On Subject Construction Of Characters In Alice Munro’s Short Stories From The Perspective Of Lacanian Three Orders

Alice Munro is one of the masters in contemporary Canadian short stories. She enjoys a high reputation in the field. Up to now, 14 collections of short stories have been published, including Dance of the Happy Shades, Runaway, Too Much Happiness and so on. Many of her works have won a variety of awards in the field of Canadian literature. In 2013, Munro is awarded Nobel Prize in Literature.The three short stories—Chance, Soon and Silence, narrate Juliet’s frustrating emotional experiences which are from her younger age to middle age. In Face, a male protagonist who has defection in his face recalls his incomplete emotional memories from childhood to middle age. Boys and Girls takes the girl’s growth of consciousness as a clue and depicts her transformation from tomboy to a girl. Three protagonists have similar psychological growing process. Therefore, the thesis tries to analyze their psychological experiences in subject construction with Lacanian Three Orders—the Imaginary Order, the Symbolic Order and the Real Order.The thesis consists of six chapters. The first chapter introduces Alice Munro and her works. And it also presents the literature review and thesis statement. The second chapter is the theoretical foundation which mainly introduces the famous psychoanalyst—Jacques Lacan and his Three Orders. The third chapter is protagonists’ primary subject construction in the Imaginary Order. They have misrecognition in the Imaginary Order and have suffered from the influence of the Other. The forth chapter is about their second subject construction in the Symbolic Order. They experience different crises and confusion in face of the appearance of “Name-of-the-Father” and do harm to others. The fifth chapter is about their tertiary subject construction in the Real Order. They step into the Real Order with traumatic feelings in the Symbolic Order, then transfer “disability” to “ability” and finally envisage ego. The sixth chapter makes a conclusion. It summarizes the whole thesis, presents the significance and limitation and gives suggestions for later research.This thesis applies the Three Orders theory to analyze the three protagonists’ subject construction process and significant status of the Other from the angle of psychology. During the period of experiencing germination, growth and the formation of stable ego, individuals have to deal with a series of relationship among ego, the Other and society. The process of the subject’s psychology construction has instructive meanings for adjusting our psychology in our daily life.