An Interpretation Of Narrative Strategies In Everything I Never Told You From The Perspective Of Feminist Narratology

Celeste Ng,an American Chinese female writer,becomes a “dark horse” in the circle of the contemporary American novel with the publication of her debut Everything I Never Told You.As an Asian woman living in the European and American white groups,Ng is able to defeat many well-known writers and becomes a rising star sweeping the European and American lists.Her success depends on the complex themes of women's self-growth,immigrant identity orientation,cultural conflicts and immigration family education.Additionally,the elaborate development of the novel and exquisite narrative strategies designed by the author in the novel are also conducive to her rapid popularity.Based on the Susan Lanser's theory of voice,point of view,and discourse theory,the thesis conducts a holistic study of narrative strategy in Everything I Never Told You from the following three aspects: narrative point of view,narrative voice and narrative discourse.It is difficult for a Chinese American female writer to set her own place in the literary circle of Europe and America.For that reason,it is of great research value to analyze how she reflects the text reliability and improves female influence in her writing.The work presents the real situation and experiences of American immigrant offsprings and portrays the contradictions within the cross-racial family.Through the interpretation on the female narrative strategies and techniques used by the author,this thesis aims to present the real living state and reveal the difficult situation of cross-racial families in America.And it endeavors to arouse public attention to the ethnic groups,helping readers further understand the text and giving some hints to the following research on fixing cross-racial family blocks.This thesis contains three parts,including introduction,the main body and conclusion as follows:The first part is the introduction,which briefly introduces Ng's life and her works.Then it mainly makes a brief summary of research on Everything I Never Told You abroad and at home.At last,it points out the significance,the perspective and the originality of the thesis.The main body of the thesis is composed of four chapters.Chapter ? lays a theoretical foundation of the whole thesis,providing the outline offeminist narratology and illustrates some relevant theories to this thesis.Chapter ? probes narrative strategy from the perspective of narrative voice based on the feminist narratology theory introduced by Susan Lanser.This chapter is developed through the authorial voice and the communal voice.From the perspective of the authorial voice,the thesis deals with the process of how the author uses different characters who bear different races and genders to construct the narrative authority.Then it takes social events to deconstruct the male authority.From the perspective of the communal voice,this section mainly explores the impact of the majority oppression and gender politics on the female community and ethnic group respectively in America,represented by Lydia and Marilyn.In this section,it highlights Marilyn who attempts to set up her own authority by fighting against the male-dominant society.Then,it probes the process of how Lydia struggles to keep the distorted family harmonious with the sacrifice of her requirements.It also analyzes the process of how Lydia orientates her identity under the racial discrimination situation.The author represents the voice of female and ethnic community and shortens the distance from readers to the text with the text reliability improved,which helps to set the narrative authority.Chapter ? mainly discusses how narrative strategy is built through the internal and external points of view from the feminist narrative perspective.The author sets several internal perspectives of characters to display different possibilities of events to readers,especially the point of view of Hannah who stays at the corner all the time,spurring readers' interests in thinking.The third person point of view runs from soup to nuts.In order to strengthen narrative effects,the author sets two clues through the third person point of view to narrate Lydia's death and detailed information about the Lees.Besides,many presuppositions are designed through this narrative skill.The story starts with “Lydia is dead but nobody knows” to stimulate readers' intense interest and instruct readers in thinking about the plot set by the author.Through the observation of different characters in the novel,the multifaceted nature of events is presented,and in turn the secrets of the cross-racial family come to the surface.Through the use of various point of views,Asian immigrants' survival and their difficulties in obtaining the right to speak and maintaining balance among the cross-racial family members are paid attention to.Chapter ? focuses on narrative discourse,analyzing the use of free direct speech and free indirect speech in female narrative.Free direct speech displays the character's monologue.It enables the character to express the inner thoughts directly,which is more persuasive and deterrent.Readers can walk close to the character's heart and sense his or her feelings.That is instrumental in building female authority.Free indirect speech discloses the ambiguity of the two voices of the narrator and the character.The author conveys her viewpoint to the readers invisibly by virtue of the character.The analysis of free direct speech and free indirect speech in this chapter helps to figure out the impact of gender politics on characters' fate more clearly.The interpretation on the dilemma of people from ethnic group draws public attention to the survival and growth of the ethnic minority in the multicultural America.The last part is the conclusion that summarizes the whole thesis.The author expresses complicated themes by means of narrative voices,narrative points of view and narrative discourse,which helps build the female narrative authority simultaneously.Readers' eyes are caught by the exquisite plot.In addition,the use of different narrative strategies conduces to spurring up readers' sympathy for the characters in the novel.It attracts their attention to the causes for the characters' tragedy and their efforts to solve such problems.