The Study Of Feminist Narrative In Marilynne Robinson’s Novels

Marilynne Robinson has attracted much attention in contemporary American literary circles.Her writing has covered novels,essays,and social literary criticism.Robinson has won many awards in her writing career,including Pulitzer Prize,Orange Prize,etc.Her most famous works are her four novels: Housekeeping,Gilead,Home and Lila,the last three parts are called the "Trilogy of Gilead" because of the same writing background.From the time Robinson published her first novel to the present,American academia have done a lot of research on her novels,and the research perspectives have also shown a diversified trend.Chinese academic circles have also shown an upward trend in the study of her novels in recent years.No matter in the United States or in China,few people have systematically analyzed the narrative techniques in Robinson’s novels.Based on Susan Lancer’s feminist narratology theory,this article starts with the three aspects of Robinson’s novels: narrative voice,free indirect speech and negative plotting,and explores how Robinson constructs his own female discourse authority through writing.The thesis starts with the three narrative voices proposed by Lancer—personal,authorial,and communal narrative voices,discusses how Robinson uses different narrative voices to write female discourse,and analyzes the actual use of the three in the text.The different text effects reveal the process of constructing the authority of its discourse.Secondly,the thesis analyzes how the author uses free indirect speech in the novel by combining specific texts in Robinson’s novels,so that the female consciousness of the characters is naturally revealed,strengthens the author’s ironic effect,and further promotes the construction of narrative authority.Finally,this article explores the "negative plotting" in Robinson’s four novels.Starting from Lancer’s latest theory of intersecting feminism,combined with the concept of "negative plotting" proposed by her,it analyzes the effect of intersectionality on the "negative plotting".And analyses the "inner negative plotting" and "outer negative plotting" in the text of the novel,and explore the female narrative authority contained in the "negative plotting".This article uses feminist narratology theory to illustrate the construction of female narrative authority in Robinson’s four novels,revealing Robinson’s observation of women’s destiny in the novels,and women’s pursuit and yearning for subjective consciousness.