Subverting The Patriarchal Narrative

When Fox Is a Thousand is the first novel by Larissa Lai,a contemporary Chinese Canadian writer.Some critics pointed out that the rewriting of Chinese strange tales and Yu Hsuan Chi's experiences in the novel spread the splendid Chinese culture effectively and helped Chinese Canadians pursue their identities and the sense of belonging.The relationship between the technique of rewriting and Chinese culture has been discussed much,but the relationship between the feminist narrative in When Fox Is a Thousand and the patriarchal narrative which Larissa Lai bases her rewriting on has not been mentioned by critics yet.From the perspective of focalization in feminist narratology,the dissertation makes an investigation on the one hand into the images of the female characters under male zero focalization employed by the male writers-Pu Songling,Sun Guangxian and Huang Fumei.On the other hand,it explores how Larissa Lai rewrote the conventional and distorted female characters depicted by male writers with the narrative technique of female internal focalization.It is found that Larissa Lai re-depicted unconventional and positive female characters with the narrative technique of female focalization.The dissertation is comprised of five chapters.Chapter one includes a brief introduction to the research background as well as relevant literature reviews.Besides,research questions,methods,significance and the structure of the dissertation are also introduced.Chapter two briefly introduces the origin and development of feminist narratology and the relevant term focalization which is divided into zero,internal and external focalization.In addition,the ideologies conveyed by male focalization and female focalization will be elaborated.Chapter three makes a meticulous investigation into how the female characters under male zero focalization in Hengniang and The Taoist Priest of Mount Lao were like and how the rewritten female characters under female internal focalization in When Fox Is a Thousand were like.By contrasting the conventional female characters under male focalization with unconventional female characters under female focalization,this chapter demonstrates Larissa Lai's attempt to break the traditional female stereotype.Chapter four consists of two parts.In the first part,the image of Yu Hsuan Chi under male zero focalization is proved to be distorted.The positive image of Yu Hsuan Chi under female internal focalization is illustrated in the second part.Hence,it can be recognized that Larissa Lai re-depicted a model of feminist image.In summary,guided by the perspective of focalization in feminist narratology and by contrasting the images of conventional and distorted female characters under male focalization with the images of unconventional and positive female characters under female focalization,the dissertation illustrates Larissa Lai's feminist ideology of subverting the patriarchal narrative with the narrative technique of female focalization to rewrite the images of female characters under male focalization.