Gendered Narrative In Kazuo Ishiguro’s A Pale View Of Hills

A Pale View of Hills is the first work of British Japanese writer Kazuo Ishiguro.Once published in 1982,the work caused great repercussions in the western literary world.The book tells the story of a Japanese widow Etsuko living in the UK,who recalls her life in Japan after her eldest daughter Keiko committed suicide.The protagonist Etsuko deliberately fictionalizes Sachiko and Mariko,the marginalized mother and daughter,to reveal the heavy oppression that Japanese women have been facing in Japanese society dominated by patriarchy,as well as identity confusion she and her daughter have experienced in their home country and foreign land.A major feature of A Pale View of Hills is the use of gendered narrative.This paper analyzes and interprets the first-person recollection narration of the protagonist Etsuko from the perspective of feminist narratology.This article is divided into five parts.The first chapter briefly introduces Kazuo Ishiguro and his novel A Pale View of Hills,and summarizes research trends at home and abroad,Susan Lancer’s and Robin Warhol’s researches on feminist narratology and related theories as well as several important terms,and put forward the feasibility and research significance of the paper.The second chapter starts from the voice level of feminist narratology,and discusses how the narrator constructs female narrative authority through narrative voice and makes such authority infiltrate into the story and discourse level through gendered voice so as to eliminate male authority and achieve the purpose of subverting patriarchal ideological hegemony.The third chapter starts from the perspective of female narratives,discussing how the narrator transforms and reproduces the current situation of marginalized female groups including herself,and how to constantly compete for the right of “looking” without becoming the object of male so as to reveal the living conditions of the female group,expose the misfortunes,and resonate with readers.The fourth chapter will use the “unnarratable plotting” to reveal the huge narrative undercurrents in the novel: the negative plotting actually reflects the patriarchal ideology and militarist ideology of Japanese society,and the boom of liberal thoughts as well as women’s liberation thought after the war.The fifth chapter concludes and summarizes the feminist narrative strategies with gendered voices,focalization and plot in the novel that not only subvert the traditional male-centered narrative authority but also help women who live in a dual marginal position to construct their identities.