative functions of space.This thesis takes Snow Flower and the Secret Fan as the text for analysis,focusing on the interpretation of space and its narrative functions from the perspective of Soja's "Thirdspace" theory which sheds some fresh light on the study of this novel.This thesis consists of five parts.Chapter One briefly introduces the author Lisa See,the novel Snow Flower and the Secret Fan,literature review in the relevant fields and the theory used in the thesis,including space theories of Edward Soja and correlative theories of narrative functions.Based on Soja's theories about Firstspace,Chapter Two analyzes the polarized living space from the following two aspects:the limited living space of women and the limitless living space of men.Besides,this chapter also lays special stress on analyzing narrative functions of living space.Chapter Three analyzes the spiritual spaces of Lily and Snow Flower from their hearts of lonely at two different periods:one is their childhoods,and the other is during their marriages.From the analysis of the two periods,it is clear to see the reasons why the spiritual worlds of the two heroines are isolated and narrative functions of the spiritual space are also discussed.Chapter Four mainly clarifies the disillusion of the feminine cultural space in the patriarchal system according to the life experiences of Lily and Snow Flower.The last part is the conclusion.Through the analysis of the polarized living spaces of the two sexes,the inexpressible loneliness existed in spiritual spaces of the two heroines and the disillusion of the otherized feminine cultural space,this thesis finds that different types of space have different narrative functions.The living space not only constructs a narrative framework for the story,but also promotes the development of narratives.The spiritual space acts upon the human spirits that are used for making characters whose self-awareness are destroyed and thus pushes forward the development of the plot to some extent.The feminine cultural space has a predictive effect on the tragic fate of the characters due to its rich cultural meaning.The failure of constructing the feminine cultural space in Snow Flower and the Secret Fan clearly illustrates the fact that multiplying of different space crises leads to the suppression and loss of Chinese women's self-consciousness in the nineteenth century...